England, happily, has been spared any life and death contest, any war on the gigantic scale of the foregoing. But while her neighbours have been at each other’s throats, she has been engaged in numerous “little wars”--wars misnamed little, indeed, for the issues have often been immense and the efforts made most severe. In an empire so extensive as ours, causes of conflict abound, and fighting must be frequent. Since the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny, we have had at least half a dozen campaigns. A diplomatic war with China, a war for supremacy in New Zealand, a war for the deliverance of captives in Abyssinia, of retaliation in Ashanti, of self-defence in Zululand, against a too-powerful neighbour, of aggression followed by “scuttle” in Afghanistan, of interference in Egypt, followed by the dire necessities of occupation. [Illustration: [_Photo: Fradelle & Young, Regent Street._ SIR GARNET (AFTERWARDS VISCOUNT) WOLSELEY.] In many of these the chief work lay in combating the physical and climatic difficulties. There was not much fighting in the march to Magdala, but it was a stupendous undertaking to convey a British army across the “mountains of Rasselas,” to the nearly inaccessible stronghold of King Theodore. When Sir Robert Napier reached his goal, his troops had only four days’ rations left, other than meat, and everything had been carried up from the sea on mule- or donkey-back. In Ashanti there was the same urgency as regards supplies, but as no four-legged animals will live on the Gold Coast, the only means of conveyance was on the heads of native men and women. The organisation of transport was one of the greatest, although not the only difficulty. There was also the climate, which was at times, and in most places, pestilential. There was the absence of all means and appliances, almost of food, and there was the certainty of encountering a brave, if savage, enemy in the field. How well the Ashantis fought was shown by their stubborn stand at Amoaful, and again in front of Coomassie. The most trying phases of the campaign were those anticipatory to the arrival of the white troops. A small and select band of staff-officers, under the then new and little tried General Sir Garnet Wolseley, were sent out to prepare the way, to make roads and bridges, secure native allies, carriers, and last, not least, to hold their own as best they could against the enemy, who was close at hand and threatening the very existence of the Cape Coast Colony. Within five months the whole of the arrangements were completed; two good black regiments had been organised and drilled under Colonels Evelyn Wood and Baker Russell, Rait’s artillery was an effective body, and with these and a few sailors and marines from the fleet, the Ashantis had been driven back to the bush.