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THE decisions of the amateur critic often bear, outwardly, the appe?ance of P?????; but in nine ca8e out of ten they are ba e<? on something very like ignorance. Thousands have b? finding fault with our generals now j1 en?ged in the Boer war, for their failure t,? do thf* [to avoid that, and to foresee something else, and the conclusion has very commonly been arrived at that the British soldier is defective in tactical knowledge. Time and a fuller com- i prehension of what is going on have already taught many of us to dou the j ticc of this Terdict. We are ?t?ti?h omce??r?, S8 & rulf) that during this war the Brit.s „ „ aDd' has been  much the lave of "tactics," and that bee. to. much the sl?? In fact, the generalsana subordinates appear to have got up their tcxt-books with unu.-ual care, and to have followed the "latest" max.ms of mod,ern war science with all the docility and fidelity of good little Sunday School pupils. And what has been the result? Whenever they carried out a _1-pn.'I" Qf-ntpo;n ft"\nn (no "'Of\nm.. particularly k I mended in the text-books), the Boers have had things all their own way. No doubt, it will be said that note should have been taken of this sooner, and that men on the ground should have learned from one or two sharp lessons that it was time to reverse, or greatly modify, the old rules of j warfare. That sounds plausible enough; but, in the first place, men who are in the thick ol the melee are not apt to see things under their nose so clearly as if they looked at them quietly j from a distance; and in the next place, the British soldier, like all animals with a strong. backbone, does not excel in adaptiDg himself, either in mind or body, to the Wrf approved and matured plans It really rqum:cl some experience like what they n ^d in the present campaign to make our milita leaders realise that the tactics M? strategy they ll --+ o.l'Trn'r"C"I have been learning in books j stand them in good stead If t 0 j generals had done nirthmg but study our war SCIcncc we might have where to find ?; ?cncewe unfortunately they have studied it? them, with the of. .proventing us from only ?ith the ?e? w ???? h?e from putting it in practice. Nowhere have we j [ seen this fact So learly set  as it is in seen ttus fa_? by a writer, who says: rs have invented a new system cf? warfare nnd we have been trying to beat them with or old system. The Zulus did the same, ? ?? ? b?t us at Islandhlwana. The Boer can move ten miles to our two: he is a _v good shot with his rifle, and lives and fights ?a country where Mature has built a fortress at every mile. He has an excellent pony, and carries no impedimenta. His tactics are to garrison a fortress with a few hundred men, and _l induce us to attack he shoots a COUple Vi, hundred of us, we shoot twenty, and he s ips away on his pony to repeat the operation at the j next fortress. We bury our dead, take a couple of old waggons that he has left, and call it a Tictory." Such victories are, in very truth, worse than defeats. The tactics of Badajos and Waterloo are evidently not the tactics for South Africa. In order to fight the Boer, you want the best modern artillery to hurry him out of his fortress, and mounted infantry and cavalry to catch him while he is running to the next. The ordinary infantry may be left behind, and no Boer will touch them. The whole Boer army, as the writer above quoted reminds us, cannot take Ladysmith. While speaking of our officers having observed the (book) rules of strategy, we ought, perhaps, to have excepted some of Lord Methuen's movements, and it is difficult to see how General Buller's project of forcing a river-line in the face of a strongly- CLtrenched enemy differs from a blunder. But, on the whole, it is not in tactics, as the term is commonly undei stood, that our generals have failed. They have been a little slow in seeing the necessity of new devices to meet the novel problems with which they have been confronted, and, worse still, they have not been provided with the proper fighting material for waging a war like that in which they are engaged. But the men of the strong backbone only need time to adjust themselves to a novel and unforeseen condition of things. It is evident, to use once more a sadly hackneyed phrase, that Great Britain is calmly determined to see it through," and that being so, we may already look upon the Transvaal Republic as a state that will dis- appear next year from the map of Africa.

HUNTING APPOINTMENTS.

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-PEMBRIKESHIRE QUARTER -SESSIONS.

~ CARMARTHEN TOWN NOTES. j

LA TES T TELEGRAMS.

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" I - THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA.

IBRIEF SUMMARY OF THE WEEKYS…