SOM A Tin', A ND O UR difficulties in Somaliland constitute
a most an- noying piece of business. Nobody wants Somali- land, or would give a sovereign for it in fee-simple ; yet here we are pledged to a petty war which may cost millions in money and hundreds of good English and Sikh lives, with nothing to gain and a liability to be compelled to annex another desert province which can never pay expenses, or police itself, or be free from the risk of dangerous and costly surprises. The thing began in a natural way enousti. When we took Aden and made it an important post, the place—which we once heard described as " a bit of the floor of the infernal regions thrown up to show us what they looked like "- produced nothing whatever, either to eat or drink. In our people, however, obstinacy develops resource. The water difficulty, which for a moment seemed insuperable, was overcome by distillation, and the food difficulty by buying supplies from the coast tribes of the opposite Somali country, to whom British appetites appeared a source of wealth untold. Aden was provisioned sufficiently, and as we were much obliged to the coast tribes and a little afraid of their striking, we scattered promises of pro- tection against the universe broadcast. Now the promises have to be kept. Out of the depths of the Somali Hinterland appears an able Mussulman with a gift for preaching and organising, and an ambition which, like that of all Mussulman religious leaders, has no limits except the air and the ocean. His real objective, it is believed, is Abyssinia, which from its history and its situation is a permanent irritant to Mahommedan pride ; but in order to gather force the Mullah attacked tribe after tribe, absorbing each as he defeated it, and at last began harrying our own " friendlies." They appealed to us for help, and, of course, it was given, most properly, for we live in those regions on the belief inspired by our promises; but it was given in the inept way in which we commence all our never-ending military undertakings. Nothing can convince our Foreign Office or our War Office that African Mussulmans are not savages all through, but singularly brave spearmen and swordsmen, who when provoked regard life as of no consequence, and who throw up with a curious frequency, probably caused by the practical equality which Islam maintains among. believers, men able to raise armies, who would, if they could ever rely on successors like themselves, found strong military Empires. The idea is that any force will do against savages, and we send, therefore, against a chief- tain like the Mullah, to whom the smallest victory brings swarms of allies, a force hardly sufficient for a recon- naissance and composed of men of all colours except white ; we neglect to provide transport reinforcements ; and we disperse the strength we have over the face of a country where the wells are fifty or a hundred miles apart. We do not apparently provide the little steel tubes employed in the Abyssinian Campaign, which will draw water from the depths even in a desert; and then we march about hunting for an enemy who, knowing the country and being utterly careless how many men he drops en route, can march two miles to our one. He on his side knows perfectly well who and where his pursuers are, and that his chance is to cut off detachments, which accord- ingly he tries to do. Very often he fails, for our men are as brave as his, they know they must win or perish, and they have aid both from science and from discipline; but every now and then he succeeds, and a detachment, with officers more valuable to us than the whole country they are traversing, is wiped out. There is a " disaster," big or little, and the whole Continent claps its hands, and predicts a bursting up of the " overgrown Power " which has become so infamously rich. Great Britain, however, takes the news phlegmatically, because she has a silent contract with her Government that she is always to win in the end ; but then that contract implies a larger expedition, more transport, more lives given to the enemy and the hospitals, and expenditure in rivers. We are never to stay beaten, and in the long run we never do stay; but the preliminary process of waiting for a, disaster to wake us up, which is perpetually repeating itself, is most wasteful, it frequently brings us nothing—as it will in Somaliland—and it always interferes with other and more important plans. In the present instance we must go on,—firstly, because our good faith is at stake, and secondly, because a retreat evidently due to the Mullah would send a thrill of exulta- tion through all the Mussulman tribes of Africa, and perhaps compel us, and the French, and the Italians to fight for our lives on larger and more important fields. We are all three hopelessly outnumbered, our enemies are brave men with many potential Hyder Alis among them, and if they once believe that attack on the white men can be successful in the end, Europe must either bid adieu to North Africa, or deliberately subjugate it at a cost which will be the despair of statesmen as well as economists. But while we must catch the Mullah or destroy his prestige, there is not the smallest necessity for occupying, still less for annexing, Somaliland. The Mullah once smashed, as we may presume, now that the Home Government is roused, he will be, we can warn our " friendlies " that they must take care of themselves, abandon all posts not within thirty miles of the sea, and trust to the profit- seeking instinct of Africans and Arabs to feed Aden. They will sell their goods at a price as long as we pay faithfully, and so will their conquerors from the interior, if any should hereafter appear. Indeed, in the worst resort Aden can now be fed from India almost as readily as from Somaliland, or, still better, from New Zealand by means of cold storage. And we would ask for the fiftieth time whether some of the muddling could not be pre- vented; whether we must, that is, do everything in this hand-to-mouth fashion, improvising everything by sheer power of gold as necessity arises ? Is it really impossible to establish a small but mobile force of African Sepoys, as the French have done with their Senegalese—with the exception of the Sikhs, the best Sepoy force in the world— to organise an African transport department equally mobile, and, above all, to create an Intelligence Bureau specially for active service? We never in Africa know half enough about our enemies ; yet we have money in plenty, we have secure bases in which to concentrate our know- ledge in Cairo and Aden, and Arabs can in Africa discover anything they choose to discover, and describe facts as well as Europeans. Are these methods of prevision pre- vented by jars between the Departments at home, Colonial Office men telling Foreign Office men that they must not interfere with each other ?—because if it is so, we do not see the use of a Premier, who ought to be, and in theory is, the representative of the Crown for all Depart- ments. Whenever we get into a mess, whether it is on the big scale or the microscopic, it is always foresight which is found to have been the wanting quality. Men cannot foresee, it is true, but they can observe and they can calculate ; and when they do, it is usually found that they can succeed. We are not recommending, be it observed, the creation of great establishments, to eat their heads off in time of peace, and possibly fail in time of war; but of small establishments of picked men, so organised as to be expansible when they are urgently required. This Somaliland affair, for example, threatens disaster for want of sufficient transport. Well, we do not recommend a stud of ten thousand camels, to be drawn on when necessary ; but a small stud, managed, say, by five picked officers, whose business would be in part to train camels, but principally to know everything about the camel trade,—where beasts should be bought, who can be expected to provide them in a hurry, and what kind of camel survives and what kind is liable to " split." It is not mad expenditure which is required in our Departmental arrangements, but that prevision which reconciles economy and efficiency ; and this we rarely obtain. If any one of the three detachments now trying to concentrate at Bohotle (pronounce as if the word rhymed with " remotely ") had been cut off, we should have to spend a sum which would have provided for ever all that we venture to recommend, and the country would be asking for a scapegoat,—who, when found, would probably receive a great command or high Ministerial office. It is too vexatious. There must, we fear, be petty wars while we rule a, fifth of the world with insufficient forces, but they might at least be expected and provided against with a certain amount of judgment and far-sightedness. Gallantry and expenditure will not do everything.
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