A BRITISH COLONIAL ARMY. T HE French Government is about, it
is said, to organise a Colonial Army for service in Indo-China, New Caledonia, and its West Indian possessions, and it is worth while to consider for a moment whether Great Britain would not gain by the adoption of a similar policy. We do not mean that she should split the Queen's Army in two, one for general service and one for service in Europe only, for that suggestion, though often made, is too large to be discussed seriously until it is brought forward by responsible statemen. What we desire to propose for con- sideration is the addition to the Queen's Army of a Fatigue Force, a considerable corps d'armee of coloured men, commanded by English officers, who would garrison .and protect our ever-increasing tropical possessions. We need such men in Egypt, in the West Indies, on the West Coast of Africa, on the East Coast of the same continent, in Zululand, Bechuanaland, and Livingstonia, in Borneo and New Guinea ; and we may need them in other regions besides. We cannot waste Europeans in these climates, or ask them to do police-work, and. we meet our necessities by local levies of all kinds,—sometimes, as in the West Indies, almost regulars ; sometimes, as on the (old Coast, military policemen ; and sometimes, as in East Africa and Zululand, a miscellaneous mob of . armed men, whose varied discipline, qualities, and precise functions it would not be easy to describe on paper. Is that not rather a waste of force ? It seems to us that if all these organisations were superseded by a regular Colonial Army, say of twenty thousand men, with a settled organisation, a regular code of discipline, and uniform rates of pay, the Empire would possess a most useful force, very . cheap, able to acquire a high tone of pride, and incapable of becoming oppressive to the protected populations. It would be paid for, in the main, by the tropical Colonies protected, but would be under the orders of the Colonial • Office in the same way and to the same degree as the Indian Army is under the orders of the India Office.
We need not waste time in describing the kind of organisation needed, for it would be nothing but that of an Indian division, and the Departments, if authorised to spend the money, would put all that in order in two years ; nor need we remark that of officers there could never be a deficiency. The class of Englishmen which is at once educated and esurient grows fearfully large, and the Government can have five hundred officers at its disposal only for the asking, and at rates of pay which curates would not consider munificent. The real question is the men, and we want to point out that this is ceasing to be a difficulty. We could draw, we believe, if we pleased, upon at least four admirable sources of supply. One, of course, is the Indian hill popula, tion, any number of whom would enter such a service for twenty rupees a month—X24 a year—and their -uniforms, purchasing supplies for themselves. They would -be found brave, obedient, and patient of hardship, and would be men whom their officers thoroughly understood. If they once accepted the service, they would be easily transferred from post to post, and they would on their return carry back to the hills strange tales of the extent and strength of the Empire with dominion in every con- tinent. We know of no special objection to this source of supply, except that it is not a new one, and would create some danger of competition between the Colomal and the Indian demand. There are, however, at least three other sources. One is Zululand, from which we might attract large numbers of unusually brave men, accustomed to hardship and a simple life, quite willing to obey white officers, and as little affected by most climates as the pure Negroes themselves. We need not talk of the military qualities of Zulus, for they have made them manifest in the most patent of conceivable ways. Another source is the Negro population of " Africa " itself, and especially the Negroes of the Nile, who now fill the black regi- ments of Egypt which fight so well. There are millions of these men who, if a depat were always open—say, in Zanzibar, or a point on the Red Sea—would swarm down to it, and become in a twelvemonth excellent and most enduring soldiers. They are perfectly willing to obey white officers, and very small pay for five years would enable them to return to their villages comparatively rich, or to settle as cultivators wherever they were required in British territory. These men march splendidly, they are unaffected by any climate whatever, and they are in a singular degree capable of severe discipline. A whole corps d'armie could be formed of them, and, scattered through the Colonies, they could be relied upon almost as completely as our own troops, and would gradually come to consider the "Colonial Army" as their natural home. Professional pride, the second strength of armies, is soon generated in any considerable force, and once generated, draws recruits who cease from the first to be mere mercenaries.
Either of these three reservoirs would supply what we need, and there is said to be a fourth, as to which we are more dependent on external information. We are told and believe that among whole classes of emancipated slaves, both in the Southern States and Brazil, there is a strong desire to emigrate and settle as peasants under the British flag in tropical Africa. They would come at call if convenient points in Africa were arranged, and would willingly serve five years for their keep, and the grant of land at the end of their term. East Africa would suit them as well as West, their only stipulation being that their farms should be in Africa, and that they should be settled as far as possible together. These men make admirable soldiers, can bear any African climate, are nominally, at all events, all Christians—a great point, as the Arab missionaries cannot corrupt them—and speak only English or Portuguese. If the accounts we have received are accurate, there could be no better material ; and it is available in abundance, without danger of any collision with any Government. The Americans would not, of course, suffer us to recruit in the Southern States, but they are favourable to any scheme of black emigration, provided only that the emigrants do not return. More- over, in any scheme which depends on Negroes, whether African or American, we should, we are told, have one advantage it is impossible to exaggerate, the preference of the pure black races for English rule. Why they prefer it, it might be hard to say; but the preference is admitted. by Negroes when speaking to Negroes in everypart of Africa, and especially in the East. They say, in their own methods of speech : "The English punish, but they neither worry nor insult, and when the fight is over, they leave people alone,"—the last, we take it, being the true cause of a feeling for which, we fear, we have consciously given but little jus- tification. Even Germans do not attract the Negroes, and their hate of the French is as deadly in Senegal as it ever was in Haiti. At all events, the readiness to enlist is there, and although we recognise the advantage of our local, hand-to-mouth, haphazard ways—one result of them being that the scampish dare-devils who enlist as local officers really understand the local work to be done—it seems a pity to neglect such a source of fresh strength. If after the great war, or through the progress of events, East Africa falls to us, from Alexandria to the Cape, while Germany makes an India of the Congo State, and France acquires Morocco, we shall have to form some such Colonial Army as is sketched out here, and we might as well acquire all the needful information now. There are plenty of men very much in awe of the Colonial Office, who possess it all, except the knowledge as to the wishes of Negroes in Brazil and the Southern States.
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