Miniature--Hoisting Guns on Hilltops--The Fifty-mile
Front--Saving the Situation.


So far French had justified the tradition which called him lucky. Any
competent and experienced general _might_, with luck, have won the
battle of Elandslaagte. That victory did not mark French out as a
commander of genius. But what followed in the campaign round Colesberg
did.

It is very much to be regretted that the circumstances of the case
forced this campaign to be fought amid an unusually dense variety of
"the fog of war." Owing to the difficulty and danger of the operations
and the extended front on which they were carried out, any newspaper
correspondent present could hope to chronicle only a sub-section of
the action. The public, therefore, was without any complete record of
what happened.[11] To the man in the street the British general and his
forces seemed to spend three months in perpetual dodging in and about
some thirty square miles of kopjed veldt.

[Page Heading: THE "INEFFICIENT" GENERAL]

Yet French's column was the pivot on which the whole British plan
turned. This campaign in miniature gave French his chance finally to
disprove the fallacies of the critics at home. Before his appointment
in October, he had actually been described by some of his opponents as
"inefficient to command in the field." This is the tragedy of many a
brilliant cavalry leader--it is impossible for him to demonstrate his
ability save in actual warfare.