THE PROBABLE ORIGINAL STRENGTH OF THE BOER FORCES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Sin,—In the Spectator of June 21st there is a note about the probable original strength of the Boer forces. The following estimate made at the beginning of the war will seem less of an exaggeration now than it did then, and if not exact, yet help perhaps to elucidate this interesting point. At the time of the ultimatum the Kruger Government counted on a fully equipped force of a hundred and eleven thousand " true Afrikanders." This was an overestimate by the number of Cape Colonists who failed to redeem their pledges—about twenty-five thousand out of the forty thousand—and so the actual number in the field or available was probably about eighty-six thousand. In addition to these "true Afrikanders"
were the corps of foreigners present out of (temporary) sym- pathy with the Boers, or for experience of the art of war, and the natives employed in the firing line as well as for trench- digging and other menial operations. A formidable army when it is borne in mind that they had hopes of the native tribes, that they had on their side the amazing "neutrality" of a large portion of the Cape Dutch, and that South Africa was a spider's web of intelligence for the Republican autocrat in Pretoria. If the British Army was ill served by its Intelli- gence Department in its underestimate of the Boer strength, what is to be said for the Boer Intelligence Department ? Was not the total available strength of the British set by them at a hundred thousand ? That defect on the British side may have hampered the British arms; but on the Boer side it was fatal.—I am, Sir, &c., G. G.
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