I firmly believe that the true solution of the problem is to be found only in the application of the ballot to the old constitutional force which up to the legalisation of a Standing Army in 1689 may be said to have fought the battles of England, and which rendered possible the victories of the Peninsula and of Waterloo. If this view is admitted to be correct, I am confident that an appeal to the democracy, which in the present emergency has shown a spirit worthy of the best traditions of our race, will not be made in vain. If the standard and the organisation of our military resources are not speedily raised to the level required by our vast Imperial responsibilities, then the bitter words of an old classic writer will before long be applied to the British nation:

That the present grave warning may not pass unregarded is my most earnest desire.

G. S. CLARKE.

THE MILITARY WEAKNESS OF ENGLAND AND THE MILITIA BALLOT

In the last number of this Review it was pointed out that the results of the campaign now in progress in South Africa are not in the least likely to be limited to that quarter of the world. No one can tell,' said Count von Bülow, the Prussian Foreign Minister, in the German Reichstag, what the consequences of the present war in South Africa may be;' but some of them we begin to perceive already, and it is obvious that they will be comprehensive. During the past month events have occurred to convince us that the task we have undertaken is in itself a tolerably large one.

We went to war, I am afraid, like the fatuous Minister of Napoleon the Third in 1870, with a light heart. We started with an outburst of jubilant Jingoism, especially manifest in society and the music-halls, and a general impression that we were in for a comparatively easy kind of military picnic, which would cover us with glory and fill the world with envy. There was the British Army, with all its most famous generals on the one side, and a Militia of farmers on the other, and our anticipations seemed almost justifiable. We forgot that the process of beating down a resolute and brave people, of Teutonic race, absolutely united in the determination to defend what they regarded as their liberty, can never be other than a difficult enterprise, especially when it has to be performed in an extensive and distant country, which presents many natural obstacles to an invading army of regular troops. We shall succeed in the task eventually, but after difficulties and reverses which have already had a sobering effect upon the nation, and at a cost which is likely to be more rather than less than 100,000,000l. sterling; and, unhappily, so far from having impressed the inhabitants of foreign countries with an idea of our military efficiency, a quite opposite effect has been produced.

It is humiliating to have to say it, but, as a matter of fact, for weeks past in the press of every civilised nation, not excluding that of our good friends the United States, there has been a chorus of contemptuous satisfaction over what is regarded as the miserable exhibition Great Britain has made of herself in this unfortunate contest. We told you so,' say the scribes of Berlin,

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Paris, Vienna, of St. Petersburg and Brussels, in unpleasant unison. John Bull is no good for military work; he has plenty of money, we know, and a lot of ships, but on land all he can do is to get the better of Asiatics and Africans, and when he comes to fighting civilised folks he makes a muddle of it. His soldiers are brave, of course, but he has not enough of them, and they are badly led and improperly organised.' It is disagreeable to know that this kind of talk is reverberating through the world, and all the worse because there is a substratum of truth in it. The Transvaal War may have been necessary, or even, as Ministers maintain, inevitable; but if the object was to raise British prestige, it certainly cannot be said to have been successful. Nevertheless our sacrifices and burdens will have been useful if they have taught us some of the lessons which are so obligingly presented by our candid friends and kindly critics abroad. We have learnt, or ought to have learnt, that as a military Power we are absolutely unequal to the duties and responsibilities of our Imperial position; and if we make haste to act upon that knowledge, tens of millions of British money and thousands of British and Colonial and Boer lives will not have been thrown away for nothing. In point of fact, we shall have no choice in the matter. A reorganisation and increase of the British Army will be absolutely forced upon us as soon as the present hostilities are concluded, if not even before. At the time I am writing it has become clear that the entire available Regular Army of England will be engaged in the task of overcoming the armies of the Boer Republics and repressing the Afrikander insurrection in the Cape Colony. We set out with the idea that what was called the First Army Corps of about 47,000 men, supplemented by the then existing garrisons of the Colonies and a draft from India, would have been sufficient to accomplish the objects we had in view. Since then we have mobilised a Fifth and a Sixth Division, a Seventh is under orders, and there is talk of an Eighth; and we are utilising several thousands of irregular troops and volunteers of one kind and another raised in the South African territories. With all this, it seems that our generals, so far from being able to sweep the burgher levies before them, and advance victoriously on Pretoria, are not, in fact, in a condition to effectually oppose the invasion of our own colonies. With well over 100,000 troops in the field or on the way out, it is seriously suggested that the forces at the disposal of the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa are insufficient, and that at least 150,000 will be required. Nor, when we come to think about it, does this number really seem excessive, for our task is to subdue, not merely a nation, but a people in arms-almost the whole Dutchspeaking people of South Africa--and that people mainly a peasantry operating in their own wild and difficult country, well armed, capably led, and descended from the most obstinately tenacious of European

