It is very dangerous.

No supports at this moment nearer than England."[8] [Footnote 8: "From Cape Town to Ladysmith," pp.
16-20.] In this brief and pregnant summary the reader will note outlined the elements characteristic of all strategic situations: the bases, the seaports; the communications, the railway lines; the front of operations, the frontier of the Orange Free State, or rather, perhaps, in this defensive--or defenceless--stage, the railroad line parallel to it, which joins De Aar, Naauwport and Stormberg.
Dangerous, sure enough; how much so needs only a glance at the map to show.

Before reinforcements could arrive Sir George White was shut up in Ladysmith by forces double his own.

These he held there, it is true; and the fatal delay of the Boers before his lines, reflected in their no less fatal inactivity on the frontier of the Cape Colony, whence Steevens wrote the words quoted, doubtless threw away the game; but we are now speaking, as he was then writing, of the time {p.106} when the cards had only been dealt and the hand was yet to play.

Put your marks on each of the places named--Mafeking, Kimberley, De Aar, Naauwport, Stormberg--note their individual and relative importance, the distances severing them from one another, the small bodies of men scattered among them, incapable through weakness and remoteness of supporting each other, and with no common supports behind.