Sorry to carry on a conversation with myself, but I have done enough to move on even though what I have sort of makes my stomach queasy. For future users of the forum, let me document what I did.
Instead of spring3 (tsk tsk tsk), I used the spring2.5.6 that came with the struts distribution, always the better idea. I took the spring-core-2.5.6 which satisfies the ResourceLoader class need and the spring-test-2.5.6.jar which gives me the Spring mock objects needed. I eliminated the Dispatcher Initialization Failed error by noting that
Junit was looking at the WEB-INF/lib directory I had and so the same xwork bean was being loaded twice which causes an error. Lesson, make sure duplication of libraries/classes is not present on your classpath. We put our libs in one directory and then copy them automatically in our
ant build and hence two copies of everything.
But still, please, oh please, oh please ... if anyone can point out how to use StrutsTestCase without the use of Spring libraries, please tell me.