ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
don't know how to fight it, and are not prepared." And continuing, for no one demurred, "If Lord Salisbury would send for Buffalo Bill, and tell him to gather together thirty thousand cowboys, and supply him with plenty of horses, guns, and ammunition, he would settle it in three months." This was received with murmurs of expostulation and dissent, the colonel's voice being the loudest. But after a thoughtful silence he said, "It could not be done, but I believe you are right."
The Boers' tactics were to fight and run; the cowboys would have run after them and probably caught them.
On returning to London I became seriously alarmed at the situation, and saw Edward Clifford, of the Church Army, who was an old and intimate friend of George Wyndham, the Secretary for War. I asked him to see Mr. Wyndham and urge upon him the necessity for sending at least forty thousand men to Africa. I wrote a letter for him to read to Mr. Wyndham, quoting from American history the methods of fighting that sort of guerrilla warfare always adopted by the colonists, and later by the Federal cavalry, when dealing with Indians. Clifford replied that they, the Government, would know their business best. They knew it so well that, in the end, more than three hundred thousand men were sent fourteen thousand miles in ships to conquer, with great difficulty, roving bands of about sixteen thousand farmers.
Between 1870 and 1914 repeated warnings were given that Germany was increasing her army, and perfecting its equipment and drill for a war. She was also building a powerful navy; and it was pointed out that it could only be intended for use against Great Britain's navy. German writers openly avowed this intention. Some one has written that
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