The Place Was The Point Of Bifurcation Of
The Main Line, Which Divides At This Little Town Into One Branch
Running To Harrismith In The Orange Free State, And The Other
Leading Through The Dundee Coal Fields And Newcastle To The Laing's
Nek Tunnel And The Transvaal.
An importance, which appears now to
have been an exaggerated one, was attached by the Government of
Natal to
The possession of the coal fields, and it was at their
strong suggestion, but with the concurrence of General Penn Symons,
that the defending force was divided, and a detachment of between
three and four thousand sent to Dundee, about forty miles from the
main body, which remained under General Sir George White at
Ladysmith. General Symons underrated the power of the invaders, but
it is hard to criticise an error of judgment which has been so
nobly atoned and so tragically paid for. At the time, then, which
our political narrative has reached, the time of suspense which
followed the dispatch of the Cabinet message of September 8th, the
military situation had ceased to be desperate, but was still
precarious. Twenty-two thousand regular troops were on the spot who
might hope to be reinforced by some ten thousand colonials, but
these forces had to cover a great frontier, the attitude of Cape
Colony was by no means whole-hearted and might become hostile,
while the black population might conceivably throw in its weight
against us. Only half the regulars could be spared to defend Natal,
and no reinforcements could reach them in less than a month from
the outbreak of hostilities. If Mr. Chamberlain was really playing
a game of bluff, it must be confessed that he was bluffing from a
very weak hand.
For purposes of comparison we may give some idea of the forces
which Mr. Kruger and Mr. Steyn could put in the field, for by this
time it was evident that the Orange Free State, with which we had
had no shadow of a dispute, was going, in a way which some would
call wanton and some chivalrous, to throw in its weight against us.
The general press estimate of the forces of the two republics
varied from 25,000 to 35,000 men. Mr. J. B. Robinson, a personal
friend of President Kruger's and a man who had spent much of his
life among the Boers, considered the latter estimate to be too
high. The calculation had no assured basis to start from. A very
scattered and isolated population, among whom large families were
the rule, is a most difficult thing to estimate. Some reckoned from
the supposed natural increase during eighteen years, but the figure
given at that date was itself an assumption. Others took their
calculation from the number of voters in the last presidential
election: but no one could tell how many abstentions there had
been, and the fighting age is five years earlier than the voting
age in the republics. We recognise now that all calculations were
far below the true figure.
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