It is curious in turning over the files of such a paper as the ‘Times’ to observe how at first one or two small paragraphs of military significance might appear in the endless columns of diplomatic and political reports, how gradually they grew and grew, until at last the eclipse was complete, and the diplomacy had been thrust into the tiny paragraphs while the war filled the journal.  Under July 7th comes the first glint of arms amid the drab monotony of the state papers.  On that date it was announced that two companies of Royal Engineers and departmental corps with reserves of supplies and ammunition were being dispatched.  Two companies of engineers!  Who could have foreseen that they were the vanguard of the greatest army which ever at any time of the world’s history has crossed an ocean, and far the greatest which a British general has commanded in the field?

On August 15th, at a time when the negotiations had already assumed a very serious phase, after the failure of the Bloemfontein conference and the dispatch of Sir Alfred Milner, the British forces in South Africa were absolutely and absurdly inadequate for the purpose of the defence of our own frontier.  Surely such a fact must open the eyes of those who, in spite of all the evidence, persist that the war was forced on by the British.  A statesman who forces on a war usually prepares for a war, and this is exactly what Mr. Kruger did and the British authorities did not.  The overbearing suzerain power had at that date, scattered over a huge frontier, two cavalry regiments, three field batteries, and six and a half infantry battalions—­say six thousand men.  The innocent pastoral States could put in the field forty or fifty thousand mounted riflemen, whose mobility doubled their numbers, and a most excellent artillery, including the heaviest guns which have ever been seen upon a battlefield.  At this time it is most certain that the Boers could have made their way easily either to Durban or to Cape Town.  The British force, condemned to act upon the defensive, could have been masked and afterwards destroyed, while the main body of the invaders would have encountered nothing but an irregular local resistance, which would have been neutralised by the apathy or hostility of the Dutch colonists.  It is extraordinary that our authorities seem never to have contemplated the possibility of the Boers taking the initiative, or to have understood that in that case our belated reinforcements would certainly have had to land under the fire of the republican guns.

In July Natal had taken alarm, and a strong representation had been sent from the prime minister of the colony to the Governor, Sir W. Hely Hutchinson, and so to the Colonial Office.  It was notorious that the Transvaal was armed to the teeth, that the Orange Free State was likely to join her, and that there had been strong attempts made, both privately and through the press, to alienate the loyalty of the Dutch citizens