THE COLONIES AND THE TRANSPORTS
In matters accessory to the War in South Africa, two stand
conspicuous, as worthy of note by such as interest themselves in
clearly comprehending those contemporary facts of which the import is
not merely local, but universal. As in all theatres of war, and in all
campaigns, there exist in South Africa particular conditions,
permanent or transient, to utilise or to overcome which introduces
into the character of the forces employed, and into their operations,
specific variations, distinguishing them from methods elsewhere
preferable. Such differences, however, being accidental in character,
involve questions strictly of detail--of application--and do not
affect the principles which are common to warfare everywhere. To the
casual reader, therefore, they are less important to master and
{p.072} to retain in mind, however necessary to be observed, in order
to apprehend the relative advantages and disadvantages of the parties
to the conflict, and so to appreciate the skill or the defects shown
by either in the various circumstances that arise.
In South Africa such specific differences are to be found, not only in
the features of the country, which are more than usually exceptional,
or in the contrast of characteristics between the two races engaged,
which from the military point of view is very marked, but notably in
the uncertainties and impediments attending the lines of communication
by which the British army must be sustained nearly a thousand miles
from the sea. These embarrassments are manifest in the great length
and small capacity of the single-track railroad--750 miles to
Bloemfontein and over 1,000 to Pretoria; in the difficulty and
slowness of transport by all other means; in the problems of water,
and of pasturage, as affected by the wet and dry seasons; in the
effect of all these upon mobility, and in the influence on questions
of transport, and of all mobile services, exercised by {p.073} the
regional sickness that rapidly destroys the greater part of
non-acclimated horses.
Communications dominate war; to protect long lines of communication
from serious interference by raids demands an ample mobile force.
These are general principles of warfare, universally applicable. The
questions of water, pasturage, and horse sickness are special to South
Africa, as is also in some degree the inadequate railway system; and
these constitute conditions which modify the local application of
general principles. Two factors, however, have appeared in this war
which, while they characterise it especially, are gravely significant
to those who would fain seek in current events instruction for the
future, whether of warning or of encouragement. These are the almost
complete failure of the British Government and people to recognise at
the beginning the bigness of the task before them; and, in the second
place, the enthusiasm and practical unanimity with which not South
Africa only but the other and distant British colonies offered their
services {p.074} to the mother country. The philosophical reflector
can scarcely fail to be impressed with this latter political fact; for
it has illustrated vividly the general truth that, when once men's
minds are prepared, a simple unforeseen incident converts what has
seemed an academic theory, or an idle dream, into a concrete and most
pregnant fact.
The naval battle of Manila Bay will to the future appear one of the
decisive events of history, for there the visions of the few, which
had quickened unconsciously the conceptions of the many, materialised
as suddenly as unexpectedly into an actuality that could be neither
obviated nor undone. What Dewey's victory was to the over-sea
expansion of the United States, what the bombardment of Fort Sumter in
1861 was to the sentiment of Union in the Northern States, that Paul
Kruger's ultimatum, summarizing in itself the antecedent
disintegrating course of the Afrikander Bond, was to Imperial
Federation. A fruitful idea, which the unbeliever had thought to bury
under scoffs, had taken root in the convictions of men, and passed as
by a bound into vigorous life--perfect, if not yet {p.075} mature. In
these months of war, a common devotion, a common service, a common
achievement, will have constituted a bond of common memories and
recognised community of ideals and interests. To a political entity
these are as a living spirit, which, when it exists, can well await
the slow growth of formal organisation, and of compact, that are but
the body, the material framework, of political life.
It is evident enough that the Transvaal War was the occasion, not the
cause, of the manifested unity of purpose which resulted in immediate
common action between communities so far apart, geographically, as the
British Islands, Canada and Australasia. As early as July 11 the
Governor of Queensland had telegraphed that in case of hostilities the
colony would offer two hundred and fifty mounted infantry, and on
September 29 the Governor of New Zealand sent a message of like tenor.
Before the Boer ultimatum was issued, Western Australia and Tasmania
had volunteered contingents. The other colonies rapidly followed these
examples. There were, indeed, here and there manifestations of
{p.076} dissent, but they turned mainly upon questions of
constitutional interpretation and propriety, and even as such received
comparatively little attention in the overwhelming majority of popular
sentiment.
The attitude of the Imperial Government throughout was strictly and
even scrupulously correct. The action of the colonies was left to be
purely voluntary, the aid accepted from them being freely proffered,
and the expenses of equipment and transportation by themselves voted.
