as steady as the old battalions composed of men who counted ten to twenty years' service. Of course they were not. They were very sickly, very ill-disciplined, and very far from well-conducted. However, the war was ended, and the power of the Zulus was broken without further serious mishap; and we learned by this experience the lesson that a force of seasoned soldiers must at all times be held ready for what is called the police-work of the Empire. Our last experience of war in South Africa is too recent for me to presume to say much about it, except that in many respects it bore a singular resemblance to the American War of Independence. The operations of the latter war embraced at least eleven hundred miles of coast-line, as the crow flies, and in places penetrated inland as far as a hundred and fifty miles from the sea. Only facilities of water-carriage enabled armies to be moved at all over this vast tract; and it was rare for bodies even of ten thousand men to remain for long united. The theatre of war in South Africa was quite as vast. Our two principal bases of operations were nearly a thousand miles apart--as far, say, as Antwerp is from Lisbon, with the enemy's capital situated at Warsaw. But for the existence of a few railways the conquest of this enormous tract might have taken thirty years, for there are no waterways and the country produces little wheat. As things were, it was accomplished more or less in three; and a force of three to four hundred thousand men was fed with a regularity highly creditable to the officers responsible for that duty. But the expense was terrific; and although it was possible by great exertions to bring up food for the men, there were moments when it was impossible to provide sufficient forage for the animals. Hence the waste of horses in the cavalry and artillery was enormous, for they could not live on the African pasture as did the horses of the enemy. In fact a community with a more or less empty continent at its back can, with good management, prolong resistance for an almost indefinite time; for the chances are that the invader will be more quickly exhausted than the invaded, while the former is always subject to troubles and diversions at home which may weaken him at a critical moment. That is the secret of the power of Russia and of the United States. It is impossible to hurt them seriously, for the further you penetrate into their country the weaker you are. Little countries, such as our own, may be pierced to the heart at the first thrust. Space in fact means time where war is concerned; and time is the most powerful of all allies. The Americans themselves discovered that when they invaded Canada in 1812.