Note Back to Main Text — Chapter II

Protective Posts. If these conclusions were sound—and the course of events during the first month of the war was to prove their general correctness—it was highly desirable that detachments of British troops should remain in the northern districts of the colony, and thus carry out the double function of encouraging the loyal while checking lawless spirits, and of retaining possession of those lines of railways, the use of which would be a matter of vital importance to the field army in its subsequent advance from the coast. It was obvious that these isolated posts of a few hundred men would run serious risks. Thrust forward in close proximity to the enemy's frontier, they were separated from their base on the coast by some four to five hundred miles of country, throughout which there might be possible enemies; thus their communications might at any moment be cut. Furthermore, until troops arrived from England or India, no reinforcements would be available for their assistance. But the alternative of abandoning the whole of the northern districts of Cape Colony to the enemy, and thus allowing them to enforce recruitments from colonists who might otherwise live in peaceful security under the British flag, involved dangers far graver, and was, in fact, never contemplated by the military authorities either in London or at the Cape, except in the remote contingency of war with some maritime Power coinciding with the outbreak of hostilities with the Boer Republics. Moreover, by the middle of September, 1899, the organisation and training of Colonel Baden-Powell's two newly-raised corps, the one at Tuli and the other near Mafeking, were already sufficiently advanced to afford good hope of their being able to sustain effectively the rôle which had been assigned to them, while arrangements were being taken in hand to secure Kimberley from being captured by any coup de main.[54]