[Footnote 13: The experiences of a particular battery, Royal Field artillery, afford an illustration of the consequences detailed above. From this battery, by the end of November, 1899, there had been drafted off to staff, service batteries, ammunition columns, or excess numbers, the captain, the senior subaltern (the only one who had had four months' service in field artillery), five sergeants, one corporal, one bombardier, four shoeing smiths, two trumpeters, the wheeler, six gunners and five drivers. In December, 1899, the battery commander, with the whole of one sub-division, was taken away as the nucleus of a new battery to be formed. Ten days after this the mobilisation of the battery was ordered. Rather more than 50 per cent. of the battery when mobilised were men of Section D. of the Reserve, of whom about half had seen the gun which they were to work, while none had seen it fired.] [Footnote 14: Statement of the Mobilisation sub-division.] [Footnote 15: The effect of this, as regards the cavalry, was that some 2,000 reservists, over and above immediate requirements, were prematurely placed at the disposal of the department.] [Sidenote: Mr. Stanhope's two corps exceeded.] There was little breathing time between the successive embarkations of the mobilised divisions from the commencement on 20th October, 1899, to the completion on 18th April, 1900, with the result that in the space of six months more than the equivalent of the two army corps and the cavalry division, laid down in Mr. Stanhope's memorandum as that which we should be prepared to send abroad in case of necessity, had left our shores. By the despatch of these troops, followed by later demands for reinforcements, our organised field army was practically exhausted, and home defence, "the primary duty" of the whole army, was enfeebled to a dangerous degree. In place of the army corps, "partly composed of regulars and partly of Militia," required by the memorandum, there remained for home service a few regular troops, some hastily formed "Reserve Battalions," and such of the embodied Militia, the Yeomanry, and the Volunteers, as had not already gone abroad--all being for the most part unorganised, partially trained, and not fully equipped. [Sidenote: Demand exceeds supply of units.]