Of course this disagreeable incident can make no possible difference
to the final result of the campaign, but it shows how much more dangerous it is in the case of the Boers to sit still than to act boldly on the offensive. As long as we are advancing the Boers seem paralysed, and give up splendid positions almost without a struggle.—That this is not through guile or a desire to lead us on is shown by the fact that the advance of Mahon's relief column to Mafeking, though it was vital to the Boers to stop it, was never seriously interfered with.—The moment, however, we are quiescent the Boers pluck up courage, and begin, like the cunning hunters they are, to concoct plans for surprise. The only thing, it seems to us, is to keep the Boers on the run, and to send out flying columns with the object of following them up and attacking them. No doubt that'sounds very risky, but experience shows it is safer than standing on the defen- sive and waiting to be attacked. "Boldness, boldness, and again boldness" will pay us better than waiting cautiously and being ambuscaded after all. Note the irony of the fact that our troops at Nitral's Nek were greatly outnumbered, though we have now two hundred thousand men in the field and the Boers not twenty thousand. So true ib is that mobility is the best form of that numerical superiority in action which, barring accidents, means victory.
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