Lords, February 27th, 1906. The irregulars _raised_ in South
Africa were between 50,000 and 60,000, according to the _War
Commission Report_.]

[Sidenote: Auxiliary forces utilised.]

It was mainly from the auxiliary forces and the colonial contingents,
and not from the regular army, that the reinforcements were supplied
which repaired the critical losses of the defensive campaign, and
enabled the new striking force to be organised. Nor can it be said
that the British Government failed to do all that was possible to
retrieve its original error, when once the defeats inflicted by the
Boer forces had awakened it to a knowledge of the real situation in
South Africa. In his despatch of February 6th, 1900, Lord Roberts was
able to report that, on January 31st, there was an effective fighting
force of nearly 40,000 men in Natal and another of 60,000 in the Cape
Colony. Mr. Chamberlain put the case for the Government at its highest
in speaking at Birmingham on May 11th, 1900:

"Supposing that twelve months ago any man had said in public that
this country would be able to send out from its own shores and
from its own citizens an army of more than 150,000 men, fully
equipped, and that it would be joined by another force of more
than 30,000 men, voluntarily offered by our self-governing
colonies ... if he had said that this army, together numbering
200,000 men, or thereabouts, could have been provided with the
best commissariat, with the most admirable medical appliances and
stores that had ever accompanied an army--if he could have said
that at the same time there would have remained behind in this
country something like half a million of men, who although they
may not be equal man to man to the regulars and best-drilled
armies, are nevertheless capable of bearing arms to some
purpose--if he had said all this, he would have been laughed to
scorn."

Moreover, the army was successful. The work which it was required to
do was done. In order to realise the merit of its success two
circumstances must be borne in mind: first, the enormous area of South
Africa, and, second, the fact that practically the whole of this area,
if we except the few considerable towns, was not only ill-provided
with means of communication and food supplies, but inhabited by a
population which was openly hostile, or, what was worse, secretly
disaffected. Lor