The Staff Work of The Anglo-Boer War 1899-1901. Embodying some of the War Letters sent to the \'Morning Post\' from South Africa

The Staff Work of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899 - 1901, embodying some of the War Letters sent to the \"Morning Post\" from South Africa....Illustrated.

An account of the \"work done by the non-combatant branches of the army\" during the war, with notes on the hospitals, hospital ships, and trains. There is a chapter on the Intelligence Department enumerating the iniquities with which it is charged, but Lady Briggs does her best to exculpate the department, and asserts that it gave exact and accurate information with regard to the number of the Boers, and their equipment and artillery. With regard to the absence of maps, according to the author, it would appear that no one was to blame; it could not be \"The Director General of Ordnance,\" as the \"ordnance survey\" is a branch of the \"Board of Agriculture\"; the British Government would not make maps, of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, as President Kruger and Steyn did not encourage military triangulation surveys; as for the Cape Colony, the idea that Mr Schreiner\'s government would prepare the maps is held up to riducule, and it is argued that had the home authorities undertaken them, in spite of local opposition, there would have been \"constitutional trouble in the Colony.\" As to Natal, the local Government was too poor to undertake the survey and by the time they started making it, the war broke out. It is quite a different matter in Europe, says Lady Briggs; the Germans print maps, and the French buy them. How could the British get maps of the Boer Republics if the Boers did not print them?

Original maroon cloth with tent vignette to front cover and gilt lettering to spine and gilt top edge. Frontispiece with tissue guard showing the Marquess of Landsdowne (small stain to top-edge), preface with 43 chapters and a further 5 illustrations with 503 pages including appendix plus five page naval administrations, very clean copy.