The age-herald., 1900-02-12
LORD KITCHENER
 THE ENGINEER
From the Chicago Tlmes-Herald.

are anywhere near equal. The mistakes of subordinates, a falsity fin map. a panic in a regiment. all the incidents which enter into the rcsult determ5ne oftentimes the success Or failure of movement perhaps perfectly pfarned But to the pubkc, to whom the science of war is mystery praises or condenEs according to the re- suit. For example, the plan of the battle of Chattanooga contemplated on tine union side mo storm of Missionary ridge. A sud- den inspiration seized the northern rank and file, a sudden panic the confederates, and without stop or accident the assault ing columns rushed hill successfully Had Grant ordered the assault he would have been as foolhardy as was Burnside at Fred erlcksburg. On the other hand, Napoleon at Waterloo was told by a guide that no sunken road ran across the plateau of Mount St Jean. He ordered his culrassers to charge the English center. and they filled up the open ditch with their horses.
 Chance is a factor on the battlefield. But chance does not enter into strategy or ques- tions of supply. Correct strategy marched the French army over the St. Bernard passes, but the advantages thus secured were well-night lost on the field of Marengo, when the Austrians broke Lannes and Vic tor Ito pieces, and were only themselves beaten by the arrival of Dessaux. Consum- mate strategy brought the Austr1ans to bat tile before Koenigsgratz, but the Prussian crown prince was delayed so long by un- foreseen circumstances that Von Moltke was almost retreating when the second army at last arrived.
 
 However. when the offensive force Is greatly superior in the numbers and sup plies. then correct strategy reduces the ele- menit of chance to minimum. Take Grants Virginia campaign. The strategy was masterly, though at times the tactics were poor. Grant, by virtue of superiority. wore Lee down. He hammered the latter constantly. He moved always by the left flank. continually thereby edging nearer and nearer to Richmond, and to the communi- cations of his foe. But he assaulted the impregnable intrenchments of Spottsylva- mia and he lost thousands at Cold Harbor. He ordered his men into Bloody Angle until even those veterans refused to charge again. Despite such questionable tactics, however, Grant won the campaign because his strategy was correct and he was the first Qas In ha ast tn ora # ha tr1la SiC niiicance of the military situation. The test of military genius is strategy rather than tactics, though of course tactics are not to be undervalued.
 The British problem in South Africa is eminently one of strategy. It is even a question whether with long-range cannon, quick firing machine guns and the rifles of today there can be any tactics. Anyhow, the tactics of the civil war, of the Franco Prussian war and of the Russian Turkish Prussian war will not avail to relieve Ladysmith of Kimberley. Indeed, although public opinion is just now condemning the tactics of Butler at Colenso and Spion Kop and of Methuen at Modder River and Magersfontein, the true error of the British C1as not lain in their modes of attack on the battlefield, but in their false or perhaps better opportunist strategic conception Their true objection is not the relief of Ladysmith, but the investment of Bloem- fontein and Pretoria, and had Butler been allowed to carry out his original plan Ladysmlth would have been relieved, not by battering the Boer cordon about Whites army but by the presence today of a British army far within the Orange Free State.
 A strategy which shall embrace the war as a whole, which shall regard Whites army as but pawn in the chess play. to be saved or sacrificed according to the exi- gency of the game, requires, however. or ganization. Just as Grant, coming east saw that the army of the Potomac and the army of the west must act in cooperation, so the strategy of the British for the next six months must have its eye on the main point. the subjugation of the Transvaal. That strategy must not be diverted by sen- timental considerations, must not ritter away force to avert the shame of a sur render by White or to save Cecil Rhodes from being put on exhibition at Pretoria. If war was hell in Sherman's time, it is even more organization and science now.
 
 Kitchener Is a strategist and only sec- ondarily tactician. In the Sudan 1t is said he relied upon Arichtbald Hunter and Hector Macdonald for the tactics of the battlefield. The larger problem of strategy he grasped and mastered. What Gordon had not seen, nor Wolseley, he saw. Not the Arab armies, but the desert, was the problem of the Sudan. This is understood. To bridge the desert, to set down an army with supplies and in good health on the other side of the desert-that was his prob