Blundering On
Buller's Campaign. By Julian Symons. (Cresset Press, 30s.) Ma. SYMONS is to be congratulated on his account of Buller's campaign, an account which also clarifies in some detail the fascinating and labyrinthine story of British military politics in the years before the Boer War. The War House was divided between the followers of Roberts, who had commanded for many years in India, and Wolseley, his reputation made in the closing stages of the Zulu War, some twenty years before fighting broke out with the Boers. Contributing much to the general confusion at the outbreak of war was the acrimony between the civilian and military direction of the War Office—only in 1903 was the post of Commander-in-Chief abolished in favour of the Army Council.
Buller was a Wolseley man, his appointment to South Africa widely applauded. But as Mr. Symons makes_ clear, long years in Whitehall had sapped his powers of decision, and in any case he possessed a curiously unstable charac- ter. On the boat out to the Cape (another passen- ger was that young war correspondent, Winston Churchill) he •had no plan of campaign to dis- cuss with his staff. Once in the field, disaster followed disaster. He advocated surrender to the invested garrison of Ladysmith, advice very properly not taken. Two laughably unsuccessful
attempts to relieve the town at Colenso and Spion Kop followed, in which his forces suffered rela- tively heavy losses from the top-hatted, sharp- shooting Boers. Command relationships were further bedevilled by unnecessary arguments with subordinates. Inevitably he was replaced by Roberts, a major defeat fur the Wolseley faction at home.
Yet he still retained immense popularity with his men, and was given a hero's welcome when eventually he arrived back in England This anatomy of a failure is all the more interesting because the writer offers no single. all-revealing explanation. Written with humour, shrewd appre- ciation of the military factors involved, and great insight into the personal conflicts behind this unhappy campaign from one of Britain's more inglorious wars, here is a little masterpiece.
.HOWARD ENZENUERGER
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