BRITAIN'S RESERVES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 258, 28 October 1916, Page 13

BRITAIN'S RESERVES.

1,500.000 COLOURED TROOPS

AVAILABLE.

IPHAT NATIVE RACES COTJIJ> DO FOR THE EMPIRE-

(By SIR H. H. JOHNSTON.)

What are Britain's rceources in fightjj,cr m en outside the white populations United Kingdom, CanaJa, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa? The actual white population of the whole of the British Empire is still under' 60,000,000 in number, even when you include within it the virtually whitd lacea, not speaking the England Unguage, which are under the British ivray in portions of India, in the West Indies, the Mauritius, Malta, Cyprus, end Egypt. On the other hand, King George as Emperor rules over or protects something like 370,000,000 of yellow-okinne I. brown-skinned, and black-skinned men, women and children, and a large proportion of the adult men make excellent eoldiers, whether they come from the Indian Empire, from Africa, the West i Indies, or even North China—for the 1.000 or more well-dTilled Chinese troops that we have raised at Wei-hai-■wei axe a sample of what fighting material might be obtained from No t'u China when it was properly trained. Reduced, however, to practical propositions, we might expect, if we organised things properly, to obtain a million first-class, thoroughly reliable negro ami negroid soldiers from Africa and 500,000 from India. I am glad to note that General Smuts ias already testified with real convi,> ti«T> in his tonee to the excellent quality of the King's African Kifles, whom he h<js found ready to his hand in carrying out the conquest of German East Africa. The King's African Rifles axe, or at any rate were down to a few years ago. recruited from among the Christian. Mohammedan end pagan negroes of all that part of East and East Central Africa which lies between the Zambesi on the Boxrtib and Somalibind on the north.

TftTK SOUDANESE SOLDEER. The Somalis make excellent, intelligent, and brave soldiers, but are not perhaps quite so steady, so doggedly loyal to the British as are the men of pare negro race. There is, in addition. that remarkable recruiting ground the Anglo-Egyptian Soudan.

Bat there » also much fine soldiery among tha Bari and their distant allies.

the Masai of Bast Africa, make firetelass lighting men, of great intelligence and dmntloe bravery. Kven allowing for toe necoery maintenance of law and order not only in the more settled provinces of the Soudan, bat in the recentl «

conquered sultanate of Dtarfur, and all contingencies in Egypt, it ought to be possible to Eend from within the limits of the Anglo-Egyptian Sondan to the max in Europe a contingent of at least 200,000 picked soldiers. The King"s African Rifles, already referred to, are teeruited mainly in Uganda and British East Africa, and in what may be generally termed British Central Africa — sraely, Nysesaland, and the adjoining ixtneid of Northern Rhodesia. The Yao people of Nyassaland (British and Portuguese) have proved over and over again their fighting vahie in British campaigns. They were my toughest opponents in the years between 18S9 and 1896, wherein I strove completely to suppress and extirpate the slave trade of East Central Africa, and to bring lawj and order into the lake regions. But once they were decisively beaten by the aid of Sikh, troops from India, they 'vrned round in that abrupt way ho

characleiis tic of the negro and enlisted in our armies, and proved themselves in .Asbanti, in SomaHand, in Uganda, and East Africa the best and bravest negro soldiers we ever had under our com maud. Anyone w4o was at all known to them, Eke Sir Alfred Sharpe, recently the Governor of Nyaasaland, could recruit promptly 200,000 good fighting men among the Yaos, whom three or four months wonJd train sufficiently for service, say, in Egypt, and six months for service on the battlefields of Europe, in Mesopotamia, or in the Balkan Perjinenla.

Then there is the splendid recnutinj ground of Northern and Southern Nigeria. Here we have the far-famed Hausa soldiery, -whose praises M-e auna with almost wearisome reiteration by British and French officers in connection ■with the thoroughly successful Cameroons campaign. I have met many British officers returning from that cam paign, and not one of them has tired of rendering a tribute to the bravery, the resourcefulness, the loyalty, the discipline of the Hausa troope. But the 80-nu soldiers nowadays are scarcely to be distinguished from their Hausa-spealdng neighbours, and thf Hausa type of Mohammedan negro soldier extends right across from tlie middle Niger to the fa-r interior of the Gold Coast. In the northern territories 01 the Gold Coast and Aehanti we have another fine recruiting ground which might supply.us with 50,000 picked men There are in Southern Nureria itself fighting races that have already provided us with excellent soldiery (chiefly jjoruba and Igara), on whom we might draw for perhaps 100.000 for the purposes of the present war. THE SOTJTK AFRICAN QUESTTON. But what—many of my rea-'ers will feel inclined to exclaim—about the Zulu. the Baauto, the Kaffira, the South African negro generally? It is well known that the black people of South Africa, who number some G. 000.000. would verj willingly march under the banners of the Empire to take part in it<= iifs-and-denth struggle against Germany. It was perhape a po-Hey to be understood and even approved that General ■Botha in putting down the Boer rebellion and in conquering German South-Weal Africa should decline to make use of nerro or negroid troops. Whether or not General Smuts has started on his African campaign with similar ideas it is not worth discuseme, joi he was not long in command before h<; realised the sterling value of the K , Tig's African Rifles under their British oilinere. The German*, of course, arc "Anting us mainly with negro troops, ami we should be idiots indeed if we did not overwhelm them with still larger forces of Africans, especially as the quarrel here is largely the quarrel of the black man against the oppressing white. L*et us brush aside all ridiculous nonsense about involving the coloured man in the white man's quarrels. The quarrel we have with Germany is the lifeand death resistance to the avowed resolve of Germany to dominate the whole of the Old World and not only to oppress the whites therein but to fasten her rule and .her mental nilt.tr..- on the clack aad brown inillkiiia oi Asia and Africa.