TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE NATION AND THE WAR.
IT must be allowed that on the whole the nation re- ceived the news of General Buller's failure to cross the Tugela at his first attempt in an admirable spirit. There was no outburst of anger against any one, no attempt to make a scapegoat, no outcry about our being fools to put our hands into a hornets' nest. Everywhere the one impulse was to see the thing through to the end, cost what it might. There was not even for a moment any symptom of despair. The instant question was : " How can we best repair the damage and make a better start on new lines ? " But though there was so much pluck and high resolve shown, there was a distinct note of foreboding and anxiety in the national feeling. As a lady said in the hearing of the present writer, " The situa- tion is much too serious for despair." It was indeed pretty generally evident that people believed that we were already in a very tight place, and that we must meet it as our forefathers met the news of the Mutiny at the Nore, or of the battle of Austerlitz. Now, though from many points of view it was excellent to see the nation's difficulties met in a spirit at once so serious and so determined, we cannot but agree with our correspondent, Mr. Yerburgh, in thinking that there has been a good deal of exaggeration and over- emphasis abroad during the past week. As he suggests, if we use such heroic language over a series of checks in our war with the Boers, which, if trouble- some, are, after all, only on a very small scale, what should we do if we were obliged to face a great European army in the field ? If that were to happen, and if we were to have reverses by land and sea, we should indeed have a right to regard the situation as one of great seriousness. As it is, there is nothing yet, and there is not likely to be anything in the course of events in South Africa, which could possibly justify the feeling of dismay, coupled, we admit, with absolute determination, with which the news of the Tugela was received last Saturday. There was plenty of ground for new activity on the largest and widest scale, and for vigilance as keen as if we were actually in the middle of a great crisis ; for the only way to prevent a great crisis is to prepare against it before it is even in sight. There was no good cause for talking as if we had actually got our backs to the wall.
But though we think the public took the unsuccessful action at the Tugela a great deal too hard, and jumped at once to the conclusion that we were in for a national crisis, we are bound to admit that they had some excuse for their alarmist views. As we have said elsewhere, we do not wish for a moment to find fault with the actions of our generals in the field, but we do think that it is perfectly fair to describe them as very good fighters, but very bad users of the telegraph. Naturally we do not want them to send false news, or to suppress news, or to add heroic resolves about what they are going to do next time, to pieces of unpleasant information. The arts and tricks of the bulletin writer should, of course, be avoided. But while we do not want them to " gloze," we do think that they should refrain from actually suggesting alarmist views. It was abso- lutely necessary for General Buller to state fully and frankly that he had tried to cross the Tugela and had not succeeded, and that he had lost eleven guns and had also suffered heavily in the way of killed and wounded. It was not necessary for him, as it seems to us, to cast his telegram in a form which gave " serious reverse " as the keynote of the despatch, and conveyed the suggestion of alarm naturally produced by those words. Of course, if " serious reverse " had been the only true and correct way of describing the battle, then no doubt General Buller ought to have used the phrase in order to give the Government and the public here the proper impression. But as far as we can judge, apply- ing the recognised standard in such matters, the battle is not properly described as " a serious reverse." The accident of the gun-horses being shot was a most dis- agreeable one, certainly, but the General only lost about 6 per cent. of the men under his command—General Buller is said to have twenty thousand men with him, though probably only ten thousand were actually engaged—but a battle in which the loss is not greater than that—remember that in a modern battle all the wounds, slight as well as serious, are returned—is hardly a serious reverse. It might have been, if the enemy had been able to follow up our retirement, to take up new and still stronger positions, and so to assume a far more threatening attitude than before the battle. But there seems no reason to suppose that the Boers did or could have done this. We simply failed to carry their positions, and lost heavily in guns and men while making our attempt. It is perhaps too favourable to us to speak of this as " a drawn battle," as one of the correspondents does, but we are bound to say that, taken as a whole, the language of the special correspondents seems to us to place the battle in a truer perspective than that of the General. They give the facts, but they make no alarmist sugges- tions. It is a very topsy-turvy situation, and seems to suggest that there ought to be a censor for official as well as for Press telegrams. But General Buller is not, of course, the only general who has shown a want of dis- cretion in the handling of the telegraph. Lord Methuen's original contributions to the art of field-wiring were even less successful. It was he who described the action of the Modder River as one of the hardest fought battles in the history of the British Army, and yet his casualties, if we are not mistaken, were not much over 4 per cent. That the action of our troops at the Modder River was as gallant as could be desired we do not doubt for a moment, nor do we doubt that they would, if called upon, have fought till the percentage was that of Albuera ; but this does not alter the fact that the battle was not one which will live in history on account of the special fierceness of the fighting. We suppose the truth is that the art of giving information by long-distance wire is one which has to be learnt like any other, and that at this moment our generals are only in the apprentice stage. No doubt, however, they will learn it before the war is over. Meantime we will say once more, for we cannot say it too often, that we do not want the generals to send " high-falutin' " or optimistic telegrams, or telegrams calculated to influence public opinion, but merely that they should weigh their words more carefully, and consider what will be the suggestion conveyed by the wires. If the suggestion of grave alarm is really the one they wish to send, of course they must send it, but let them remember that their words summing up the general effect of an action will have definite results here, and will not merely be taken as official common form.
We have said enough about the way in which the public has met the situation up till now. We will add one word as to the future. It may be that a real disaster is still going to happen in South Africa, and that while General Methuen's force will be penned in and starved out at the Modder, General Buller will be unable to relieve Lady- smith, and that it too will fall. We do not believe that either of these things will happen, for we believe that General Methuen can always fall back to the Orange River, while if the worst comes to the worst General White can, by a night march, cut his way out of Ladysmith and join General Buller. He would have to sacrifice his vast stores of food and ammunition, and so will not move till absolutely obliged, but that he can move if he likes we make no doubt. But even supposing our notions to be wrong, and that both General Methuen and General White are destroyed, the public here must stand firm. They will get in that case plenty of suggestions of panic from South Africa, but they must not be moved by them. Even if we were to lose fifteen thousand men we must still go on, and must begin to organise another army appropriate to the work in hand. When that army has been trained and organised for its special work, as Lord Kitchener trained and organised the Egyptian Army to reconquer the Soudan, it must be used to beat the Boers. The Dutch have been twenty years fighting in Acheen, and are only just finishing that war. Probably, even if we have to endure the big reverses of the kind we are con- sidering, we shall not take twenty years, but the spirit of the Dutch in their oversea war is the spirit we must copy. Meantime we see no reason to believe that either Methuen or White will be unable to look after himself. All we want is to ask the public to look coolly at things at their worst, and to resolve even then not to be depressed beyond reason by alarmist telegrams or gloomy fore- bodings.
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