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"I shall do it to-night, and the men must be ready to catch him. Thus only can certain people escape disgrace."

It was late in the day before the trap was laid. Sergeant Mamadu crouched on the top of the bank, and behind the rock below Small Henry hid. There was no sign of life on the island, but the mass of boughs and leaves, that the Officer had arranged high up, was plainly visible.

As the sun came over the trees the Officer called "Cuckoo!" And Henry, swelling with pride, went "Hoo! hoo!" The Officer ran out along his bough, but seeing no one, went back and called again. Small Henry cunningly waited a full minute before he answered, and his next call succeeded. The Officer slipped down the great tree and hopped into the open.

"One more, O Small Henry," whispered Mamadu, and Henry called very distinctly and slowly. The Officer splashed across and flapped and hopped on to the very rock which concealed Henry. Mamadu and his men with a mighty shout hurled themselves upon him and bore him to the ground, while Henry jumped on the bank and cheered. Though four strong men were against him, the white man rolled over, pulling his assailants with him, and they all fell into the river. The Hausas, checked by the water, let go, and the Officer fled up the bank, over the unguarded bridge, and sped away at full speed over the plain.

The King and his Court joined the Sergeant and his

aware

men in the pursuit. As the hunted man ran he cried "Cuckoo!" and his pursuers joined in the cry. He was within sight of his hut before the townspeople were of his approach. When they saw the long figure leaping silhouetted against the sky, they thought the Evil Spirit himself was approaching, and the weak ones dispersed and hid.

The bolder rushed and headed off the fugitive, turning him back along the path. Then the King and his suite, the Sergeant and his men, five hundred of the townspeople, Long Quashie with his swinging knee, and Small Henry last of all, all joined in the pursuit.

The Officer's feet were bruised and bleeding, his body scratched and insect-bitten, but he paid no heed. Only aware of the army of pursuers, he made for the line of bushes which seemed to his distraught mind to offer him a dim hope of shelter and safety.

The relief party were marching in single file leisurely along the track when the noise, growing louder each moment, made them pause.

"What the deuce is it?" said the officer in command. "Get round the corner quick!"

The bushes ended at the turn and the plain lay open before them. The sun, now near its setting, shone direct on the whitened town, and the hot red flat intensifying the glare, the walls of Salagha seemed to tremble and dance in the shaking heat, approaching them only to again recede,

and in the middle distance a solitary pink figure ran, and as it ran it called "Cuckoo !"

Behind it came a crowd of men, women, and children, strung out in a long line as far back as the gates of the town, who likewise in varying degrees of breathlessness cried "Hoo! hoo! Hoo! hoo!" as they ran. The new arrival halted his men and formed them into line.

He was ignorant of the events of the past few months, but while he stared in wonder he began vaguely to suspect something of what must have happened.

"Sound the welcome," he said.

The hoarse triumphant notes rang out, and the pink figure

stayed its flight and stood hesitating midway between its pursuers and the line of men in the red fezzes and dark-blue uniforms, and even as it stopped so the pursuers also stood still. "Sound again,” said the newcomer.

The hunted man walked quietly up, and crouching down hid his face in his hands. His comrade put his arm gently round his neck, and taking off his tunic threw it over the blistered shoulders.

The friendly crowds, impressed and sympathetic, melted silently away into the shadows of Salagha town, but as they streamed through its gates one solitary shrill "Hoo! hoo!" was shouted after them. It proceeded from Small Henry.

ARMY ADMINISTRATION, PAST AND PRESENT.

BY COLONEL G. K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF, C.B., C.I.E.

VARIOUS books which have been published of recent years, dealing with the earlier part of the Victorian era, have thrown a flood of light on the administration of the Army during the Crimean War.

The sufferings and privations of the troops during the winter of 1854-55 have already been familiar to the public from the combatants' point of view, through the writings of Kinglake and others, but now we have them presented to us from the standpoint of the responsible Ministers and the Sovereign whom whom they served. The Queen's warm sympathy with her soldiers is as conspicuous as her intense eagerness for victory and for the honour and dignity of her country; and in reading her Letters we realise how close was the attachment between the troops who endured and the gracious lady whom they served with so much personal devotion, so thoroughly understood on her part, so warmly appreciated.

It is otherwise, however, with our feelings towards the statesmen. Our sympathies certainly go out to the Minister who at a time of trouble and national distress took over the control of an Army that was manifestly badly administered. Such abnegation of personal feeling is indeed worthy of the best traditions of English public life, and it is the more admirable in

Lord Panmure in that he was at the time in very poor health, and was bearing the burden of great personal sorrow. Yet when we regard his public actions only, as evinced by his letters to the seat of war, we see much to criticise. He seemed imperfectly to have grasped the true relations between the War Minister and the Commander in the field, frequently giving instructions about matters which pertained to the profession of arms, and not to the administration either of general policy or of the machinery of the Army. It is pitiful to read letters of recrimination between one member of the Cabinet and another, and between the Minister and the responsible Commanders at the seat of war. It is still more pitiful to read of the straits to which England one of the great European powers-was reduced for troops. Mercenaries from Germany, Switzerland, Poland had to be enrolled, and Sardinian troops paid, to fight the battles of the country that a few years before had exercised the paramount influence in Europe. It was exactly the same a century earlier. Hanoverian and Hessian troops had formed the bulk of England's land forces until the masterful hand of Pitt grasped the reins, swept away all the foreign mercenaries, and with British troops achieved those victories on four continents which have

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made the Empire what it is to-day.

