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CHAPTER XXVI.
THE ARMY MOVES FORWARD.
The
intended
stroke.
The first stage in the realisation of Lord Roberts’ plan of campaign must necessarily be the transfer to the neighbourhood of Lord Methuen’s camp of the army with which it was his purpose to manœuvre Cronje out of Magersfontein, to relieve Kimberley, and strike for Bloemfontein.
The problem. How solved.
The problem was to carry out this transfer without allowing the Boer General to suspect the design with which it was made, and, till this first movement was completed, in order to gain time for it, to keep him as long as possible uncertain whether the real advance would not be, as he had always hitherto supposed, along the railway which runs directly from Colesberg by Norval’s Pont to Bloemfontein. Both purposes were accomplished with rare success. It becomes, therefore, in all ways interesting, as a study of the larger scope of the campaign, to realise by what means this result was secured. In all war, and in every campaign, so far as the two opposing commanders are concerned, it is the play of mind upon mind which is the ruling factor. To put himself in the place of the man whom he must outwit, if he is to give his soldiers the best chance of victory, is for each commander the essential preliminary. To take such steps as will tend to confirm that man in any false impressions he is known or reasonably suspected to have received, and to conceal as far as possible those measures which are preparing the way for the real stroke, are common characteristics of all triumphant achievement. The means by which the end is gained—reticence, the