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It was determined that Plumer's advance upon Pietersburg should not be a mere raid, but that steps should be taken to secure all that he had gained, and to hold the lines of communication. With this object the 2nd Gordon Highlanders and the 2nd Wiltshires were pushed up along the railroad, followed by Kitchener's Fighting Scouts.
But a portion of Kitchener's command in rear was magnetically attracted away from the direction of the advance by a flanking fire from Hart's Hill and, by diverging towards it, broke the continuity of the line facing the position entrenched by the Boers.
In motion or action, submarines have little show against them. The Japanese at Port Arthur found that protecting nets picked up many torpedoes and submarines. Since that time, torpedoes have been made with cutting heads to pierce steel nets encircling the warships, but their effectiveness has not so far been practically demonstrated. It is Kitchener's idea to keep the enemy guessing.
The correspondent, describing the harrowing scene of the battle on April 23, said: "Long ago Kitchener's army was given its baptism of fire, but yesterday it got its initiation into hell." In their great effort to smash the Allies on the Yser the Germans also sustained terrible losses.
To hear the out-door clerks sneezing, wheezing, and beating their feet on the gravel was a zest far surpassing Doctor Kitchener's. To bid, with a shiver, the unfortunate flying waiter shut the door before he had opened it, was a condiment of a profounder flavour than Harvey.
In some of the operation orders subsequently issued, the reservation, "if this be possible without undue loss," appeared. The presence of De Wet on Kitchener's Kopje gave Cronje a moral support which was not of much use to him.
But nevertheless, such is the frailty of our nature, that he gradually, on regaining his composure, and at such leisure intervals as he could command, prepared the "Gastronomic Regenerator," in which he eschewed all superfluous ornaments of diction, and studied a simplicity of style germane to the subject; perchance he had looked into Kitchener's Preface.
To check the risings in Cape Colony, which for the time being were confined to the Prieska district, Kitchener had already sent out flying columns from De Aar. The tenacity and resolution of De Wet were never more conspicuous than during the disheartening days which followed his retirement from Kitchener's Kopje.
And for the Kaffirs to be eventually allowed to vote? The men who were attached to their families and farms, but preferred losing all to becoming 'hands-uppers, were unanimous in declaring Kitchener's conditions unacceptable, and all were ready to fight to the bitter end.
At Waterval Drift, Kitchener's Kopje, Sannah's Post, and Mostert's Hoek, De Wet showed himself to be a daring and successful partisan leader. He was instinctively drawn towards helpless or unwary detachments. He played his own hand without reference to his partner's, and seemed to be incapable of co-operating in a general scheme of strategy.
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