Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  I have said that foreign affairs and army and navy questions do not, under the ordinary practice of the colonial system, have much connection with colonial governments, and therefore may be left out of most federal proposals. But though the technical last word may never lie with the Federal Government, yet a South African federation would have genuine foreign interests, and would keep a watchful eye on the movements of the colonising Powers of Europe. Had there been a federation, there would have been no German acquisition of Damaraland, nor would we have found imperial authorities refusing the offer of Lourenço Marques for a trifling sum. No colonist can ever quite forgive those memorable blunders, which prevented British South Africa from having that geographical unity from the Zambesi to the Cape which its interests demand. Thirty years ago it would have been easy for Britain to proclaim a Monroe doctrine for South Africa — for that matter of it, for East Africa also. The opportunity has passed, but a strong national Government could still exercise great influence on foreign affairs, and prevent encroachment upon Portuguese territories by that Power which twenty years ago saw in Africa material for a new German Empire and has never forgotten its grandiose dreams, as well as keep an eye upon that dangerous mushroom growth, the Congo Free State, and check its glaring offences against civilisation. Army and navy questions belong, in their broadest sense, to schemes of imperial federation, a discussion of which here would be out of place; but since there is already in South Africa a large military force under one commander-in-chief, certain army questions arise which may find their proper answer only in federation, but which even now require a provisional settlement. According as we treat the matter, it may become a unifying or a violently disjunctive force, a step towards federation or a movement towards a wider disintegration. The bearing of the army question on South African policy is the subject of another chapter.

  CHAPTER XVIII. THE ARMY AND SOUTH AFRICA.

  The foremost political lesson of the late war was the solidarity of military spirit throughout the Empire. But this cohesion is only in spirit, and the actual position of colonial forces is that of isolated units, connected in no system, and subject to no central direction. For a student of military law, or that branch of it which concerns the relation of military forces to the civil power, a survey of the British colonies has much curious interest. Speaking generally, since 1868 there have been no imperial forces in any self-governing colony, since we have acted on the principle that when a colony became autonomous the defence of its borders, except by sea, must be left to its own government. Colonial troops are, therefore, militia and volunteer, who take different forms according to the needs of the colony. In some the militia, or a part of it, is to all intents a regular force, performing garrison duty and acting as a school of instruction for the other auxiliary forces. In Canada, for example, there were in 1902 a troop of cavalry, a troop of mounted rifles, two batteries of field artillery, two companies of garrison artillery, and a battalion of infantry, in which the men were enlisted for three years’ continuous service. In New South Wales, to take one state of the Australian Commonwealth, provision was made for a permanent force, which included a half-squadron of cavalry, three companies of garrison artillery and one field battery, a company of infantry and various supplementary services, with men enlisted for five years. In New Zealand the enlistment for the permanent force, which consists of artillery and submarine miners, is for eight years, three of which may be passed in the reserve. Next comes the militia proper on the home model, where the men are partially paid and are subject to a certain amount of annual training. Lastly there is a wide volunteer organisation, stretching from fully organised companies of infantry and mounted rifles down to small local rifle clubs. In certain colonies where there is an aboriginal or unsettled population, such as Canada, Cape Colony, and Natal, there is also a permanently embodied police force, which may rank with the permanent militia as a sort of colonial regulars. All such forces are under the full control of the Colonial Governments, whether, as in the Australian Commonwealth and Canada, under the Federal Ministry of Defence, or, as in Cape Colony, under the department of the Prime Minister. An imperial officer may be lent, as in Canada and Australia to-day, for the command of the colonial force, but as soon as he enters upon his command he becomes a servant of the Colonial Government. To that Government alone belongs the power of raising new forces, of changing the status of existing troops, of ordering their distribution, of regulating their rates of pay, and of lending them for service beyond the colony. A strong general officer commanding may have great influence in all such decisions, but technically he is merely an adviser who receives his orders from the local authorities.

  This is one chief type of the organisation of our over-sea imperial force. The other is furnished by India. There we have a native Indian army, and a large number of imperial troops, all of whom are under the authority of the commander-in-chief in India, who in turn is under the control of the Indian Government. When imperial troops are stationed in any other part of the Empire they are commanded by an officer who is directly subject to the War Office; but in India, as soon as a battalion lands it takes the status of the local forces and passes under the authority of the local government. The War Office retains certain powers, but for all practical purposes the Indian command is wholly decentralised.

