trary to the rule of the United States, this matter is intrusted,
and which is ultimately responsible both for the general system in
force and for the results, but also upon the Director of Transports,
Rear-Admiral Bouverie Clark, to whose tenure of this office has fallen
the weighty care of immediate supervision. To success in so great an
undertaking are needed both a good antecedent system and a good
administrator; for administration under such exceptional conditions,
precipitated also at the end by the rapid development of events, means
not merely the steady running of a well-adjusted and well-oiled
machine, but continual adaptation--flexibility and readiness as well
as precision, the spirit as well as the letter. When a particular
{p.087} process has had so large a share in the general conduct of a
war, a broad account of its greater details is indispensable to a
complete history of the operations.

[Footnote 6: The distance from Southampton, the
chief though not the only port of departure, to
Cape Town is 5,978 miles.]

The number and varied distribution, in place and in climate, of the
colonial or foreign posts occupied by the British army at the present
time, and the extensive character of its operations abroad, during war
and peace, for two centuries have occasioned a gradual elaboration of
regulation in the transport system, to which, by the necessity of
frequent changes of troops, are added an extent and a continuity of
practical experience that has no parallel in other nations. These have
vastly facilitated the unprecedented development demanded by the
present war. A leaven of experimental familiarity, by previous
personal contact with the various problems to be solved, suffices to
permeate the very large lump of crude helplessness that may be
unavoidably thrown upon the hands of regimental officers; and even
where such personal experience has been wholly wanting to a particular
ship's company, the minuteness of the regulations, if intelligently
followed, gives {p.088} a direction and precision to action, which
will quickly result in the order and convenience essential to the
crowded life afloat. Nowhere more than on board ship does man live
ever face to face with the necessity of order and system, for there
always the most has to be disposed in the least space.

When a ship is engaged for the government service wholly--but not
otherwise--she is know