286 Field-Marshal Earl Roberts [March 23, 



which, I do not hesitate to say, would be impossible in the event of 

 any complication with a foreign power. When we had used all our 

 available trained material, we had to offer five shilhngs a day for the 

 services of men who were totally untrained, and who had to be turned 

 into soldiers in the midst of war. We had at one and the same time 

 to use an Army and to make an Army, and it is difficult to imagine 

 a greater strain upon any administration than was involved by such 

 a double task. 



We were fortunate in the circumstances which enabled our great 

 Colonies to come to our aid, and in the fact that the peace of the seas 

 was not troubled by a shot ; transport between the scene of war on 

 the one hand, and Canada, the Antipodes, and the mother country 

 upon the other, was carried on without the slightest interruption, and, 

 I might almost say, with railway regularity. The British population 

 in South Africa gave priceless assistance, and I think it is hardly 

 realised in this country that they supplied local forces equal altogether 

 to the whole number of British troops under the Duke of Wellington's 

 command at Waterloo. The assistance thus afforded made up in a 

 measure for the absence of a large Home Reserve, and enabled us to 

 use a certain number of improvised troops against a small enemy, 

 wholly enclosed in our power and unable to reinforce itself — a condi- 

 tion which afforded time and opportunity for retrieving initial disaster, 

 but which is not possible to occur in a serious war with any country 

 other than South Africa. 



We know not the day nor the hour when the horizon may darken, 

 when we may find ourselves engaged against some infinitely more 

 numerous, better trained and prepared, more favourably situated, and 

 altogether more formidable enemy than our antagonists in the late 

 campaign. The means by which we were enabled to make good our 

 opening mishaps in the struggle of six years ago would avail us little 

 in any theatre upon which the colossal forces of the Great Powers 

 could be set in motion. 



If such a new and grave emergency should occur in the next 

 decade — and no man can say with certainty that it will not occur — 

 and if it should find us still without a National Reserve behind a 

 Regular Army, we may have to pay for the absence of that Reserve 

 a price from the effects of which succeeding generations may never 

 be able to recover, and for which they will never cease to upbraid us. 



As I have ah'eady remarked, valuable })rogress has been made as 

 regards the efficiency of the Regular Army, ])ut we have made no 

 effort whatever to co|)e vvitli the other military problem which, as I 

 have endeavoured to explain, is peculiar to ourselves — the problem of 

 l)uilding up an adequate National Reserve by some means entirely 

 apart from, and outside of, the system by which our small long-service 

 Anuy is provided. It is possible that we could despatch to any part 

 of the world 70, ()()() to 120,000 men, who would be sooner ready and 

 would be ])etter trained, and a finer and more warlike force than any 



