Unless the author has greatly misconceived the general utterances, the occupation of Ladysmith has been in popular estimation merely an unfortunate accident forced upon the British as a result of the original faulty dispositions of the campaign. This view is scarcely correct; and even if it were in part well founded, the natural inference, that the investment was a misfortune, pure and simple, would not follow. Probably no single incident of the war has been more determinative of final issues than the tenure of Ladysmith. Therefore, an examination of the relation borne by this single factor to the whole, of which it was a part, may very fitly precede immediately the narrative of the particular occurrences which locally centred around it. The considerations of any and every nature which made Ladysmith a railroad junction, a cross-roads, at which met three important {p.179} lines of communication--one with Durban, one with the Transvaal, and one with the Orange Free State--constituted it at the same time, necessarily and consequently, a position of strategic importance. Even had a mistake been made in selecting it as a railroad centre--which I have never seen asserted--the decision alone would have given it value; but, if the choice was sound, all the considerations which dictated it go to increase that value. It does not follow, of course, that such a position must under no circumstances be abandoned, that something better than its tenure might not have been done for the British campaign; still less is it to be concluded that the only, or the best, way to hold the place was by occupying the town itself, or the particular lines ultimately established around it by Sir George White. These are questions of detail, which, however important, are separable in thought and in decision from the general fact stated--that Ladysmith, being a railroad crossing, the only very important one on the Natal theatre of operations, was necessarily a strategic point not lightly to be surrendered.