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 week of December in the successive reverses of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso, made both the government and the public realize that a struggle with the Boers was a serious matter. The decisions, therefore, to send large reinforcements to South Africa and to appoint Lord Roberts [q.v.] to the chief command with Kitchener as his chief of the staff were received with general approval. Kitchener was at Khartoum on 18 December when he received his orders, and, starting at once, was able to join Lord Roberts at Gibraltar on 27 December. During Roberts's command Kitchener rarely performed the functions of chief of the staff. He was employed far more as a second in command and the representative of the commander-in-chief in his absence, so that his duties were executive rather than advisory, and he had very free scope for the employment of his limitless energy and readiness to accept responsibility. His first business was to reorganize the transport, and to make that increase in the number of mounted troops which was needed to give the force the mobility required for the execution of Roberts's plans. When, early in February, the movement for the relief of Kimberley had begun and General Piet Cronje had retreated from Magersfontein, Kitchener was with the leading troops urging on the pursuit, and not at Lord Roberts's side. So when Cronje was forced to stand at Paardeberg, it was Kitchener, with full powers from the commander-in-chief in his pocket, who ordered the attack and directed the operations. The first attack (18 February) on Cronje's laager failed, and failed largely because of Kitchener's faulty tactical dispositions. He had with him only a small personal staff and could not effectively direct the movements of a considerable body of troops scattered over a wide area. Methods applicable to troops in the close formation used in the Sudan against ill-armed natives were not suited to the wide extensions necessary against a determined enemy armed with modern rifles. The attacks were therefore disconnected and were repulsed in succession. Kitchener wished to renew them the next day, but Roberts arrived and decided to blockade the laager instead. There can be no doubt that Kitchener's original decision to attack was right, and it is highly probable that a new and better-arranged attack on the laager on the day following the battle would not only have been successful but would have been less costly than the direct and consequential losses of the blockade, while the time gained might have been of great value. The incident is indeed typical of Kitchener's character and career. His judgement on larger issues was almost always uncannily correct, and he never lacked the courage to put his judgement to the test. His failures were generally due to a lack of knowledge of technical detail, and to a dislike, amounting almost to contempt, of deliberate methods, which he was disposed to regard as red tape. He was accused, but with injustice, of callousness and disregard for the lives of his men. His natural shyness and reserve, accentuated by years of solitary work in the East, made him almost incapable of expressing deep feeling; but he was essentially tender-hearted, and certainly not lacking in consideration for the soldier.

Five days before the surrender of Cronje at Paardeberg (27 February), Kitchener was sent by Roberts to open up railway communications across the Orange river towards Bloemfontein, and was next employed in suppressing a rebellion of the Cape Boers about Priska, and in clearing the southern portion of the Orange Free State. Everywhere he went he endeavoured to infuse the spirit of energy which he had inculcated in Egypt, but found sadly lacking in South Africa, where he said the War was taken ‘too much like a game of polo with intervals for afternoon tea’. During Roberts's advance through Pretoria to Koomati Poort, Kitchener varied intervals of office work at head-quarters with expeditions to clear the lines of communication from the Boer raiders, who were becoming increasingly numerous and were usually led by that bold and enterprising leader of guerrillas, Christian De Wet. In one of these Kitchener was all but captured in a night surprise, and had to ride for his life. In November 1900 Roberts's forces had reached the frontiers of Portuguese East Africa; President Kruger had fled, and organized resistance seemed to be at an end. Lord Roberts therefore came home, and Kitchener was left as commander-in-chief to wind up the campaign.

It soon appeared that De Wet had taught the Boers the possibilities of guerrilla warfare, and that the War was far from over. Kitchener met these tactics of the Boers by employing an elaboration of the methods which he had already used in the Orange Free State. Lines of block-houses were established criss-cross through the country, and a series of drives by mounted troops, starting from these barriers, was organized 310