Not till the landing of the colonial troops in Africa were they taken
into pay as an integral part of the Imperial forces, to which they
were assimilated also as regards support in the field, and in matters
of pension for wounds and other compassionate allowances.
The rapidity which characterised the movements on the part of the
various colonies affords the most convincing proof, not only of the
cordial readiness of their co-operation, but of the antecedent
attitude of thoughtful sentiment toward the home country and the
interests of the Empire, which is a far more important matter than the
relatively scanty numbers {p.077} of men sent. Imperial Federation is
a most momentous fact in the world's history, but in material results
it concerns the future rather than the present.
On the 9th of October the Boer ultimatum was issued. On the 23rd the
contingent from British Columbia left Vancouver, to cross the
continent to Quebec, where the Canadian force was to assemble; and
from that port, on the 30th of the same month, the "Sardinian," of the
Canadian line, sailed with 1,049 officers and men. The New Zealanders
and part of those from New South Wales had already started, and by the
5th of November there was left in Australia but one small steamer's
load, of less than one hundred men with their horses, which was not
already at sea speeding for Cape Town. To what was known officially as
the First Colonial Contingent the Australasian colonies contributed
1,491 officers and men.
It is impossible to an American reading these facts not to recall that
there was a day when troops, from what were then North American
colonies, fought for Great Britain in the trenches at Havana, and
before Louisburg in {p.078} Cape Breton, as well as in the more
celebrated campaigns on the lines of Lake Champlain and the St.
Lawrence. But--and herein is the contrast between past and present
that makes the latter so vitally interesting--neither mother country
nor colonies had then aroused to consciousness of world-wide
conditions, for which indeed the time was not yet ripe, but by which
alone immediate and purely local considerations can be seen in their
true proportions, and allowed proper relative weight. From those old
wars the mother country expected but an addition to her colonial
system, to be utilised for her own advantage; the colonists, outside
the love of adventure inherent in their blood, were moved almost
wholly by the jealousies and dangers of the immediate situation, as
the South African colonists have in part been in the present instance.
American concern naturally, inevitably as things then were, did not
travel outside the range of American interests, American
opportunities, American dangers, while the British Government regarded
its colonies as all mother countries in those days did. Consequently,
when the wills of {p.079} the one and the other clashed, there was no
common unifying motive, no lofty sentiment--such as that of national
Union was in 1861 to those who experienced it--to assert supremacy, to
induce conciliation, by subordinating immediate interest and
conviction of rights to its own superior claim.
After making due allowance for mere racial sympathy, which in the
present contest has had even in the neutral United States so large a
share in determining individual sympathies, the claim of an English
newspaper is approximately correct, that the universal action of the
colonies, where volunteering far exceeded the numbers first sent,
"indicates what is the opinion of bodies of free men, widely separated
by social and geographical conditions, concerning the justice and
necessity of the quarrel in which we are now engaged." But this takes
too little account of the much more important political fact that cold
opinion was quickened to hot action by the sentiment of the unity of
the Empire, an ideal which under different conditions may well take to
Imperial Federation the place that the Union occupied in American
hearts {p.080} and minds in 1861. Alike in breadth of view and in
force of sentiment, nothing exceeds the power of such an ideal to lift
men above narrow self-interest to the strenuous self-devotion demanded
by great emergencies. Should this be so in the present case, and
increase, Imperial Federation and the expansion of the United States
are facts, which, whether taken singly or in correlation, are
secondary in importance to nothing contemporaneous.
Nowhere was the failure of the British Government to comprehend the
largeness, at once of the current struggle and of its Imperial
opportunities, more evident than in the wording of its momentary
rejection of the second proffered help from the self-governing
colonies. To the offer of the Canadian Government on November 3, the
British Ministry on the 8th replied that circumstances then were such
that the necessity of a second contingent was not apparent. It may be
that, to quote again a contemporary utterance, "It has been decided
that the forces so contributed shall rather serve to assert a
principle than to constitute a serious burden on {p.081} the
colonies"; and it is doubtless more judicious to accept less, and
charily, of a too eager giver than to overtask his benevolence.
Nevertheless, a more guarded and contingent refusal would have shown
better appreciation of current conditions, and of the Imperial
possibilities involved in the continued and increased participation of
the colonies in an Imperial war.