1 December 14th.

races. On operations easier than this other European War Offices have sometimes had to expend armies larger, actually or proportionately, than that which is in the field in South Africa. The Spaniards at one time had upwards of 150,000 men engaged in the ineffectual attempt at coping with the Cuban rebels; the Austrians required some 200,000 men to subdue the Bosnian mountaineers, and then they took two years before the business was completed; the Italians made an utterly hopeless muddle of their Abyssinian campaign with over 60,000 men in the field; and the Americans, even now, have 65,000 troops in the Philippines, and are still far from having overcome the resistance of the half-armed, unorganised, islanders. And after all, neither the Cuban rebels, the Bosnian mountaineers, or the Tagals of the Eastern Archipelago are to be compared as fighting men with our present tough and determined antagonists. It is noticeable that from the beginning the wellinformed writers of the German military press have prophesied that 150,000 British troops at least would be needed before the Boers were vanquished. The number seems enormous to us, but that is only because we have never been able to grasp the scale of modern military armaments. As things go at present, such a force is not a gigantic army; it represents less than four of the available army corps which the German General Staff would be prepared to mobilise at a fortnight's notice, and no European Power would have undertaken. operations against such an enemy as the South African Dutchmen over a country several times the size of France 2 with a smaller number of men in the field. We have lost our sense of proportion owing to the comparatively cheap rate at which we have been luckily enabled to run the most gigantic Imperial business on record. We call it a great war if we have ten thousand troops engaged; we lose our heads after a victory over practically unarmed savages, in which we have sacrificed a few score men and officers. It is clear that we must revise our estimates. Either we shall have to draw in our horns and abandon our policy of extension and expansion, or we must be prepared to make sacrifices equivalent to the calls upon our military resources. We must give up the idea that we can be content with a mighty Navy, which involves no kind of burden on the bulk of the population, and with an Army less than that of the third-rate Powers of Europe.

Apart from all general considerations, the sequel of the South African War must necessarily be a large increase of our armed forces, simply because for many years to come a great British garrison will be required in the various Afrikander States and Provinces. I have been taken to task by some critics for estimating the future South

2 Area of France, 204,146 square miles; area of the Cape Colony and the native territories, over 300,000; of the Orange Free State, 48,326; of the Transvaal, 119,000; of Natal, 29,434; of Bechuanaland, 400,000.

African Army of Occupation at 20,000 to 30,000 men.3 But in the light of events this now seems an unduly moderate estimate. Considering the revelations we have recently had of the Boer character and fighting capacity, few people will maintain that it would be safe to leave South Africa without at least 40,000, and probably 50,000, British troops after the war is over. It is true that some South African experts maintain that when hostilities are ended, and the Dutch feel themselves hopelessly beaten, they will become so friendly and contented that an armed force will no longer be necessary for the country. With all deference to these authorities, one must be permitted to accept this prophecy with the utmost scepticism. If the Boers hate us now, after a long period in which we have at least attempted to treat them with justice and toleration, what reason in the world is there to suppose that they will love us after we have carried fire and sword through their country, destroyed their towns, laid waste their fields, killed and wounded thousands of their citizens, and deprived them of their independence? As a matter of experience, a defeated nation, especially when it has only been overcome by overwhelming numbers after a stubborn and desperate resistance, does not usually love its conquerors. I never heard that the French began to like the English after Waterloo, or the Germans after Sedan. The wounds may heal in time, and fair and just government will do much; but for years to come we must expect the Dutch of South Africa to live in sullen and brooding discontent, ready to seize a chance of injuring and embarrassing England, if only we give them the power. It is scarcely likely that we shall be able to deprive them of the rifle, which is a necessity for a people of settlers and hunters, living in a wild country in the midst of a numerous population of savages; and so, though we may break up the Governments of Pretoria and Bloemfontein, and do away with their Creusot guns and field batteries and German artillery officers, and the rest of their military paraphernalia, we shall still need to keep a strong and efficient police, with a large proportion of mounted men constantly available.

How is that force to be supplied except from the British Army? It has been suggested that we might recruit it, either from the natives, or from the loyalist white colonists. Either alternative. seems equally inadmissible. To arm the Kaffirs and the Zulus would be suicidal to ourselves, even if it were not a crime which would arouse, and justly arouse, the whole civilised world against us. The decadence of the Britannic Empire will have begun when we levy an army of barbarian mercenaries to keep white men in subjection. It would be scarcely less disastrous, and almost equally unjustifiable, to employ the Cape and Natal English for a similar purpose; for this

See South African Problems and Lessons,' in the Nineteenth Century, December 1899.

VOL. XLVII-No. 275

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