  South Africa affords the spectacle of a confusion of the two types. It is made up partly of Crown colonies and dependencies and partly of self-governing states. At this moment it is occupied by imperial troops whose numbers, for the purpose of this argument, may be put at 30,000. Such troops are stationed in Cape Colony and Natal as well as in the new colonies, and the command has been unified and vested in one commander-in-chief, who is subject only to the War Office and has no responsibility to the local governments. We have, therefore, the anomalous case of an autonomous colony occupied by imperial troops, a policy which is out of line with English practice. When self-government is given to the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, the South African general will command what will be neither more nor less than an alien army of occupation. At the same time, wholly apart from the regular forces, there are police troops in Natal, Cape Colony, the new colonies, and Rhodesia; and a large number of volunteer regiments, who are directly under the control of the local governments. The South African military organisation is thus split in two by a deep gulf, and unless some method of union is found, we shall be confronted with a system alien to the tradition of our colonial policy and in itself clumsy and unworkable. But this question is intimately bound up with others — the desirability of the retention of imperial troops, the organisation of such troops in relation to the imperial army, indeed the whole question of that branch of imperial federation which is concerned with the defence of the Empire. It involves certain problems of military reform which are violently contested by good authorities. In this chapter it is proposed, as far as possible, to consider the matter of the South African army solely from the standpoint of South African politics, referring to the military aspect only in so far as may be necessary at points where South African politics are merged in wider schemes of imperial unity.

  The first question concerns the policy of keeping imperial troops in South Africa at all. The size of the force depends, of course, on the duties which it is intended to perform, but for the retention of some troops there seems to be every justification. Few people believe that there is much likelihood of another outbreak, but after a war of the magnitude of that which we have recently gone through it would seem scarcely provident to leave the peace of the country solely to the care of the police. In a country, again, where British prestige is a plant of recent growth, it is well to provide the moral support of regular battalions. If useful for no other purpose, they serve as a memento of war, a constant reminder of the existence of an imperial power behind all local administration. We have also to face the fact that we have committed ourselves to some kind of occupation force by undertaking a large preliminary expenditure on cantonments, w
hich will be money wasted if the scheme is dropped. For this purpose we have spent between two and three millions, and unless we are to be held guilty of causeless extravagance, we must abide by the plan to which this outlay has committed us.

  The original scheme was for a garrison force. For this purpose 30,000 men are too many if our forecast be correct, and far too few if it be wrong. Half the number would be ample for any peace establishment, and we may be perfectly certain that as soon as self-government is declared in the new colonies there would be many attempts to cut down the number or do away with the force altogether. Alien garrison troops will be always unpopular, and, as has been said, they are foreign to British policy with regard to autonomous colonies. A force on the garrison basis would find itself with little to do, the general commanding would be exposed to the jealousy of the colonial troops, and involved in constant difficulties with the colonial governments, and, save in the unlikely event of a rebellion, would have no very obvious justification for the existence of his command.

  If South Africa is to remain a station for any considerable number of imperial troops, some mode of co-operation must be discovered with the local governments. This co-operation would be possible between the colonial administration and a garrison force; but it would be infinitely more satisfactory if the whole status of the imperial troops were changed. For a garrison establishment makes it difficult, if not impossible, not only to bring the general commanding into touch with the governments, but to bring the local troops into line with the regular, and both unions must be accomplished before any satisfactory settlement can be given to the problem. The simplest solution was to treat the South African force, not as a garrison, but as part of the regular army on the home establishment, sent there for the purpose of training, and liable to be utilised at any moment for active service in any part of the Empire. There are certain objections to the scheme, plausible enough though not insuperable, from the military standpoint; but for the present we may limit our argument to those points which concern South Africa, and those difficulties which spring from the nature of the country — difficulties which are far more real to the soldiers who are directly concerned than the wider question of the present scheme of military organisation.

  The advantages are sufficiently obvious. There are few finer manœuvring grounds in the world than the great Central South African tableland. There is sufficient cover to make scouting possible and not enough to make it easy, and the intense clearness of the air and its singular acoustic properties will train a man’s senses to a perfection unknown in other armies and impossible to acquire in the restricted areas of a populous country. The soldier will have to face the rudiments of war in a far more difficult country than he is likely to be used in. He will learn to shoot, or rather to judge ranges correctly under unwonted conditions, which is rarer and more vital than mere accurate marksmanship. He will learn the real roughness of campaigning in long manœuvres; and from the same cause regiments will acquire that elasticity and cohesion which come from constant working together. If we except enteric, caused by bad sanitation, which has been the curse of the war, but is not a speciality of the country, the veld is almost exempt from diseases. Life there will not only train the senses and the intelligence, but will give health and physical stamina. A year of such training will make a man of the young recruit from the slums of an English city. Physique is the final determinant in war, and with our present system of recruiting and training there is no guarantee for its existence. Lastly, our soldiers trained on the veld will become natural horse masters, which few even of the cavalry are at present. They will learn that care of their horses which every Boer has as a birthright, that simple veterinary skill and common-sense whose lack has cost us so many millions. South Africa is a natural horse-breeding country, and in co-operation with Government stud-farms a breed of remounts could be got which would unite the merits of the Afrikander pony with the weight and bone required for army work. Instead of having to ransack foreign countries for our horses, we should breed all we wanted for ourselves under the eye of our imperial officers, and breed them too in a place which is the best centre in the Empire for distribution to any possible seat of war.