In order not to revert again to the matter of colonial participation,
it may be well to state here that the reverse of Methuen at
Magersfontein, on December 11, occasioned a casual suggestion in the
London _Times_ of the 14th that "the colonies, whose forces are
especially suited for the exigencies of the present struggle, have
already offered in some instances to increase the strength of their
contingents ... and should now be invited to do so." Official
invitation was not awaited. The colonies took the initiative by asking
if reinforcements would be acceptable, and upon an affirmative reply
the additional troops and sums required received the votes of men of
all parties; Buller's first repulse at Colenso, and the news of
Roberts' appointment to the chief {p.082} command in South Africa,
contributing simultaneously to harden determination and to swell
enthusiasm. Whatever may be thought of the judgment of the Ministry in
the first refusal, which but reflected the slowness with which both it
and the nation it represented aroused to the magnitude of their task,
there can be little doubt that the general outcome was favourable
beyond all antecedent probability to nurturing the growth of the
Imperial sentiment. In the second effort Canada sent 1,969 officers
and men, Australasia 1,843. From the number of horses accompanying
them it is evident that these were chiefly, if not all, mounted
troops; the kind especially needed for the seat of war.
The figures given yield a grand total of 6,352 sent from the Canadian
and Australasian colonies in the more formal organization. To these
are to be added from New Zealand and Australia some 2,700 irregular
horse, raised from among the men who live there in the open, not
previously enrolled, and corresponding in general characteristics to
the Rough Riders of our recent war in Cuba. India also sent a
contingent of 2,437 men and officers. {p.083} Up to this moment of
writing, no certain account of the number of colonial troops furnished
by the South African colonies has been accessible to me. Speaking in
public recently, Mr. Chamberlain has said that more than 30,000 men
had been offered by the self-governing colonies. Early in December it
was estimated that, including the forces in Kimberley, Mafeking, and
Rhodesia, Cape Colony had already 10,000 in service. In February, an
official, but incomplete, and therefore a minimum, list attributed
7,158 at that time to Natal. Combining these various statements, and
reckoning at 12,000 the contingents from the other self-governing
colonies (excluding India), at the time of Chamberlain's speech (May
11), it seems probable that British South Africa put into the field
from 20,000 to 25,000 men. This conclusion agrees substantially with
one furnished to the author from an independent source, using other
data.
In its entirety, the contribution of some 12,000 troops--more or
less[5]--from the greater remote {p.084} dependencies does not indeed
loom very large alongside the truly gigantic figure of 166,277
officers and men, who, between the 20th of October and the 31st of
March, were despatched for South Africa from the ports of the United
Kingdom; in which number are not included those drawn from India and
from England prior to the earlier date, and who constituted the bulk
of the force shut up in Ladysmith under Sir George White. But the
practical importance of a common sentiment--of a great moral fact--is
not to be measured by figures only. The idea of Imperial Federation
justifies itself to the intelligence as well as to the imagination,
resting upon the solid foundation of common interests as well as of
common traditions.
[Footnote 5: More have sailed since the above
information, but exact figures are wanting to the
author.]
In the adjustment of relative importance in men's intellects--which
must precede any useful adjustment of mutual relations, benefits and
responsibilities, by former political agreement--the colonies on the
one hand will have to recognize the immensely greater burden, as
indicated by the above figures and by the size of the fleet, borne by
the United Kingdom. The latter on its part must acknowledge, as
{p.085} in practice she has done, not merely the right of the colonies
to their local administration and self-government, but also the
indispensable contribution to the mutual interests of all parts in the
Federation, that results from local naval bases of operations in many
decisive parts of the world, resting everywhere upon the one sure
foundation for such bases--an enthusiastically loyal, self-dependent,
and military population. Military power, in analysis, consists
principally of two factors--force and position--and if the greater
wealth and population of the home country causes it to exceed in the
former, the dispersion and character of the dependencies contribute
decisively to the latter.
