Note Back to Main Text — Chapter I

From the great variety of countries and climates, in which it has been the fate of the British army to be engaged for the last hundred years or more, it has always been impossible to foresee what the particular equipment required for any given expedition would be.[18] To keep up permanently all the transport animals and the large reserves of food supplies needed for both animals and men would have been wasteful extravagance. In one campaign, only human porterage had been possible; in another, only transport by river boats; in another, it had been necessary to rely chiefly on camels; in another, on the development of canal and railway communication. Therefore, much time is always needed before it is possible so to prepare a British army that it is ready to wage war. An army is as little able to march till it is supplied with the necessary transport as a man would be without proper shoes, or a cavalryman without his horse. For such a war as was in prospect in South Africa, ranging possibly over tens of thousands of square miles, immense quantities, both of animals and vehicles, would be needed. A considerable proportion of these could no doubt be procured in the country itself, but from the numbers required it was necessary to extend our purchases over almost all the civilised world. This was another of the cases in which the necessity not to provoke war tended to prevent preparations for war.