ANTITHESIS OF OMDURMAN.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 750, 24 February 1910, Page 5

ANTITHESIS OF OMDURMAN.

(TEE PAABDEBEEG RAVINE) 'And : now : here's. Piet!—'is 'trouscre .to 'is '- ' knees, 1 . '■ ; . 1 : .'•■ /'ls coat-tails lyin'./level.. in . the ". bullet- . spriukled 'breeze; ' ' •K'dobs ngt lose; "is, rifle' an' '.he 'does not ■ lose 'is seat;known,a lot'o' people' fight a !long way worse than Piet,!— \ ' , —''The ;Kve Nations." ■ Paardeberg /is, of'course; the antithesis ;of Omdurman. A> great reputation,Vwon at.Omdurman, was nearly lost there. ' •' Among those who carry the tables of theiLaw down out-of Zion to our mili- • tary , transgressors there ' is,' as everyone knows, not very, much unanimity. Not ; one of them knows exactly what , sort of general ,he would: have,? oven if h e had as Iperfect/, an .option of. shaping the/ rough .material as.the last-joineu "hand" in the /moulders'. department at any Wellington foundry. One wants national generals who will handle the forces on the board with the- callousness of a. chess player; another pines for some -sort- of picturesque adventurer very much .like i the apotheosis ■of Ned Kelly, wearing a gold crown; u;ith 'diamonds- in. it; everybody, :of . course, .'wants a Hannibal. ■..■,: .i. "One. thing is perfectly ■ clear Paardeberg"—says,,. Co'nan. ..Doyle, -. who knew' absplately, .nothing : of: '.tactics— "Kitchener should not hive" attaoked."" It seems'perfectly.'.hopeless 'to &y -a'/wordrnbmit. Pnaideoerg,.unless something 'is ;nrst wd about tie:''gteai bliglits

which fall on the English mind—eipecially on tho English' mind in relation to war—from time to time. The ''millions of caterpillars" spoken of-as crossing the railway at Feilcung and-Halcoinbe to maraud among -the farmers!. cr&ps, and, being overtaken by a- just- and blessed Nemesis in the shape of a sixty-ton locomotivo forging along in the -vain endeavour to-keen, abreast of;.one . of-the Hon. Jr J.., Millar's curious;.-time-tables— theso terrible caterpillars do not pull down Farmer Smith's bank:; account half so much _as : t)ie ghnstly-fwar-"literature of England is pulling tho Old-Country downj and.us. with it. . 1 ;, /

; It . may not ' : bc.-•generally;.: known—in fact, it is not—that just before the out- • .break of the ;Boer. .war. the acme of, stupidity on the, whole, -subject was reached •by ■ a Warsaw banker named' I. S. de Bloch, .who 1 published, : six great volumes to. show that /'niollern ■ weapons"—■ Words almost'as blessed'as "Mesopotamia" —have-made, the.; fire-zone ; on ''modern" battlefields impassable, and that, as every* •war - of' the' future must. necessarily blossom .out into a war of positions, the financial strain must eventually,, break up the hostile., irieeting ; of 'nations Jong 'before the rifle.and the:.cannon could assert themselves.. ; As .war—defined .by Clausewitz —is a conflict- of forces.of which* the; resultant is:,blood, ...and practicallynothing else, this thesis of M.'de. Bloch's, if true, would have, meant; the end of war. It,is, perhaps, necessary to add that' the German military analysts had looked : this: proposition : squarely , in-' the face as early- as 1873, and-..found'it . fundamentally wrong. .. '..' ■ iNevertheless—so poor";is ..the 'general knowledge of that which ..out .'universities have' now entered, on their/calendar as /'military , science"—that the/six wretched 'volumes .survived several translations' and editions in English,' and (taken' up under the aegis of Mr. W. ,-T. : Stead) cast ' an : Egyptian- darkness; over the. scattered and very staggersomo, ideas' of '■ battle 'possessed :• by the . poor; uniformed "barn-stormers". of England, from the HorseGuardsat Whitehall'-dt)wn to the bargees' on'the lower, reaches -of; - the Thames—whore,; as a. boy, the 1 writer, remembers, .vacillating ,hugely between aigreat. respectability: at. i'one-.end and, a terrible/coarseness-at" the. other. . ; . : ~ ..Lord Kitchener - arrived pit.|the 'battlefield : at,; Paardeberg almost a day. before.Lord 'Roberts.: •It ■ must ' .not. , be'-' supposed : that as ■ Chief - of the' Staff he .'came with, any absolute command- 1 of-Tiis' own. : ; ;.yA: staff. ofßcer. comes .merely .as',the- supposedmouthpiece of , his. chief,', and- .is' always' liable, to be flouted by 'a; smaller ~ man possessing. an executive .-..command.i In. this .' caso' the .-' bugbear ; ; was ..,' Sir, Thomas , , Kelly . Kenny. Sir ' Tto'mas stated that' an assault-• on the. 'riverrhed—softly subduedi'in the. blue haie. of a splendid summer, aftefnoon—was impracticable. Lord.".', Kitchener,, . speaking' hotly as became his .'unassailable view :of things, said-that the- assault-must go. on. Then Kelly; Kenny. extended his 'shooting .lines and-sent, them in, and.pressing,them forward .in the v most;.sHockjnriy. .amateur-; .ish way, 1100 men were 'knocked' over for •nothing at all. • • '•■lt is a melancholy 'thing j to,, ponder'onthat had it, not been "for .'German ifisight, Lord Kitchener, in our- microsfcopic'vision' of things,; -would have stood? condemned: for ever over-this very action. ■ But the 1 fine brain 'of the German General Staff, making-, their* own 1 cold-blooded; analysis • of: Paardeberg, stated ' that, if 'Cranje had been assaulted ad finem—which; of ' coarse, is -the. bayonets-French and the mounted men would have been' in: Bloerufontein in forty-eight, hours! after;; and ;the, moral> shock of these Titanic events-would'have 1 .Boer.' war there- and', then.', : i