Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 11
ОглавлениеReproduced from The Poverty Bay Herald (New Zealand), May 14, 1901
THOROUGH, UNCONVENTIONAL, AND COOL
As you know him at home, a general is an elderly person in a tightly-buttoned frock coat and a befeathered cocked hat who walks with solemn stride along the stiffened ranks of a regiment in review order and discusses the civil side of the War Office with the regimental C.O. in language of a peculiar asperity. He is, moreover, a person of whom the most irreverent cavalry subaltern stands in awe, and his coming—of which a month's notice is given—causes junior line officers to devote themselves to mastering the intricacies of the sword practice with great earnestness. When he is not in uniform he opens bazaars, attends war games, presents prizes to charity schools, and writes letters to the Times.
Abroad and in war time he is another person, and where no house is available ne lives in a tent over which floats a red flag.
ONE BY HIMSELF
In these days he is a power—and, strangely enough, is less a supreme unapproachable than a comrade. He has his bath in the morning and fights steadily from sun-up to sun-down, when he knocks off to write his despatches. If he is consistently successful you at home call him familiarly by his surname, and cigarette makers use his photograph for advertising purposes. If he is unsuccessful, and disastrously so, he goes home on sick leave—for he is usually very sick.
Lord Kitchener is not like other generals; and indeed, it is well that no stereotyped officer is at the helm in South Africa, and I say this without in any way desiring to reflect upon the wisdom, capacity, or administrative abilities of any other general officer—for the situation calls rather for the specialist than the general practitioner.
A great strategist would be wasted in Africa. There is no need for delicate adjustment of forces or elaborately prepared counter-moves. The overthrow of the remnant of the Boer army requires little strategy. It is a matter for brute force and physical endurance.
Lord Kitchener realises this, and has realised it for many months. He knows that if the war is to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, that end will only be arrived at by plodding dogged perseverance, and by playing the Boers at their own game, and damaging them in the most effective manner.
THE WORK AND THE MAN
You cannot defeat the Boer by calling him names. He runs away and glories in it. You cannot get near enough to call him a coward, nor would that epitaph sting him to the fighting point. It is a part of Brother Boer's tactics to run, and he makes us run after him; it is a part of the tiring-out process, and the dominating maxim of the outlying commando is:—
"Ye who fight and run away,
Live to fight with De la Rey."
Kitchener knows this, and where another general might have been covering sheets of foolscap with general ideas for surrounding and capturing the flying burghers, Kitchener is calmly and steadily removing to well-guarded centres the means of flight.
Firstly, the burghers must have food— so we are bringing the food in. Then they must have horses, so the country from the Orange to the Crocodile is being denuded of horses.
The horses must have forage, and the forage of the country is stored or burnt.
Imagine if you can Kitchener's task. Think of the enormous tract of country over which our operations are extended, and you will realise to some extent that in Pretoria is the only possible general for the work in hand—a work that demands better generalship than would be required of the commander of an army corps in a European war.
HEAD, MIDDLE, AND FEET
In South Africa Kitchener is the head, middle, and feet of the army. He runs everything and knows everything. He has divisions, brigades, and columns moving in all directions over an area not less than 300,000 square miles, and he knows the whereabouts of every one. He has some columns that are 250 miles from any railway line, and as far from telegraphic communication. His grasp of detail is perfect. He knows how many Cape carts Henniker's column has, and he is aware that there are three sick Yeomen in hospital at Buluwayo.
THE MAN AND HIS MEN
His attitude towards his subordinates is peculiar, for he values man only as a more or less perfect machine, and the more perfect he is the better he treats him. Kitchener has no use for fops of any sort, but he is not so prejudiced by appearance as to order a man home because he wears an eyeglass, as some people would have you believe. Indeed, some of his best officers have an affection for the monocle.
If his manner were translated into words, it would run something like this:- -
"I am your superior officer; you have taken service under me, and the world will judge you according to your progress. I have great power entrusted: to me by the King through his Parliament, and whoever you are or whatever position you fill in the social world I can make or mar you. I want you to do your duty, and your duty is to do as you are told. If you do as I bid, you shall have all the credit for the success in obtaining which I used you as an instrument. If my plans miscarry I will take the blame—unless it miscarries through your inefficiency. I don't care who your tailor is or how many clubs you may be a member of providing you can lead your men into action with a maximum of dash to a minimum of risk. I don't want heroes who will lead their companies up to the cannon's mouth and reduce the strength of their regiments accordingly, but steady men who will take cover and shoot away obstruction from the shelter of a nice convenient boulder."
Nor does Kitchener spare himself, as the recent chase of De Wet testifies. If he is not at Pretoria sitting at the end of a telegraph wire he is somewhere down the line seeing things for himself, and De Wet had not been long in the Colony before Kitchener was at De Aar, talking to the commandant of Hopetown about the horses that had not been removed from the Hopetown district. On such occasions "K of K" has a fine flow of language.
