Sir Thomas Baker has, we understand, been sent over to Antwerp to take command of that garrison as soon as the depôts can be formed. Thus, about the time that we write, the whole of Sir Evelyn Wood’s force ready to take the field will be available for service elsewhere. From the all-important point of view of facilities for embarkation and provision of shipping, this has been a decided gain. Enormous as are the mercantile resources of England, and patriotic as has been the readiness of all our great companies to place their vessels at the disposal of Government, it has always been assumed that we could not reasonably calculate on moving off from our ports at one moment more than about 35,000 troops, or the force of one _corps d’armée_. To move such a force, with all the carriages, horses, and stores necessary to make the army available for the field, will require 135 large steamers. Warning and provisional arrangements had, we understand, been made, for as many as this, by the transport department of the Admiralty, when the Government first began to apprehend the possibility of our having to employ them, nearly a month ago. But the facilities of the Port of Antwerp have enormously increased our means of transport. By far the larger portion of the shipping of that great port is in the hands of English firms, and the commercial relations between these firms and Germany have enabled the Government to charter, in addition to a large mass of Antwerp shipping, many German ships which have been laid up by the high war rates now ruling for insurance. Thus, virtually without touching our own shipping or the facilities for embarking at our ports, Sir Evelyn Wood’s troops, forming about half of the 2d Corps which he is destined to command at the Seat of War, will be embarked probably before these words see the light. Meantime the troops of the 1st Army Corps have already left our shores. On May 8th the Duke of Connaught, who is to command the 1st Army Corps, sailed with the Headquarter Staff of that Corps and the 2d Battalion Scots Guards from the Royal Albert Docks, North Woolwich, in his old ship, the _Orient_, which had been recently docked. His Royal Highness had asked that, if it were equally convenient, he might travel with the captain and in the ship in which he had sailed for Egypt in 1882. It was a point of _punctilio_ with the captain to clear out at exactly the same hour as in 1882; and accordingly, at twelve o’clock on May 8th, amid the cheers of a vast crowd, the _Orient_ sailed from Woolwich as in 1882, just five days after the issue of the order calling in the Reserve men. The other portions of the Corps have sailed within the last week. So far all speaks well for the efficient working of our system, but from our different correspondents at the points where mobilisation has been taking place, we hear of not a few blots which mar the harmony of the picture.