The mistake of the Boers was in failing to recognise that a nation compelled to such a mode of action by its conditions of inferiority, in numbers and in drill, is doomed to ultimate defeat, unless at the very beginning, while the enemy has not yet developed or concentrated his powers, such an advantage is gained by a vigorous initiative as shall either prevent his obtaining the necessary initial positions, or shall at least postpone his doing so long enough to affect materially the course of the war, and give room for the chapter of accidents--for the intervention of the unforeseen. The Boers, having surprised their enemy at unawares, had the opportunity so to act. It may be that, had they done so, ultimate success would not certainly have followed--the odds were very great; but it is safe to say that only so, by rushing the campaign at the beginning, had they any chance of final {p.130} victory. "Desperate conditions," said Nelson, "require desperate remedies." The Boers' position was desperate from the first, to be saved only by the most vigorous handling of numbers which for a brief and critical period were largely superior. Thus it was that these opening weeks decided the character and issue of the war, beyond chance of subsequent reversal. By the Boers' own choice, interest was fixed not upon one or two, but upon several quarters, and these--save Ladysmith--determined not by their inherent, and therefore lasting and decisive, strategic importance, but by questions of commercial value and of the somewhat accidental presence in them of very small bodies of regular troops. At two places, Mafeking and Kimberley, the assailants were, as an English journal justly put it, "foiled by colonial forces hastily organised, and stiffened by small regular detachments which have shown far more enterprise on the offensive than their besiegers have done." Such a situation, under the existing conditions of the general campaign, should have been met, not by protracted investment in force, {p.131} but by assault; or, if that were inexpedient, a sufficient detachment should have been left to hold the garrison in check, while considerations of more decisive military importance elsewhere received concentrated attention.