experience then gained that he formed the opinion that the war which he
was now called upon to direct, could be brought to a successful
conclusion only "by the actual conquest of every man in the field: a
task doubly difficult owing to the extreme mobility of the enemy."

In his first telegram to Lord Lansdowne he described the situation as
one of "extreme gravity."

White, with five-sixths of the British Troops in South Africa, was shut
up in Ladysmith; a month at least must elapse before the Expeditionary
Force, which the British Government had on September 22 decided to send
out, would be able to take the field; Mafeking was besieged; the diamond
men of Kimberley, like a passionate child interned in a dark room, were
screaming for release; Sir Alfred Milner was pleading that the defence
of the Cape Peninsula, an area of a few thousand square miles as far
removed from the front as Marseilles is from Berlin, must be first
attended to; President Steyn had overcome his scruples and was sending
Free State commandos across the Orange River into the Cape Colony at
Bethulie and Norval's Pont; the disaffected colonials were restive; and
the fall of Ladysmith, which seemed probable, would lay Natal open from
the Tugela to the Indian Ocean.

It was a dismal outlook; but Buller, after a few days' review of the
situation, was able to report that in his opinion the opposition would
probably collapse when Kimberley and Ladysmith were relieved. His
optimism at Capetown was destined soon to be superseded by pessimism on
the Tugela. He compared himself to a man who, having a busy day before
him, has overslept himself. The original plan of campaign, a march on
Pretoria through the Free State, had necessarily to be postponed; and
the important railway junctions at Naauwpoort and Stormberg were too