National _Strategy. By Viscount Esher, K.C.B. (Arthur L. Humphreys. 6d.)—Lord
Esher printed this pamphlet "for private circulation among those interested in the formation of a Secretariat to he Defence Committee." He has now consented to publish it, and has laid the country under no small obligation by so doing. He reviews as lucidly and tersely as possible the military history of Europe since the war of 1870, describes the present situation, and states the problem which an English states- man has to solve. There is a Defence Committee (evolved out of a rudimentary body which owed its origin to Lord Salisbury). It is necessary that the proceedings of this body should be continu- ously recorded, thus keeping up an art, so to speak, of national strategy, this art being neither purely military nor purely naval, but a scientific combination of the.two, such combination as has hitherto existed being distinctly casual. Lord Esher taken a concrete instance,—the Boer War. Had there been such a Defence Committee, with its proper organisation, could the country have been left as it was, without knowledge of what the Boer Republics were doing, without any plans for supply and transport, without maps of the country? Above all, would Delagoa Bay have been neglected? Is it possible to reckon the millions that would have been saved if we had bought Delagoa Bay before hostilities broke out ?
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