the best trained troops in as will be found in the Frontier Europe. The European Col- Army Corps. This, however, onial Troops, Artillery and is counterbalanced by experiInfantry, are, if anything, ence in war. The majority of better in moral than the simi- the officers have seen service. lar units of the line with their What is bad with the French shorter service. The Sene- Army is its sanitary-discipline galese, several battalions of on the march. This may be which were employed, are said to be practically nontroops which, if held in reserve existent. Although the army throughout a long day, could was reinforced and fed by a be employed for a close-combat single line of communication, issue at nightfall with wonder- no thought was ever taken ful effect. Like the Japanese for the poor unfortunates who Infantry at the beginning of might require the same camptheir war, they have a lust ing-ground for the morrow. for killing, the instinctive Pollution of water and general cruelty and courage of the insanitation were allowed to a rapacious beast of prey, the degree that would have renprimeval instinct that civilisa- dered our own sanitation officers tion denies to us of the West. speechless. The actual valour The general standard of the of the French officer and soldier officers of the French Colonial is, as it has ever been, above Army is not, perhaps, as high discussion. KEPI. WAR OFFICE REMINISCENCES. BY COLONEL C. E. CALLWELL, C.B. No public institution in the country probably comes in for more criticism than the War Office. A good deal of this criticism is perhaps not wholly undeserved; but an old hand who has learnt the disabilities under which it often suffers, and who is aware of the unobtrusive labours of its staff, military and civilian, realises how often adverse judgments on the department are arrived at under misapprehension, and recognises that sins are frequently laid to its charge which have in reality been committed by other branches of the public service. Even soldiers often scoff at decisions and enactments emanating from Whitehall, who would be the first to admit their wisdom if fully acquainted with all the factors which have been taken into consideration when coming to a conclusion. It is the case, indeed, that one of the strongest objections which can be raised against the too common practice of moving particular officers on from one appointment to another in the office, so that they spend a considerable portion of their career within its portals, is that this practice tends to limit the numbers who pass through the mill. There can be no question but that experience at Headquarters tends to develop a sense of proportion when surveying military problems in general, and that officers who attain high rank without ever having held a War Office appointment are at a disadvantage in consequence-at least in peace time. These, however, are matters of high policy. In looking back upon two somewhat prolonged periods spent in the department, it is rather the mistakes one made from time to time and the absurdities which occasionally occurred within its precincts that come to mind. The Intelligence Department was located in Queen Anne's Gate in the later 'eighties, when I joined it to serve under General Brackenbury, to whom it owes so much of the efficiency which it has enjoyed ever since he took over charge. Those were the days when the Khalifa was dominating what is now the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan, and, as intelligence work in connection with Egypt was my special province, questions of live interest were constantly passing through my hands. Private letters telling of battle, murder, and sudden death used to reach me almost weekly from the then Head of the Intelligence Department of the Egyptian Army, Major Wingate, who rules to-day as Sirdar and Governor-General-a benevolent, prescient, progressive despot-over what is perhaps the best - governed country in the world. Osman Digna is almost forgotten now, but at that time he was perpetually being killed, or succumbing to the effects of some malignant distemper, only to come to life again for the express purpose of causing us annoyance on the Red Sea Littoral; and one of these resurrections on the part of the troublesome Dervish emir indirectly furnished me with a personal experience which was as instructive as it was mortifying. Arriving suddenly before Suakin one day with a horde of Fuzzy Wuzzies, he hunted the outposts back to the ramparts and proceeded to invest the place. There was nothing of much interest going on elsewhere at the time; so the newspapers made the most of the affair, despatched special correspondents to the scene of disturbance, and produced imaginative details under big headlines printed in prominent places. In the meantime, we in the Intelligence Department, in accordance with the usual custom in like cases, despatched copies of a certain plan of the stronghold and its environs, which happened to be available, to a number of institutions, and, amongst others, to the House of Commons. There it was solemnly placed in the Tea Room. A few days afterwards, in the course of some discussion in the House over Egyptian affairs, an honourable member seized the occasion to observe that the Intelligence Department map which had been pinned up in the Tea Room was incorrect, misleading, and entirely out of date. The War Minister (the late Mr Stanhope) was not prepared to admit this. The member was insistent, however; he declared that the fortifications had been laid out afresh at Suakin some months before, and he intimated that the map depicted the old lines, not the new ones,-it turned out that the man had been out at the place on a visit only a few weeks before, and that he actually knew something of what he was talking about. This circumstance was in itself so unusual as to attract attention. The Secretary of State thereupon expressed concern, promised to institute inquiries, and called for an explanation from my chief, who naturally sent for me. How did it come about that we had been distributing a map of Suakin on which the fortifications were wrongly shown? Were they wrongly shown?