Nelson Chronicle, Colne Observer, and Clitheroe Division News. — 1900-01-05 (Nelson, Lancashire, England)

FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1900.  MOBILITY IN THE WAR.  THE paw° in the campaign !ATMS likely to eeme to an end even before Lord ROBERTS al Id his aide-dc-camp, Lord KITCHENER, arrive on the scene, though we need not expect the initiative to be resumed just yet by Lord  MET lirEN'ti force on the Modder River. The news during the past few days has been rather restricted to the doings of the cAttral column under General FRENCH, and it is because he has at his disposal a large force of cavalry that his operations are being closely watched by critics at holut. For most of us are agreed that pling Pelion upon Ossa pursued by the ' War Office has, so far, turned out a failure. It is, in fact, becoming every day more apparent that it is useless to keep on sending infantry battalions to the front, without providing 6,N-it with the means to facilitate timirr mobility. For the attack of the positions where the Boers are entrenched in force, it :any be that th:. murderous tactics of the frontal assault will have to be repeated, and no troops in the world are better qualified, under proper reservations, than our own to carry the day. lint what we want is not only the sheer doggl J Icc! adir.;tablo pluck of the foot sol diem, led by officers worthy of s-ueh men. We want to put these men either on horseback or on wheels, so as to transport tlwm from one re,ition to the other with at least as much rapidity as the enemy, a-ho combines in a re'Linkable mintier the double role of infantry and horse. General FRENCH Soems to have hit out the best method for repelling attack and carrying the war into the enemy's country at the same time, and his little success in the neighbourhood of Colesberg should serve as a useful lesson to the authorities responsible for the working materials of the campaign. The infantry at the General's disposal, we are informed, were accommodated with carts, and a fine body of cavalry escorted the advance, while the mounted infantry acted in support. The result was that the flanking movement was admirably pushed, the whole of the troops engaged came into action fresh, and the enemy, finding his lines of communication threatened, was soon retreating post haste. No doubt General FRENCH, who thus began playing the Boers at their own game, had early realised the value of "keeping them on the move." And this is just what we have lacked the means of doing from the day the war broke out. At first, for want of sufficient troops, as in the otherwise successful actions preceding the investment of Ladysmith, and afterwards at Belmont and Gras Pan, the attack could not be pushed home. We had enough men to beat back the enemy. We had neither men nor cavalry nor transport to "keep the enemy on the move"; and that is the whole moral of the future conduct of the war, as we venture to think. It was the extraordinary mobility and swiftness of our marches in the Peninsula which kept the French on the move when once Wellington had got his forces in hand, and the proper proportion of mounted troops at his beck and call. The success of Napoleon's great campaigns was as much due to his foresight in collecting supplies, horses, and transports, and to generalship, as to any particular superiority of the French over the German soldier as a fighting unit. Mobility, therefore, is the watchword of the moment, and we may hope the War Office has now convinced itself of the fact. Crack riflemen, of course, we must have, but they ought to be provided with mounts. At !own, this is what we conceive the embodiment of the Imperial Yeomanry to imply. Above all, give our generals a chance of working away from the main arteries; away from the railroads, commanded by one Boer entrenchment after another, to which they have hitherto clung with a pertinacity eloquent in itself of the inadequate transport service at their disposal. In three months we ought to have been able to put such resources in the field, had they been in existence; but we fear that, though this weak spot in the equipment of the first Army Corps may have been remedied by now, the assertion that the transport 4arvioe was largely on paper, stands proven by the disappointing results, down to the present, which have been attained.