Sherman's advance through Tennessee was through a country which was almost a river bottom, level, and fairly supplied with roads. The roads, no doubt, were inferior. Still they were passable for artillery and wagons. Then, too, as has been before stated, General Sherman had the inestimable advantage of two large rivers as lines of transportation and supply. Nothing of that sort exists in South Africa. It is hardly too much to say, that the region which is now the scene of conflict between the British and Burgher forces, is one almost ideal for the purposes of defense. In fact, the region between the two Republics and the seasoast may be considered almost as a series of natural fortresses, each one of which has to be carried by an invading force, before actual entry can be made upon the territory either of the Orange Free State or the Transvaal.

The next point is to be found in the contrast between the degrees of knowledge possessed by each of the contending armies of the movements of the other. The current discussions of the present South African military situation deal very copiously with the matters of front attacks, flank movements, turning movements, and other things too numerous to mention. Generally, they make an omission of a feature of the military situation, which in actual operations is entitled to some weight; and that is, the force, and the position, of the enemy. This feature is one generally ignored by British soldiers. Nevertheless, as they are beginning to find out to their cost, it is a feature which cannot be ignored with due regard to safety.

As to this vital fundamental factor, in every military situation, in all military movements, the force and positions of the enemy, the Burghers have at all times an immense advantage over their adversaries. Every farm house is for the Burghers a bureau of intelligence, is a branch office of their secret service. In any mountainous district, a system of signals is a thing of The Burghers, however, have telegraph lines in abundance. At every point, thus far, their knowledge of the movements of the British has been apparently most complete. Equally complete has been the British ignorance.

ease.

So far as we can judge, this ratio of equality, between the knowledge of the one side and the ignorance of the other, will continue to the end of the war.

The next point to be noted is as to the fighting capacities of the two contending forces, so far as it concerns the quality of their strategy.

Here let us ask ourselves two questions:

What has been the quality of the strategy on the two sides thus far?

Is there any sufficient reason for thinking that there will be, in this respect, any considerable change in the future?

Those two questions every man can answer for himself.

But let us look at some of the facts, which tend to throw light on the answers to these two questions.

The most prominent characteristics to-day of the British War Office, and of the ordinary British Army officers, are arrogance, and indocility. Absolutely confident of their own superiority to the rest of the world, civilised and uncivilised, with an innate imbedded conviction impossible to dislodge, of the completeness of their knowledge on all subjects, and of the impossibility of their learning anything from other men, the inability of the British War Office, or of the ordinary British officer, to adapt themselves to the modern methods, of modern warfare, is almost beyond conception. For it must be steadily borne in mind, that the present fighting methods of the British Army are essentially mediæval. They are antiquated. They are out of date. The sum and substance of the typical British strategy of to-day is a rush with the bayonet. Practically as an army, they have learned nothing since Waterloo, where they won only by a combination of chances. The saying attributed to the Duke of Wellington, that his officers got their training for war at Eton and Harrow, gives the most accurate evidence of the fundamental conception of strategy held by the Duke in his time, and by the average British officer to-day. That idea is that war is a game of football-to be won by a front rush. A rush-at one point or another, that is the present prevalent typical British idea of war. It stands out in nearly every despatch sent home from the present field of operations.

On the other side, however, it is well understood, that war to-day is a contest, not of brawn, but of brains. Transportation and supply, position, full and accurate information as to the forces and positions of your enemy,-these are the factors that

enter into any problem of modern scientific war. And these problems are to be handled, not by brawn, but by brains. These facts are well understood, and are made matters of practical study, by the Burghers.

British valor needs not to be put in evidence. Single individual soldiers, of a high order, are no doubt to be found today in considerable numbers in the British Army. But the British Army of to-day, as a fighting organisation, as a machine for the needs of modern scientific warfare, is not a subject of serious consideration. Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener are

very able men. Lord Kitchener, according to all the indications, is an admirable organiser, and a most efficient executive. If he were put at the head of the War Office, and were given free hand, he probably could-in time-convert the British Army into a modern fighting organism. But the time required would be large. First and foremost, he would have to get rid of an enormous mass of excrescences and dead wood. The conditions which he would have to exterminate are those which Lord Roberts describes as existing in the British Army in India.

