Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/330

 320 A British Office)'- intertwined in practice to be thus severed from each other surgically by the historian, and cast mutilated into separate compartments for examination. The whole dispositions of the British troops both in Cape Colony and in Natal at the outbreak of the war were based on political rather than on strategical considerations. It is notorious that political pressure forced Lord Roberts to undertake the relief of Kimberley as his primary objective. As a strategist he would have shut his ears to the cries of its inhabitants for instant succor. It is notorious too that throughout the war the political attitude of the Cape Colonists was a far greater anxiety to successive British commanders-in-chief than the strength of the Boers actually in the field. ;Ir. Balfour's decision therefore is an additional proof that British statesmen have yet much to learn as to the true relationship between strategy and policy. How far General Maurice will find it possible to surmount or evade the obstacle which has thus been placed across his path will shortly be learned. His name is a guaranty that a conscientious endeavor is being made to place the whole truth before the world without partiality or concealment. There is some reason therefore to hope that the four volumes to which the official history of the South African War is to be confined will present to the world a just, accurate, and final record of that campaign. Since the above was written the first volume of the official His- tory of the IVar in South Africa^ published by the British War Office has appeared. The authors are not, as is the usual practice in most armies, the General Staff : for the reorganization of Pall Mall, carried out on the injunctions of the famous Esher Committee two years ago, omitted to establish any Historical Section, whose duty it would be to collate from the past the lessons of war. The compilation of the South African War history was, therefore, in- trusted to Major-general Sir Frederick INIaurice, a retired officer with a considerable reputation as a military writer, assisted by a staff, mainly also composed of retired officers. Three features stand out prominently in the narrative which has thus been prepared: (i) the omission of the causes of the war, (2) the extreme accuracy of the narrative itself, and (3) the brevity and restraint of its criticisms. The omission of the causes of the war is nuich to bo regretted. But if the commencement of the official History is therefore maimed and imperfect, the fault is not attributable to General Maurice, but ' London. Hurst and Blackctt, 1906.