TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE RELIEF OF MAFEKING.
AN instinct common not only to all who speak English, but to all civilised mankind, has made of the relief of Mafeking an important event. The place itself as a position was too isolated to-be considered of value, its fall would not have weakened the Army, and it was so nearly indefensible that its capture would not have increased Boer reputation for tactics or have decreased the general expectation of an ultimate British success. Nevertheless, the instinct which made men watch so anxiously the fate of the little outpost bad, like most human instincts, a base de- fensible by the coldest reasoning. Mafeking was really a large village on the open plain defended only by half-trained Englishmen, mostly Colonists and volunteers, led by a few Regular officers who were there almost by accident. Its sup- plies both of food and munitions were necessarily limited, it was unprotected by heavy cannon, its unarmed population, chiefly native, was a serious burden, and from the first day to the last neither food nor munitions could by possibility be increased. Its defenders, it is calculated, cannot have exceeded fifteen hundred in number, and among them only a few officers were accustomed to war, or had enjoyed anything like strict professional training. It was just such a place, in short, as a scientific Continental general would, after a few days of endurance, have thought himself justified in surrendering without fear of blame from his scientific superiors. This place so hard to defend and so insufficiently garrisoned was besieged by four thousand Boers, who, if they had no better training than their adversaries, had plenty of food, Creusot guns, ample munitions, and the means of renewing all supplies indefinitely from the country behind them. Our base was, in fact, an un- peopled veldt, and theirs Pretoria and the arsenals which had been silently stored for thirteen years. There was no sort of equality between the means of attack and defence, and there can hardly be a doubt that if the besiegers had been Americans or Germans or Frenchmen the place would have been stormed at once, and the garrison either wiped out or sent to linger as prisoners in the capital. Mafeking, however, held out week after week, month after month, and as the fact became known abroad the world began to gaze on the struggle with an ever- increasing interest. If the English could hold Mafeking, England possessed the material of an army which it would be hard, perhaps even impossible, to defeat. And it proved so. Partly through the foresight of a contractor, partly, it is said, through the financial pluck of a younger son of Lord Salisbury, the little town was better pro- visioned than in the regular course of things it would have been ; but still, as the British arms were checked and hope became more faint, the stores waxed low, food became almost too rough even for rough men—enteric fever is really indigestion sharpened into a mortal disease —and at last the ration of horse and mule flesh with a little bran porridge became barely sufficient to support men who had borne bombardment for months, and who had every day some form of hard work to do. • Effort after effort to get food failed. Intermittently com- munication was opened with the outside world, we hardly yet know how, but mainly by native runners, who risked their lives for reward and to get away, but the news till the very last can have brought the gar- rison little hope. A well-conceived dash was made from Rhodesia, but Colonel Plumer was beaten back, and at last death from starvation must have been actually in full sight. And still the half-trained garrison, slowly changing, as the shells daily fell and the enemy's attacks were weekly repulsed, into war-worn veterans, fought steadily on, not with the fury of the heroes of Saragossa and Badajoz, but with the "cheery stoicism" which is said to be the specialty of the English aristocrat, but which really marks all who speak English when they mean fighting at all. "Tommy" will jest as the shells fall just as well as Da Vere. if the enemy's trenches came too close, they were met by other trenches. If a Boer "fort" became too dangerous, it was assaulted. If the " snipers" were too persistent, picked marksmen "sniped" back till they desisted. The need of the hour was met in ihe hour by men who from first to last 'never lost wholly the schoolboy sense of enjoyment in the affair, in circum- venting a tricky enemy, in meeting new difficulties with new devices, some of them such as only Englishmen in.a tight place, which they are resolved not to quit, ever conceive. The garrison never disobeyed orders, never made indiscreet rushes, never shrunk when called upon for two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage. At the very lase when a grandson of the President got together a few . hundred desperadoes, many of them foreigners, for a final rush, and almost carried the defences, he was beaten because half the available force had the nerve and the patience to lie in their shelters till the assailants had passed, and so to " surround " them. The moral quality of the garrison rather than their resources or their dis- cip'ine beat the assailants back, and it was because the world without reasoning much felt this that the siege at last keenly interested all mankind, till when the relief arrived, composed of men from all the ends of the earth, but timed by Lord Roberts to an hour, Tennesseeans • telegraphed delight, Russians almost sobbed with vexa- tion, and one Parisian at least—it is affirmed on evidence —committed suicide from disappointment.
The defenders of Mafeking had no doubt two advan- tages. One was that most of them were Colonists used to rough life, full of resource, and with a rooted dislike of yielding to Boers ; and the other was the character of the commandant. It is not often that the precise man quali. fled to do a particular work is given by Providence or the current of events that particular work to do, but that was the good fortune of Mafeking. Colonel Baden- Powell, now Major-General Baden-Powell, has been the object of such showers of eulogy that one is almost ashamed to add to the number of the raindrops, but he. clearly deserves the world-wide recognition which he has received, and which, but for his humorousness of nature, might spoil him as some Americans say it has spoiled Admiral Dewey. There are many kinds of courage, and his is evidently of that rare sort which- includes, as all courage does not, the fearlessness of results which is the foundation of tenacity. Besides his courage and that cheer- ful temper which all observers now describe as the specialty of "Tommy," and which has a fascination for Englishmen not easily explicable—unless it be that ours is at bottom a grave people and feels cheerfulness as a relief—he is also a great officer, whom men follow readily because of his intelligence, who in every emergency has a plan, and whose remedy is always ready. The garrison after a fortnight of him would have chosen him by acclaim to lead them, and for the long-drawn seven months his presence, his resource, his never-failing perception of all that was bright in the situation, gave his followers fresh confidence that at the last somehow all would go well. "You were never at the end of him," perhaps of all con- victions about a leader the best protection against the despair which, when patience is overstrained, and hope deferred has made the heart sick, and the nerves have to resist hunger as well as momentary danger of death, sometimes overcomes even the dour British spirit. We must not let his repute drown the deserved fame of all who stood so bravely by him, but there can be little question that without Baden-Powell, his ascendency over rough men, his endless energy, and his laughing courage, Mafeking could not have been saved. He is the hero of the siege,—a siege which, besides illustrating our time, will, we hope compel soldiers to reconsider their judgment as to what half-trained men can do. That judgment is of the last importance to us, for we shall not resort to the conscription, of which, indeed, every incident of the war tends to reduce the necessity. What need of the dreaded life in barracks for the defence of England when men who never passed through that mill can fight behind hillocks like the Boers at Colenso or in the open plain like the Englishmen, Scotchinen, and Irishmen who endured and fought and died to protect Mafeking, every man of whom might have said in the stirring words which Drayton puts in the mouth of Henry V. :— "And for myself,' quoth he, This my full rest shall be,
England ne'er mourn for me, Nor more esteem me. Victor I will remain, Or on this earth be slain, Never shall she sustain Loss to redeem me.'"
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