Apart from our clamorous rejoicing at the non-existent prowess of
our generals and our armies, we comforted ourselves by asserting that everything which was not quite perfect was the fault of the War Office. I am prepared to believe that our General Staff had not with any marked accuracy foreseen the probable nature of a war in South Africa or the skill, equipment and versatility of the Boer commandos. Yet it seems strange on looking back across this- gulf of years to realise that the public fury aroused by our disasters did not centre upon Joseph Chamberlain, Cecil Rhodes or the financiers, but almost wholly upon the dim and bewildered generals in Pall Mall. I can well recall, as a little boy, driving down with my father on his way to the Travellers' Club. We passed that distraught and huddled building where now stands the French frontage of the Royal Automobile Club. "That," said my father, " is the War Office." I gazed at it in fascinated horror ; it aroused in me the same feelings of awed repugnance with which, at a later date, I gazed upon the Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Broadmoor, or even later at the Brown House at Munich. In that building, I was con- vinced, was housed the cause of all our distress.
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