The transportation of the above immense body of soldiers, with all the
equipment and supplies of war needed for a protracted campaign a
distance of 6,000 miles[6] by sea, is an incident unprecedented, and
in its success unsurpassed, in military history. The nature of the
war, it is true, removed from the undertaking all {p.086} military or
naval risk; there was in it nothing corresponding to the anxious
solicitude imposed upon the British generals, by the length of their
thin railroad line and its exposure in numerous critical points to a
mobile enemy. But as a triumph of organisation--of method, of system,
and of sedulous competent attention to details--the performance has
reflected the utmost credit not only upon the Admiralty, to which,
contrary to the rule of the United States, this matter is intrusted,
and which is ultimately responsible both for the general system in
force and for the results, but also upon the Director of Transports,
Rear-Admiral Bouverie Clark, to whose tenure of this office has fallen
the weighty care of immediate supervision. To success in so great an
undertaking are needed both a good antecedent system and a good
administrator; for administration under such exceptional conditions,
precipitated also at the end by the rapid development of events, means
not merely the steady running of a well-adjusted and well-oiled
machine, but continual adaptation--flexibility and readiness as well
as precision, the spirit as well as the letter. When a particular
{p.087} process has had so large a share in the general conduct of a
war, a broad account of its greater details is indispensable to a
complete history of the operations.
[Footnote 6: The distance from Southampton, the
chief though not the only port of departure, to
Cape Town is 5,978 miles.]
The number and varied distribution, in place and in climate, of the
colonial or foreign posts occupied by the British army at the present
time, and the extensive character of its operations abroad, during war
and peace, for two centuries have occasioned a gradual elaboration of
regulation in the transport system, to which, by the necessity of
frequent changes of troops, are added an extent and a continuity of
practical experience that has no parallel in other nations. These have
vastly facilitated the unprecedented development demanded by the
present war. A leaven of experimental familiarity, by previous
personal contact with the various problems to be solved, suffices to
permeate the very large lump of crude helplessness that may be
unavoidably thrown upon the hands of regimental officers; and even
where such personal experience has been wholly wanting to a particular
ship's company, the minuteness of the regulations, if intelligently
followed, gives {p.088} a direction and precision to action, which
will quickly result in the order and convenience essential to the
crowded life afloat. Nowhere more than on board ship does man live
ever face to face with the necessity of order and system, for there
always the most has to be disposed in the least space.
When a ship is engaged for the government service wholly--but not
otherwise--she is known officially as a "transport"; when passage for
troops is taken, but the ship is not entirely at the government's
disposal, she is a "troop freight ship." In the former capacity, to
adapt her to her new employment, she passes under the charge of
designated naval officers for particular fitting; the time for which,
in this war's practice, has not exceeded two weeks for infantry or
four for cavalry transports. Upon preparation completed ensues an
immediate inspection by a mixed board of army, navy, and medical
officers before the ship proceeds to the place for embarkation. The
aim necessarily is to keep this process well in advance of the
mobilisation of the troops, and incites to beneficial rivalry the War
{p.089} Office and the Admiralty, between which there must be full
mutual understanding and prevision, as to the readiness of the
transports, the ports of assembly, the numbers and quantities of men,
of horses, and of material of all kinds, to be carried in each vessel.
When an embarkation is to take place, the position and arrangement of
the ships at the docks, the number and regiments of men assigned to
each are arranged, have been arranged, often many days before. The
system and manner are laid down by regulation, from the time the
detachment leaves the post where it has been stationed until the ship
is ready to cast off from the dock and go to sea. Each man takes with
him in the car, from the starting point, his sea kit and immediate
personal equipment, from which he is not permitted to part until it is
handed aboard for stowage in the precise place assigned to it in the
vessel. The muskets, when carried by the men on the journey, are
marked each with a label corresponding to the rack where it is to
stand in the ship. Upon arrival at the port, {p.090} and during the
operation of transferring, a naval officer is in charge so far as
general direction on the dock and on board the ship is concerned, but
without superseding the military ordering and management of the troops
by their own officers. The same general arrangement continues at sea.
That is, the discipline, routine, and supervision of the troops are in
the hands of the military officers, as though in a garrison; but they
can give no orders as to the management or movements of the ship to
the sea captain who commands her. On board, the mode of life is fixed
by regulation--subject, of course, to the changes and interruptions
inseparable from sea conditions. The hours for rising, for meals, for
drills, for bed, and all the usual incidents of the common day are
strictly prescribed.
