’Yours of today received and understood.  My suggestion is that you take up strongest available position that will enable you to keep touch of the enemy and harass him constantly with artillery fire, and in other ways as much as possible.  I can make food last for much longer than a month, and will not think of making terms till I am forced to.  You may have hit enemy harder than you think.  All our native spies report that your artillery fire made considerable impression on enemy.  Have your losses been very heavy?  If you lose touch of enemy, it will immensely increase his opportunities of crushing me, and have worst effect elsewhere.  While you are in touch with him and in communication with me, he has both of our forces to reckon with.  Make every effort to get reinforcements as early as possible, including India, and enlist every man in both colonies who will serve and can ride.  Things may look brighter.  The loss of 12,000 men here would be a heavy blow to England.  We must not yet think of it.  I fear I could not cut my way to you.  Enteric fever is increasing alarmingly here.  There are now 180 cases, all within last month.  Answer fully.  I am keeping everything secret for the present till I know your plans.’

Much allowance is to be made for a man who is staggering under the mental shock of defeat and the physical exertions which Buller had endured.  That the Government made such allowance is clear from the fact that he was not instantly recalled.  And yet the cold facts are that we have a British General, at the head of 25,000 men, recommending another General, at the head of 12,000 men only twelve miles off, to lay down his arms to an army which was certainly very inferior in numbers to the total British force; and this because he had once been defeated, although he knew that there was still time for the whole resources of the Empire to be poured into Natal in order to prevent so shocking a disaster.  Such is a plain statement of the advice which Buller gave and which White rejected.  For the instant the fate not only of South Africa but even, as I believe, of the Empire hung upon the decision of the old soldier in Ladysmith, who had to resist the proposals of his own General as sternly as the attacks of the enemy.  He who sorely needed help and encouragement became, as his message shows, the helper and the encourager.  It was a tremendous test, and Sir George White came through it with a staunchness and a loyalty which saved us not only from overwhelming present disaster, but from a hideous memory which must have haunted British military annals for centuries to come.

CHAPTER 12.

The dark hour.