Chapter 12

THE DARK HOUR

The week which extended from December 10th to December 17th, 1899, was
the blackest one known during our generation, and the most disastrous
for British arms during the century. We had in the short space of
seven days lost, beyond all extenuation or excuse, three separate
actions. No single defeat was of vital importance in itself, but the
cumulative effect, occurring as they did to each of the main British
forces in South Africa, was very great. The total loss amounted to
about three thousand men and twelve guns, while the indirect effects
in the way of loss of prestige to ourselves and increased confidence
and more numerous recruits to our enemy were incalculable.

It is singular to glance at the extracts from the European press at
that time and to observe the delight and foolish exultation with which
our reverses were received. That this should occur in the French
journals is not unnatural, since our history has been largely a
contest with that Power, and we can regard with complacency an enmity
which is the tribute to our success. Russia, too, as the least
progressive of European States, has a natural antagonism of thought,
if not of interests, to the Power which stands most prominently for
individual freedom and liberal institutions. The same poor excuse may
be made for the organs of the Vatican. But what are we to say of the
insensate railing of Germany, a country whose ally we have been for
centuries? In the days of Marlborough, in the darkest hours of
Frederick the Great, in the great world struggle of Napoleon, we have
been the brothers-in-arms of these people. So with the Austrians
also. If both these countries were not finally swept from the map by
Napoleon, it is largely to British subsidies and British tenacity that
they owe it. And yet these are the folk who turned most bitterly
against us at the only time in modern history when we had a chance of
distinguishing our friends from our foes. Never again, I trust, on
any pretext will a British guinea be spent or a British soldier or
sailor shed his blood for such allies. The political lesson of this
writer has been that we should make ourselves strong within the empire,
and let all outside it, save only our kinsmen of America, go their own
way and meet their own fate without let or hindrance from us. It is
amazing to find that even the Americans could understand the stock
from which they are themselves sprung so little that such papers as
the 'New York Herald' should imagine that our defeat at Colenso was a
good opportunity for us to terminate the war. The other leading
American journals, however, took a more sane view of the situation,
and realised that ten years of such defeats would not find the end
either of our