xxi THE MILITARY AND POLICE FORCES 213 



prestige we still maintain. That when the Abyssinian 

 boundary was delineated it was so drawn with a view 

 to interposing the desert as a buffer between ourselves 

 and a warlike and predatory race. That these posts 

 are most unhealthy and disagreeable, and that the loss 

 we suffer through their retention is for this reason not 

 one of money alone. 



These arguments are without question true in fact, 

 but the advocates of the wider policy produce as a 

 counter the argument that when we as an Empire 

 undertook the administration of the Protectorate we 

 undertook the liabilities attaching to the worst in 

 addition to the benefits attaching to the best portions 

 of that Protectorate. It is therefore our bounden duty 

 to give adequate protection to even the poorest and 

 meanest tribes which inhabit its furthest boundaries. 



As to the weakness or soundness of these conflicting 

 arguments each man must judge for himself. It may, 

 however, be pointed out that the present policy is 

 unlikely to meet with favour with either side, since 

 though the expense is great the garrisons are too 

 meagre to afford protection to our subject races. 

 Moreover, the instructions of those garrisons are, or 

 have been, to suffer any indignity sooner than risk 

 embroiling themselves with our neighbours across 

 the frontier. 



It is with the volunteer movement that it is hoped to 

 replace, as time goes on, our professional soldiers. 

 Already we are possessed of a good proportion of 

 keen and genuine volunteers — to take no account of 

 those who have joined the corps for the sake of acquir- 

 ing a rifle and cartridges wherewithal to replenish the 

 larder. Moreover, there is a stout band of the Legion 

 of Frontiersmen, to say nothing of the Boy Scouts. 



