HORDES OF NATIVES AT BRITAIN'S CALL.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 November 1916, Page 2

HORDES OF NATIVES AT BRITAIN'S CALL.

ARMY OFFICERS PRAISE MEN AS BRAVE AND DARING IN BATTLE. London, August S. The drain of man power on the population of all the Allies is enormous, though, of course, Great Britain, with her teeming dependencies is not yet feeling the strain like some of her friends. But the wastage grows day by day, France has felt it, especially at Verdun, and of all the Allies, only Russia, with her teeming millions, can look forward to the future with absolute confidence; she, at least, will have an ample supply of men to draw upon ito the end.

The famous explorer, Sir Harry Johnston, computes that there are 1,500,000 native troops from foreign dominions at Britain's command, and demands that this material shall be made use of. The actual white population of the whole of the British Empire is under 00.000,000 in number. On the other hand, King George rules over or protects something like 370,000,000 of yellow skinned, brown skinned, black skinned and neutral skinned men, women and childen, of whom a large proportion of the men would make excellent soldiers. Sir Harry Johnston says:— "I am giad to note that General Smuts lias already testified with real conviction in his tones to the excellent quality of the King's African Rifles, whom" he has found ready to his hand in carrying out. the conquest of German East Africa. The King's African Rifles are, or at any rate were down to a few years aga. recruited from among the Christian, Mohammedan and pagan negroes of all that part of East and East Central Africa which lies between the Zambesi on the south and Somaliland on the north. .....:, . .'.^

MAKE EXCELLENT TROOPS. "The Somalis make excellent, intelligent and brave soldiers, but are not perhaps quite bo steady, so doggedly loyal to the British as are the men of pure negro race. There is, in addition, that remarkable recruiting ground, the Anglo-Egyptian Soudan. "But there is also much fine soldiery among the Bari, and their distant allies, the Masai of East Africa, make firstclass fighting men, of great intelligence and dauntless bravery. Even allowing for the necessary maintenance of law and order, not only in the more settled provinces of the Soudan, but in the recently conquered sultanate of Darfur, and all contingencies in Egypt, it ought to be possible to send from within the limits of the Anglo-Egyptian Soudan to the war in Europe a contingent of at least 200,000 picked soldiers. The King's African Rifles, already referred to, are recruited mainly in Uganda and British East Africa, and in what may be generally termed British Central Africa—namely, Nynsaland and the adjoining districts of northern Rhodesia.

"The Yao people of Nyasaland (Rritish and Portuguese) have proved over and over again their fighting value in British campaigns. They were my toughest opponents in the years between IRS!) and 1800, wherein I strove completely to suppress and extirpate the slave trade of East Central Africa, and to bring law and order into the lake regions. But once they were decisively beaten by the aid of Sikh troops from India, they turned round in that abrupt way so characteristic of th>> negro, and enlisted in our armies, and proved themselves in Ashnnti, in Somaliland, in Uganda and East Africa the best and bravest negro soldiers we ever had under our command.

"Any one who was at all known to them, like Sir Alfred Sharpe, recently the Governor of Nyasaland, could recruit promptly 200,000 good fighting men among the Yncs, whom three or four months would train sufficiently for service, say. in Egypt, and six months for service on the battlefields of Europe, in Mesopotamia, or in the Balkan Peninsula.

PRAISED BY OFFICERS. "Then there is the splendid recruiting ground of northern and southern Nigeria. Here we have the far-famed Hausa soldiery, whose praises are sung with almost wearisome reiteration by British and French officers in cqnnection with the thoroughly successful Camcroons campaign. I. have met many British officers returning from that campaign, and not one of them has tired of tendering a tribute to the bravery, the resourcefulness, the loyalty, the discip line of the Hausa troops. "But the Bomu soldiers nowadays arc scarcely to be distinguished from their Hausa speaking neighbors, and the Hausa type of Mohammedan negro soldier extends right across from the middie Niger to the far interior of the Gold Coast. In the northern territories of the Gold Coast and Ashanti we have anther fine recruiting ground, which might supply us with 50,000 picked men. There are in southern Nigeria itself fighting races that have already provided us with excellent soldiery (chiefly Yoruba and Igara), on whom we might draw for perhaps 100,000 for the purposes of the present war."