1906.] on Imperial Defmce. 285 



doubtless many grave military mistakes. There were personal errors 

 and errors of system, and perhaps I shall not be thought to trespass 

 unduly upon ground which is not my own, when I say that many of 

 these military shortcomings were the natural and inevitable result in 

 the field of the mental habits then prevailing in all classes of society, 

 and of political circumstances for which all political parties must 

 bear their share of blame. In short, there were mistakes which more 

 careful preparation beforehand could certainly have prevented ; there 

 were others which, by the light of the experience then acquired, a 

 wiser system may fairly hope to prevent in the future ; and there 

 were others again of a kind which no system can ever effectually 

 guard against. 



My purpose is to place before you as clearly as I can that, if the 

 Regular Army at the outbreak of the South African War had already 

 reached the level of efficiency upon which it now stands, without 

 being more adequate in point of numbers than it then was, no amount 

 of skill and devotion upon the part of the officers and men could 

 have saved us from many of the checks and disappointments met 

 with in that struggle, or could have forced it rapidly to a decisive 

 issue, or could have prevented it from laying a heavy financial burden 

 on posterity. 



I have recalled the physical and strategical conditions of the 

 South African campaign, because those conditions had a remarkable 

 effect in elucidating the problem of the numbers necessary for success. 

 Adequate numbers proved, as is almost invariably the case in war 

 between civilised peoples, to be the decisive influence required to 

 bring the struggle in which we were engaged to a favourable issue. 

 The Boers, brave and stubborn opponents, had no lines of communi- 

 cation, and so were able to use every man for fighting purposes. 

 They knew every inch of the country, most of the inhabitants 

 of which were on their side and eager to assist them, and they could 

 strike wherever they liked. We had to be prepared at all points. 

 The defence of our lines of communication absorbed the great bulk 

 of our forces. It absorbed a number of men several times more 

 numerous than the whole of the Boer Army, and the mobile forces 

 we were able to use for offensive purposes at any given moment never 

 outnumbered our antagonists in anything like the proportion that is 

 generally imagined. It was very speedily realised that to prosecute 

 the War with success far larger forces would be required than our 

 Regular Army organisation had ever been expected to provide. The 

 supreme lesson of the South African struggle was not the inefficient 

 character of the Regular Army, but the utter lack of anything like a 

 National Reserve behind that Army. 



How did we succeed in the long run in providing the numbers 

 necessary ? We did it partly haphazard, partly, as I have already 

 said, by pulUng society to pieces, and partly by an enormous expendi- 

 ture of money. We denuded these Islands of troops to an extent 