With such forethought and method, ripened by long experience, results
were obtained differing greatly from the headless scene of confusion
attending the embarkation of our troops at Tampa, as described by
witnesses. Only experience can fully meet the difficulties of a great
operation of this character, and we were {p.091} without experience;
nor can experience like that of British officials ever be expected
among us, for neither we nor any other nation has or will have the
colonial responsibilities of Great Britain. The large number of
seasoned sergeants and corporals, who had embarked and disembarked
half a dozen times before, contributed immeasurably to the order and
rapidity of the process in each shipload that went to make up the
166,000 that left England for South Africa. But while so much falls
naturally to the military element, and can best be discharged by them,
because by their own self-helpfulness alone it can be carried out, the
choice and equipment of ships, the entire preparation and internal
arrangement of them as well as the direction of their movements,
coaling, etc., belong most fitly to the Navy, for the simple reason
that equipment and supervision of this character are merely a special
phase of the general question of naval administration and management;
and no specialty--in whatsoever profession--is so successfully
practised as by a man who has a broad underlying knowledge of, and
wide acquaintance with, {p.092} the profession in its general aspect.
To this unimpeachable generalization the settled practice of the
nation, whose experience in this matter transcends that of all others
combined, gives incontrovertible support.
A brief detail of the methods of the first departure, October 20,
1899, will facilitate comprehension and serve for all others. That day
four transports lay at Southampton Docks, to take on board
Major-General Hildyard, with the first brigade of the first division
of the army to be commanded by Sir Redvers Buller. The trains ran down
to the wharf near the ships, the troops remaining in them until the
usual officers, alighting, had placed the markers to indicate the
positions for each company. At the signal the companies fell in; the
regiments in quarter column. The companies then advanced successively,
forming in line abreast their ship, between two gangways--one forward
and one aft--along each of which was stretched a chain of men, who
thus sent on board, one set the rifles, the other the sea kits and
valises, which, passing from hand to {p.093} hand, reached certainly
and without confusion the spot where their owner knew to seek them.
The company then moved off, clearing the ground for its successor, and
was next divided into messes; which done, each mess, under charge of
its own non-commissioned officer, went on board by a third gangway, to
the living or "troop" deck. This unceasing graduated progress
completed its results for the first ship by 2 P.M., when she cast off
her lines and steamed out. The three others were then nearly ready,
but were delayed a short space to receive a visit and inspection from
the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, with a number of the distinguished
higher staff-officers. Thus five thousand troops, who had slept inland
the previous night, were before dark at sea on their way to South
Africa.
The same scene was repeated on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday
following. By the latter evening--October 23--21,672 men had sailed,
the order for mobilisation having been issued just a fortnight before.
Of this number more than half were of the Army Reserve; men, that is,
who had served their {p.094} time, gone into civil life, and now
rejoined the colours.
The specific methods are sufficiently illustrated by the above, but it
may be interesting to note the numbers sent in each succeeding month,
for they show, on the one hand, the continuousness and magnitude of
the operation, viewed as a whole, and also, incidentally, the December
return indicates the slackening of the current, due to the unwarranted
confidence of the people and of the government in the sufficiency of
their preparations, and their underestimate of the difficulties before
them. We in the United States during the Civil War more than once made
a like mistake, discontinuing enlistments and discouraging
volunteering.
In October, from the various ports of the United Kingdom, were
despatched 28,763 officers and men; in November, 29,174; in December,
19,763; in January, 27,854. In the short month of February the spur of
the December disasters began to show its results, for then the figures
rose to 33,591; in March, with which month my information ends, 27,348
went out. The grand total, 166,277, may in its {p.095} effects be
summarized by saying that from October 20 to March 31, 162 days, an
average of over one thousand men sailed daily from Great Britain or
Ireland for the seat of war.
Some illustrations of the capacity of great ocean steamers for such
service may also be interesting. Thus the "Cymric" carried a brigade
division of artillery, 18 guns, 36 wagons, 351 officers and men, 430
horses, with all the ammunition and impedimenta, besides a battalion
of infantry; in all nearly 1,600 men. Another, the "Kildonan Castle,"
took on an average 2,700 officers and men, on each of three voyages.
The greatest number in any one trip was by the "Bavarian"--2,893.
In effect, although embarkation was not wholly confined to the great
shipping ports, the vast majority of the vessels sailed from
Southampton, the Thames, and the Mersey. At each of these was
stationed a captain on the active list of the Navy, representing the
Director of Transports at the Admiralty, and having under him a
numerous staff of sea officers, engineers and clerks, by whom the
work {p.096} of equipment, inspecting, and despatching was
supervised. After sailing, the vigilant eye of the Transport
Department still followed them by further provision of local officials
at foreign and colonial ports, and by the network of submarine
telegraphs which has so singularly modified and centralised the
operations of modern war. At Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, and at
St. Vincent in the Cape de Verde, the intermediate coaling ports, a
ship of war was kept always after October, the captains of which
watched over the transports, cabling arrivals and departures, deciding
questions of coal requirement, repairs, delays, and generally, no
doubt, discharging the function noted by the midshipman, who explained
that he must be going because he saw the first lieutenant's glass was
turned his way.
At Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and Durban were other local
representatives--naval captains with staffs similar to those of the
home ports--so that, to use a phrase of the Director of Transports,
the ships were "well shepherded." It was, in fact, much the position
of a man who with ten fingers manipulates {p.097} the several keys of
a piano. If the end crowns the work it may be said, although the end
is not quite yet, that the work of transportation has been crowned. No
loss of human life by preventable cause has occurred, nor has
complaint been heard of serious hitch of any kind. The numbers speak
for themselves.
The carriage of animals necessary for an army of the numbers
transported would in any case be a weighty and troublesome task, but
it has been rendered doubly so by the scanty resources of the scenes
of war, by the terrible horse-sickness, and by the length of the
voyage, which enfeebles the animals in a proportion ever increasing
with the passage of the days. The evil becomes yet greater from the
pressing needs at the front, and the importunate urgency to hasten the
animals forward, over a railroad journey of hundreds of miles, without
first giving them time to regain the fulness of their strength.
The importance and embarrassing nature of this factor in the campaign
are hard to overestimate. The insufficient number of horses and their
debility have doubtless accounted {p.098} for much of the delay and
seeming languor of action, which has appeared otherwise inexplicable;
the utter weakness of the poor beasts having indeed been expressly
alleged as the reason for failure of cavalry or of artillery in more
than one critical moment. That the supply forwarded has been large, if
nevertheless falling short of the demand, is shown by the transport
figures, according to which, in round numbers, 50,000 horses and
39,000 mules had been shipped by the end of March. Half of the former,
and the greater part of the latter, were drawn from North and South
America, from Australia, and from the Mediterranean. To these figures
is to be added another, yet uncertain because future, but which, when
ascertained, will probably double the number of horses and mules
actually used in the war, raising it, including those obtained in
South Africa itself, to nearly 200,000. The monthly waste has been
roughly reckoned at 5,000.
The size and multiplicity of these various operations enforce the
homely, but always to be remembered, maxim that "War is business," and
that in all its aspects; business in {p.099} which, like every other,
the aim must be the best results with the least expenditure--of money,
of labour, and of life. An intermediate difficulty in the problem of
getting men, horses, and supplies from England to the front of
operations, and one which probably would not antecedently occur to a
person inexperienced in such transactions, was the inadequate
facilities at Cape Town itself, as well as of the railroads, for
handling the mass of freight, animate and inanimate, unexpectedly
thrust upon them. A third-class port cannot be suddenly raised to the
business of one of the first class, and be found either competent or
convenient. Consequently, the congestion at the docks, wharves, and
railroads was very great. Many ships were kept waiting two months, or
even more, for discharge; a fact which means not merely expense,
though that is bad enough, but delay in operations, which in turn may
be the loss of opportunity--and the equivalent of this again is
prolongation of war, loss of life, and other miseries.
The practical lesson of this embarrassment at Cape Town should not be
lost to those who {p.100} assume too lightly that the traffic of the
Suez Canal can in time of war be turned to the Cape route. The
question of necessity for coaling at Cape Town, and the facilities for
it should at least be exhaustively studied before accepting this
solution as final, or even probable. It is evident that, for the
operations of this war, the use of Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, and
East London, although they have no docks at which steamers can lie and
discharge, would to some extent relieve Cape Town; but that such
relief should be effective at the front, it was necessary also that
the railroads from them should be securely held up to their junctions
with the main line. This was not the case at first.
It may be added, for the benefit of American readers, that this
question of local congestion, and of consequent dislocation and delay
of traffic and of transport, is worthy of consideration by those among
us who may think that the interruption of our coasting trade, or the
blockade of one or two principal harbours, can be met by transferring
the business, of the former to the railroads, of the {p.101} latter
to other ports not blockaded. This is not so, because the local
conveniences and methods, which have developed under the sifting tests
of experience and actual use, cannot be transferred at short notice;
and until such transfer has been made, distribution cannot proceed.
The body economic and commercial will be in the state of the body
physical whose liver is congested, whose blood therefore circulates
poorly, with consequent imperfect nutrition and general disorder of
the system; much where little ought to be, and little where much.