-Well, when the thing was put that way, it did occur to me that we had somehow heard some time before that the defences were being rearranged. Then why on earth was the amended line of defence not indicated on map? Could I sketch it in on the map now, so that a revise could be prepared and a new issue made? But the worst of it was that I knew no details, and had taken no steps to obtain them. The General was an ideal chief to serve under; it was an education indeed to be one of his subordinates for a season. But he was only human after all, the close of the interview was by no means pleasant, and I slunk off to my apartment, about on it here and there, crushed, to try and devise blobs which merely make the some means of bringing the huge blank spaces the more map up to date. To have conspicuous. A map of that appealed to the busy body of kind is all very well in the a legislator who had created field if you happen to be all the trouble would have carrying out your tactical been insupportably ignomin- combinations on one of the ious. Luckily, somebody re- blobs, but it is not much use membered that Colonel (now when your troops, or the hostile General Sir Leslie) Rundle, forces, are operating on the who had quite recently been blank spaces. A rough map for a short time Governor of is almost always very much the Red Sea Littoral, was better than none - provided home on leave. He was at that it is known to be only Queen Anne's Gate next a rough map. Although it is morning, and although a little no exaggeration to say that uncertain on some points, he the lack of even rough maps had soon sketched in the of some parts of South Africa fortifications quite accurately during the war cost this enough for the House of Com- country many millions sterling, mons, and probably accurately those that were supplied of enough for practical military other parts, unreliable as they were, were by no means to be despised in default of better. One would imagine that almost any civilian of reasonable intelligence must realise the importance of maps in time of war; but a case occurred a very few years ago when, in the course purposes. At that time the mapping section was always in the hands of artillery officers. This arrangement has since been altered, and latterly it has been permanently in charge of engineer officers, who generally have been chosen in recognition of prolonged experience of survey work in India, or else at Southampton. Although work of this kind is in most respects best performed by the trained technicalist, there is also something to be said for the man of rough methods. Your expert surveyor has a horror of inaccuracies. Any map-making undertaken without trigonometrical operations is bound to be an aggregate of inaccuracies. So he produces a huge sheet of paper with a few blobs of unimpeachable topographical details scattered of a discussion between the War Office and the Treasury over a question in connection with certain mapping work which would cost a good deal of money, somebody in the latter department actually asked officially on paper what was the use of maps to the military. This public servant had no doubt passed some prodigious examination before attaining the position which he adorned-but common-sense cannot have formed one of the subjects in the syllabus. Owing to my connection with Egypt, it fell to me to complete and edit the late Sir H. Colvile's 'History of the Sudan Campaign'- the official record of the attempt to relieve Gordon. Colonel Colvile had been obliged to relinquish his task owing to ill-health just when it had arrived at the stage of appearing in preliminary proof form. In some of the earlier chapters, which were devoted to recording the events that led up to the investment of Khartoum by the Mahdi, a good deal of political matter had been introduced in a form which no doubt did not give quite a correct impression of the actual course of events. However, copies of the proof were sent out to all the chief actors in the drama with the request for their observations, and amongst others one was of course despatched to Sir E. Baring (Lord Cromer). When he came in due course to send in his remarks on the book to the Foreign Office for transmission to the Intelligence Department, Sir Evelyn took strong exception to the earlier chapters on the grounds that much that was in them was inaccurate and misleading, because the author was not aware of the whole of the facts, and had not had access to all the documents bearing on the subject. He wound up by expressing the opinion that an official history of a campaign prepared by the War Office ought to treat only of actual military events-a pronouncement carrying all the more weight seeing that it emanated from an ex-soldier who had enjoyed a wide experience in dealing with official military literature. As a consequence of his representations, some forty pages or so of the book were cut out bodily. Something of a very similar nature would seem to have occurred in the case of the first volume of the Official History of the South African War prepared by the late Colonel Henderson, which never saw the light. But there was this difference. The objection to the earlier work was that facts had inadvertently been stated in it incorrectly, while the objection to the latter work appears to have been that it told the truth. After all, it is not unnatural that other Departments of the State should object to having their blunders and want of forethought advertised in a publication prepared by the War Office. But the history of a conflict which omits all mention of the events that brought about the campaign with which it is coneerned, or which only refers to those events in the baldest form, can never be an altogether satisfactory work. Now that the preparation of historical works has been taken over by the Committee of Imperial Defence, it will be interesting to see, when next the record of one of our contemporary wars comes to be compiled, whether the story will be treated as a whole. All the Departments of State likely to be concerned in the events leading up to future operations in the field are repre |