It is clear, however, that at all events one man in England did realise where improvements in Army administration should begin. That man was the Prince Consort.

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Misunderstood and misjudged by his adopted countrymen, who, as Lord Herbert's biographer tells us, expected to see him committed to the Tower as being in traitorous respondence with Russia, the Prince alone among English statesmen seems to have seen where our weak point lay, and although his position obliged him to give his opinions with deference, it is most noticeable that not only are his suggestions fraught with value for the actual needs of the moment, but in most cases they have furnished the germ or nucleus from which our administrative reforms have expanded to the present day. All such ques

tions as the formation of 8 general staff, peace manoeuvres and camps, transport for material and supplies, proper bearer companies and transport for the sick and wounded, communication service for intelligence, a capable system of commissariat and supply, improvements in artillery and engineers, formed not only the subject of the Prince's suggestions, but are still matters on which improvement must be continually sought after.

With the organisation that then prevailed it was no wonder that war threw everything into hopeless confusion. The Secretary of State for War and the Colonies was responsible for

the general conduct of a campaign, for the selection of the officers to hold the more important commands, and for all operations bearing on the hostilities. Yet so little did warlike matters affect his duties in peace that he had no military officers on his staff, his whole attention being directed to colonial affairs and his staff being selected accordingly. The Secretary at War was the Minister who had control of the Army votes generally; he was responsible for the rates of pay and food of the soldiers, their quartering, clothing, et hoc genus omne. But he had no control over discipline or military appointments, promotion or efficiency, which were in the hands of the Commander-inChief. Nor was he in any way responsible for the pay, &c., of the artillery and engineers. These corps were under the Master-General of the Ordinance, who also supplied the warlike stores. Finally, the Commissariat was not under the War Office at all, but was a civil department under the Treasury.

Surely such an organisation was bound to produce a maximum of friction with a minimum of effect. It is at least to Lord Panmure's credit that he succeeded in amalgamating under one head many of these divergent and often antagonistic branches.

The soldier who had in his individual person to participate in the combined action of the various discordant elements above enumerated was too frequently forgotten. He was drilled, and he was, after a

1909.] The Soldier's Suspicion of the Administration.

fashion, fed and housed. But the food was meagre and badly cooked; the barracks were execrable. It is an appalling fact, disclosed by the Sanitary Commission after the Crimean War, that the death rate among the soldiers in barracks in England was more than double that of the civil population, and that too in spite of the fact that the average age of the soldier was that most favourable for health. The reason was that, crowded together in barrackrooms without regard to sanitation, the unfortunate men contracted diseases which, especially in London and among H.M. Guards, produced a mortality which was as shocking as it was wholly discreditable to the administration.

On active service the British soldier displayed in the Crimea the same qualities of patient courage that have always been his characteristic. But Kinglake tells us how Lord Raglan, in his very frequent visits to hospitals, found that the men's complaints were never with reference to danger, exposure, or physical suffering of any kind, but always with regard to some stoppage of money or rations, as though the soldier was quite ready, in his contract with the Government, to do his part of personal service, but was ever suspicious that the State was unwilling to do its share in fair remuneration. This suspicion is easy to arouse, it is hard to allay. It must be admitted that the men had strong grounds for it. They thought, rightly or wrongly, that if they were to be drilled ad nauseam, and flogged, and

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treated generally like dissolute brutes and not like human beings, in peace, and expected to endure hardship and disease and wounds in war, they had at least the right to get what was promised to them in pay, clothes, victuals, and housing. It was to the suspicion and distrust caused by this administrative negligence that the deficiency in recruits must be attributed and our country was obliged to resort in her time of need to hiring foreign mercenaries to fight her battles.

It is difficult perhaps nowadays, when sanitary science is so much in evidence, to blame Ministers of the early Victorian age for not insisting, in barracks, upon improvements which at that age were little known in private houses. But surely the health statistics of the Army ought to have been known by the responsible Minister. Mr Sidney Herbert (to give that noble statesman his most usually known title) busied himself, while Secretary at War under Sir Robert Peel, in the improved education of the soldier. All honour to him for being first in this useful reform. But it is impossible to acquit him, or any of his predecessors in office, of culpable ignorance in the matter of vital statistics. They did not know that the conditions of the soldier's life in peace were fearfully unhealthy, but it seems never to have occurred to them to inquire into the matter. Mr Herbert, however, amply atoned for any earlier neglect by his subsequent energy in pushing sanitary reform.

As regards the Commissariat,

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