March a day and fight
a day seems the rule so far.
At home, when you are criticising these actions of Methuen, you must
always bear two facts in mind. First, we are bound to keep our line of
communication, that is, the railway, open, and hold it as we advance. We
can bring Kimberley no relief unless we can open and guard the railway,
and so enable supplies to be poured into the town. Second, we are not
strong enough, and above all not mobile enough, while holding the
railway to attempt a wide flanking movement which might threaten the
Boer retreat, or enable us to shell and attack from two sides at once.
If we had anything like a decent force of mounted men I suppose we could
do it, but with our handful to separate it from the main body would be
to get it cut off. "Want of frigates" was to be found on Nelson's heart,
as he said on some occasion, and I am sure by this time that "want of
cavalry" must be written on poor Methuen's. So you must figure to
yourself a small army, an army almost all infantry, and an army tied to
the railway on this march; and if we bring off no brilliant strategy,
but simply plod on and take hard knocks, well, what else, I ask, under
the circumstances can we do?
Yesterday in the early morning we found ourselves emerging from some
stony hills with a great plain before us about four miles wide, I should
think, with an ugly-looking range of hills bounding it on the north and
the railway running north and south on our left.
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