Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/223

 1899.)- Mr. Wyndham's Statement. [215

officers, for the purpose of raising two regiments of horse for the protection of Rhodesia. But the Transvaal and also the Free State continued military preparations ; large consignments of ammunition being sent through Cape Colony and Delagoa Bay into the two republics. On September 8, after the withdrawal by the Boers of the five years' franchise proposal, the Govern- ment ordered the further reinforcement of the Natal garrison by 10,000 men, chiefly from India and the Mediterranean. This brought up the force in South Africa to 24,746 regulars, trained and mature men, and was accomplished without mobili- sation, or calling on the Reserves or any dislocation of the system of reliefs. At the same time sanction was given for the raising of a body of Imperial Light Horse in Natal. After the " interim despatch " of September 22, the despatch of a large body of the Army Service Corps to South Africa was ordered, and on September 29, two days after the adoption by the Free State Volksraad of the resolution expressing their intention to join with the Transvaal in the event of war, and not until then, the Cabinet authorised the despatch of a large field force from this country. That field force/' continued Mr. Wyndham, " is to be composed of a cavalry division, making up a total of nearly 6,000 men, an army corps of about 32,000 men, and forces for lines of communication of about 9,000 men, the total estimated forces being about 47,000 men, about 11,000 horses, 14,000 mules and 2,650 waggons and other vehicles, with 114 guns. To do this we had to mobilise. We mobilised eight cavalry regiments, fifteen batteries of field artillery and four of horse artillery and thirty-two battalions of infantry, besides other troops. To fill these regiments to war strength we called up a portion of the Reserve. The whole strength of the Reserve on October 1 was 81,000 men ; we called up 25,000, and, after reckoning for absentees and invalids, we expected to get an effective force of 21,000. That expectation has been exactly verified, and our field force consists of about 26,000 men who were with the Colours, and about 21,000 Reservists — total 47,000." The sum required for mobilising the field force of 47,000 men, for transferring it 6,000 miles over sea, and for equipping it and maintaining it for four months in a land destitute of surplus supplies was estimated at 8,000,000J. But that sum also covered necessary measures of replacement, in par- ticular the embodiment of thirty-three battalions of Militia, a fundamental principle of our Army system being, as Mr. Wynd- ham explained, that "when all the battalions of a regiment are. sent abroad, we must call out the affiliated Militia battalion, and we must form a provisional battalion of that regiment by weld- ing together the Militia battalion and the men under twenty left behind by the battalion abroad. We are leaving 9,000 men behind from our thirty-two battalions." The cavalry and the field artillery, Mr. Wyndham pointed out, must be strength- ened in a different manner, and it was proposed to raise the