The real fact was that the system of recruiting up to 1870 was, and always had been, unpopular. The service was a very hard one. Regiments were kept abroad for upwards of twenty years, often in tropical, unhealthy climates; and of the thousands who enlisted yearly but few ever returned, and even those were often prematurely aged and broken down. It is no wonder that the poor people of the country looked upon enlistment of their sons with dread, and as almost equivalent to a sentence of banishment and of death. So great was the difficulty, that between 1861 and 1869--although the men were then better paid, fed, and clothed than in former years--the average number of recruits obtained was only 12,546 per annum.[84] In 1867 General Peel, the Minister for War, said that 'the question now is whether the British army should be allowed to collapse.' In that year another Royal Commission was appointed to consider the subject, and in their report said: 'The military history of this country, even up to the date of the last great war in which we were engaged, shows that it has been our practice during periods of peace to reduce our military establishments to the lowest possible point.... No preparations for a state of war were thought of; and the consequence has been that, when war occurred, everything had to be done in a hurry at the most lavish expense.... Men were enrolled and sent half-trained into the field, material manufactured, transport provided, and accommodation for the sick and wounded devised and organised.' They went on to say that 'wars will be sudden in their commencement and short in their duration, and woe to that country which is unprepared to defend itself.' The above remarks will probably be sufficient to demonstrate the difficulty which the country had experienced over and over again, not only in maintaining its forces in the field during a campaign, but even in providing sufficient numbers for our garrisons at home and abroad in time of peace. But whatever may have been the merits or shortcomings of the arrangements up to 1870, one point, at all events, was perfectly clear--that the army had no reserve. One or two feeble efforts in that direction had been made, but had failed. When a great war came upon us, the only resource was to try and stimulate recruiting by lowering the physical standard and by raising the bounties, so that often the campaign was over before the desired numbers had been obtained.[85]