In an interview given on the 3rd of October, a week before the war broke out, Sir Wilfrid denied a report that the Government had already decided to send a contingent, and stated that it could not do so without parliament's consent. On the same day a dispatch was received from Mr Chamberlain expressing thanks for individual offers of service, and stating that four units of one hundred and twenty-five men each would gladly be accepted, to be equipped and sent to Africa at their own or Canada's cost, and thereafter to be maintained by the Imperial Government. {190} Ten days later, three days after the declaration of war, the Government at Ottawa issued an order-in-council providing for a contingent of one thousand men.[2] The decision once made, the Government lost no time in equipping and dispatching the contingent. On the 30th of October the troops sailed from Quebec. A week later the Government offered a second contingent. Already it was becoming clear that there would be no 'Christmas dinner in Pretoria.' Mafeking, Kimberley, and Ladysmith were besieged, and the British were retiring in Natal. Six weeks passed before the British Government accepted. This time the Canadian authorities decided to send a regiment of Mounted Rifles and three batteries of artillery. Later a battalion of infantry was raised to garrison Halifax and thus release the Leinster regiment for the front, {191} while Lord Strathcona provided the funds to send the Strathcona Horse. In the last year of the war five regiments of Mounted Rifles and a Constabulary Force, which saw active service, were recruited. All told, over seven thousand Canadians went to South Africa. The course of the war was followed with intense interest in Canada. Alike in the anxious days of December, the black week of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Tugela, and in the joyful reaction of the relief of Kimberley and Ladysmith and Mafeking and the victory of Paardeberg, Canadians felt themselves a part of the moving scene. Perhaps the part taken by their own small force was seen out of perspective; but with all due discount for the patriotic exaggeration of Canadian newspaper correspondents and for the generosity of Lord Roberts's high-flown praise, the people of Canada believed that they had good reason to feel more than proud of their representatives on the veldts of Africa. After Zand River and Doornkop, Paardeberg and Mafeking, it was plain that the Canadian soldier could hold his own on the field of battle. In the words of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, replying to an attack made by Mr Bourassa: