in that deliberate resolve Lord Wolseley was a partner or an overruled
protester. Ministers have a higher duty than that to their party. The
Nation has as much confidence in Lord Rosebery as in Lord Salisbury and
the difference in principle between the two men is a vanishing quantity.
A change of ministry would be an inconvenience, but no more. But if the
public comes to believe, what I am sure is untrue, that the military
department at the War Office has blundered, the consequences will be so
grave that I hardly care to use the word which would describe them.

I accept the maxim that it is no use crying over spilt milk or even over
spilt blood, but the maxim does not hold when the men whose decision
seems inexplicable are in a position to repeat it on a grander scale.
The temper of the Boers as early as June left no doubt in any South
African mind that if equality of rights and British supremacy were to
be secured it would have to be by the sword. The Government alone among
those who cared for the Empire failed to realise this in time. That has
been admitted. The excess of hope for peace has been condoned and is
being atoned for on the battlefields of Natal. But to-day the temper of
Europe leaves no room for doubt that, in case of a serious reverse in
Natal, Europe if it can will interfere. Have Mr. Goschen and Lord
Lansdowne worked out that problem, or is there to be a repetition in the
case of the continental Powers--an adversary very different from the
Boers--of patience, postponement, and haphazard? It is not the situation
in South Africa that gives its gravity to the present aspect of things,
but the situation in Europe. Upon the next fortnight's fighting in Natal
may turn the fate not merely of Natal and of South Africa, but of the
British Empire. That this must be the case was plain enough at
Christmas, and has been said over and over again. Yet this was the
crisis which was met by sending to the decisive point a reinforcement
of ten thousand men to do the best they could along with the six