uent disaster. The failure to mobilise the Army
Corps in June had placed the Army in a position of disadvantage at the
outbreak of the war, from which it never wholly recovered. The
original striking force--the Army Corps--was not employed in its
proper function, but absorbed, upon its arrival in South Africa, in
the task of supporting the defensive forces. Twenty-two thousand men,
with an Army Corps advancing upon Bloemfontein or Pretoria, would have
sufficed to repel attacks upon the colonial frontiers, and to check
rebellion in the Cape Colony. But twenty-two thousand men defending
one thousand miles of frontier from a mobile force nearly twice as
numerous with the Army Corps six thousand miles away in England, was a
very different thing. Yet this was the situation in which the nation,
by withholding from the Government the support necessary to enable it
to give effect to the advice of Lord Wolseley, had elected to place
the British Army. The plan of mobilisation, long prepared and complete
in all particulars, worked with perfect success. Twenty Companies of
the Army Service Corps sailed on October 6th, a day before the actual
mobilisation order was issued. The rest of the offensive force--one
Cavalry Division, one Army Corps, and eight battalions of lines of
communication troops--began to be embarked on October 20th, and by
November 17th the long succession of transports, bearing the whole of
the men, horses, and guns of which it was composed (with the exception
of one cavalry regiment detained by horse sickness), had sailed for
South Africa. This was Lord Wolseley's task, and it was promptly and
efficiently performed. The War Office was not inefficient; but the
refusal to mobilise in June had thrown the whole scheme of the
offensive and defensive campaign out of gear.

[Sidenote: General Buller.]

With the evidence of the War Commission before us, it is impossible to
divest General Buller of a share of responsibility for the disastrous
conditions under which the war was commenced. He was nominated to the
South African command in June, and he was consulted upon the strength
and composition of the force which was to be employed. On July 7th
Lord Wolseley asked the Government, apart from the immediate
mobilisation of the Army Corps which he still urged, to "consider
whether we should not at a very early date send one Infantry Division
and one Cavalry Brigade--say 10,000 men--to South Africa," adding that
he had "no