  The objections to the scheme are partly of sentiment and partly of technical difficulties. South African service, it is said, is at present unpopular. Our army has recently concluded a long and arduous war, fought under conditions of extreme discomfort. Small wonder if troops who have been kicking their heels for eighteen months in remote blockhouses should have little good to say of the pleasures of the life. For the officers there have been dismal quarters, a cheerless dusty country, heavy expenses, little sport, and no society; and the lot of the men, though relatively less hard, has been equally comfortless. The proper answer to such a contention is to ignore it. It is the objection of the non-professional officer, and cannot be entertained. The forces in South Africa are sent there for training, not for garrison life, and if the place is a good training-ground, the question of congenial society and interesting recreation has nothing to do with the matter. But there is no reason why South African life for the future should be unattractive. An English society is rapidly arising, English sports are becoming popular, the cantonments can easily be made comfortable homes, and there are a thousand ways, such as the allotting to each soldier who desires it a small patch of land to cultivate, in which the men can be made to feel an interest in the country. For the officers there is a sporting hinterland as fine and as accessible as the Pamirs to the Indian sportsman. Living is undoubtedly more costly, and there will have to be special allowances for South African service; but with a proper canteen system, such as existed during the war, the cost of luxuries might be kept low enough for all. There is a future, too, for the reservist which he cannot look for at home. Even as an unskilled workman he can command wages which are unknown in England; and the men who, at the end of their three years’ service, would join the South African reserve, would be young enough to begin civil life in whatever walk they might choose.

  The chief technical difficulties, exclusive of sea-transport, which is outside our review, are the extra cost, the difficulty of recruiting, and the delays in bringing reservists from home in case of active service. The last will be met in a little while by the creation of a South African reserve; but in the meantime there are many ways in which it might be surmounted. Battalions might be brought up to fighting strength by the inclusion of men from local forces. It would be an easy matter to introduce into the terms of enlistment of the South African Constabulary a condition of foreign service, and to keep from 1000 to 2000 men in readiness. It would be possible also to enlist 1000 men of the Transvaal volunteer force for special foreign service, paying to each man a bonus of £12 per annum. The real solution of this difficulty is bound up, as we shall see later, with the whole theory of a colonial army; but even on the present system it is easy to provide a working expedient. The question of extra cost — for each man would require an extra 6d. per day, or £9, 2s. 6d. per annum — is answered by pointing out that such a force being on the home establishment would do away with the necessity of linked battalions, and would effect a saving of twenty-four battalions and six regiments of cavalry, so that even if the extra cost were 50 per cent, the total saving would far outbalance it. The recruiting difficulty is unlikely to be a serious one. We may lose to the army a little of the loose fringe of half-grown boys from the towns, — stuff which, as history has shown, can be transformed into excellent fighting men, but which at the same time does not represent the last word either in moral or physical qualities. But many of the best of our young men, whose thoughts turn naturally to the colonies, would gladly seize the chance of three years’ service there, in which they would gain experience of the new lands, and be able to judge, when their turn came for entering reserves, which line of life promised most. No Emigration Bureau or Settlement Board would be so effective an agency in bringing the right class to the country. But, further, such a system would throw open t
o us the vast recruiting-grounds of our colonies. It is difficult for one who has not been brought face to face with it to realise the military enthusiasm which the war has kindled not only among the more inflammable, but among the coolest and shrewdest of our younger colonists. They know — none better — the joints in our armour; but they have paid generous tribute to the solidarity of spirit, the gallantry of our leaders, the unbreakable constancy of our men. A few fanciful war correspondents have done a gross injustice to our colonial soldiers by painting them as a race of capable braggarts, who laughed at our incompetence in a game which they understood so vastly better. It is safe to say that in the better class there was no hint of such a spirit; and the way in which irregular horse, with fine records of service, have traced the source of victory in the last resort to the stamina of the British infantry, does credit both to their judgment and their chivalry. They have become keen critics of any organisation, looking at war not only with the eyes of fighting men but of professional soldiers. All the details of the profession are of interest to them, and an imperial force in South Africa could draw largely both for officers and men upon the local population. The benefit of such a result, both to the colonies and to ourselves, is difficult to over-estimate. A common profession would do much to smooth away the petty differences which are always apt to widen out gulfs. The army would become a vast nursery of the true imperial spirit, and a school to perpetuate the best of our English traditions; and would itself gain incalculably by the infusion of new and virile blood, and the weakening of prejudices, both of class and education, which at present are a grave menace to its efficiency.