'That the long-existing discontent and growing disloyalty in our Native army might have been discovered sooner, and grappled with in a sufficiently prompt and determined manner to put a stop to the Mutiny, had the senior regimental and staff officers been younger, more energetic, and intelligent, is an opinion to which I have always been strongly inclined. Their excessive age, due to a strict system of promotion by seniority which entailed the employment of Brigadiers of seventy, Colonels of sixty, and Captains of fifty, must necessarily have prevented them performing their military duties with the energy and activity which are more the attributes of younger men, and must have destroyed any enthusiasm about their regiments, in which there was so little hope of advancement or of individual merit being recognized. Officers who displayed any remarkable ability were allowed to be taken away from their own corps for the more attractive and better paid appointments appertaining to civil employ or the irregular service. It was, therefore, the object of every ambitious and capable young officer to secure one of these appointments, and escape as soon as possible from a service in which ability and professional zeal counted for nothing."

Upon the question of the time required to organize, drill and 'discipline an ordinary force of British soldiery, we may quote

Napier as to the capacities of the British soldier in his day. He says, speaking of the British soldier: "When completely disciplined (and three years are required to accomplish this) his port is lofty, and his movement free."

What delicious naiveté!

In this connection we may also cite the language put in the mouth of the Earl of Oxford by the great novelist, which expresses in the clearest way the actual conditions as they have existed at all times of her military history, with one exception, concerning the organization and maintenance of a British army in any foreign country:

"Look, therefore, at this English Army. Winter is approaching; where are they to be lodged? how are they to be victualed? by whom are they to be paid? Is your Highness to take all the expense and labor of fitting them for the summer campaign? For, rely on it, an English army never was, nor will be, fit for service, till they have been out of their own island long enough to accustom them to military duty. They are men, I grant, the fittest for soldiers in the world; but they are not soldiers as yet, and must be trained to become such at your Highness' expense."

In view of all these facts, what are the reasonable possibilities which can be accomplished in South Africa by Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener? Or by any other two or three individuals, even if they were Napoleons.

The essential difficulties of the situation lie further back-in the British War Office.

But taking the situation, as it exists in South Africa alone. How long will it take, to organise, equip, and supply an army adequate for a successful invasion of the two Republics? How much distance in advance have the British Armies surmounted since the opening of the war? At the same rate of progress, or at any rate of progress which is at all within reasonable probability, how long will it take the British Army to reach Pretoria? Especially, what will be the cost, in money, and in men? Then comes another question, which looms up in the background-WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN INDIA?

These are questions, to which the entire British people will do well to give their mind, their best thought.

It is not the part of prudence to leave them to be decided by a Birmingham ward politician.

II.

THE POLITICAL SITUATION BETWEEN BOERS AND BRITISH.

The redress of the grievances of the Uitlanders, of the "intolerable grievances" of the Uitlanders-that is the pretext, which has been put forward as the real reason for the latest act of invasion, and attempt at conquest, by the British Government of the Transvaal Republic.

It becomes, therefore, a matter of interest to ascertain who these Uitlanders are.

Many persons no doubt suppose, that the Uitlanders consist in the main of Englishmen and Americans, who have been always accustomed to liberal institutions, who are intelligent law-abiding citizens, who earnestly desire the most advanced facilities for education, with all the concomitants of the most modern civilisation.

As a matter of fact, Johannesburg, where the Uitlanders live, is a mining camp, with all that the term implies. Its population is a mining population. Mr. Bryce describes its residents as "a crowd of English, Australian and American miners, employed by capitalists, mostly of Jewish extraction." In another passage Mr. Bryce describes them in this way: Nearly all of the latter [the recent emigrants] were gathered in the mining district around Johannesburg, which is practically an English, or rather an Anglo-Jewish, city, with a sprinkling of Australians, Americans, Germans and Frenchmen." In these quotations Mr. Bryce has omitted one of the chief ele ments of the Johannesburg population, that is, a collection of over forty thousand Kaffirs, who are held in what is practically slavery by this collection of liberty loving adventurers.

The idea, that the denizens of this mining camp care anything for religion, or education, or free representative govern