AT THE BRITISH FRONT


LADYSMITH, NATAL, _Wednesday, October 11, 1899_.

Ladysmith breathes freely to-day, but a week ago she seemed likely to
become another Lucknow. Of line battalions only the Liverpools were
here, besides two batteries of field artillery, some of the 18th
Hussars, and the 5th Lancers. If Kruger or Joubert had then allowed the
Boers encamped on the Free State border to have their own way, no one
can say what might have happened. Our force would have been outnumbered
at least four to one, and probably more. In event of disaster the Boers
would have seized an immense quantity of military stores accumulated in
the camp, and at the railway station. What is worse, they would have
isolated the still smaller force lately thrown forward to Dundee, so as
to break the strong defensive position of the Biggarsberg, which cuts
off the north of Natal, and can only be traversed by three difficult
passes. Dundee was just as much threatened from the east frontier beyond
the Buffalo River, where the Transvaal Boers of the Utrecht and Vryheid
district have been mustered in strong force for nearly a fortnight now.
With our two advanced posts "lapped up" (the phrase is a little musty
here), our stores lost, and our reputation among the Dutch and native
populations entirely ruined, the campaign would have begun badly.

For the Boers it was a fine strategic opportunity, and they were
perfectly aware of that. But "the Old Man," as they affectionately call
the President, had his own prudent reasons for refusing it. "Let the
enemy fire first," he says, like the famous Frenchman, and so far he has
been able to hold the most ardent of the encamped burghers in check. "If