It was often alleged during the South African War that the Army Staff had made no provision for it, and had given little or no thought to the subject prior to the outbreak of war. I give therefore an extract from my journal: “2nd January 1896.—Worked in the office all day; nothing but work. Prepared a Division and a Brigade of Cavalry on paper.” In the Autumn of 1896 I induced the General Officer commanding in South Africa, by private correspondence, to propose a form of contract for providing Army Transport, and got one of a Firm of contractors to come to the War Office, where we discussed a scheme, the acceptance of which I recommended. The Financial side of the office made many and various objections. I, however, so persistently urged the matter that the Secretary of State consulted the Secretary of State for the Colonies, but I was told no action need be taken. One of the reasons alleged against doing anything to provide for the emergency which arose three years later was that the Boers might hear what we were doing, to which I replied: “That would certainly make for Peace.”
When I failed to get a transport contract, being apprehensive of the immobility of the garrison at Ladysmith, I recommended, in 1897, that a reserve of two months’ food should be maintained constantly at that Station. This was also refused.[321]
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On the 17th of April 1897 I begged the Commander-in-Chief to press for Regimental transport being provided for all units in South Africa, equal to carriage of ammunition, tents, baggage, and two days’ rations, and again urged that the contract I had suggested should be made at once.
At the same time, foreseeing there must be delay in providing horse fittings for transports, about which I had been in constant communication with the Director of Transports, going on several occasions to Liverpool and other ports to look at different vessels, I urged but in vain an immediate expenditure of £25,000 to obviate the delay which, as I foresaw, occurred two years later. Lord Wolseley warmly supported these suggestions for outlay at the present time, in order to save larger sums in the future.
I wrote at the time to the Secretary of State: “No doubt we must fight the Boers unless they become more reasonable.” I asked for £36,000 to replace horses we handed over to the Chartered Company, and for Mounted Infantry, and urged that one company should be mounted in each Battalion in South Africa. I pointed out that we should require six mules for every seven men in the Field.
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I learnt to cycle, which added greatly to my recreation, for after I was fairly proficient I cycled down to Aldershot or into Essex, about the same distance, on Saturday afternoons, returning for an eight o’clock breakfast on the Monday morning. Before I left London in 1901, I had cycled over 2000 miles in twelve months; but did not attain this facility without some adventures. The first, when I was learning, occurred from a collision with a hansom cab-horse, which was moving just out of a trot on the Edgeware Road at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. Without any warning the driver turned his horse suddenly as I passed him at a short distance, and the horse’s head struck my arm so violently, as I put it up to save my face, that the arm was marked by the animal’s teeth, and I was thrown from the centre of the road to the far curbstone, leaving the cycle under the horse’s feet, in the wheel of which they remained imprisoned until we got a blacksmith to cut the spokes away. The driver was greatly relieved when I told him he had better complete the job by driving me home, for, as he admitted, “I thought I had killed you.”
When I was still in the learning stage, going past the Mansion House I collided with the shoulder of an omnibus horse, and the impact sent me under the fore-feet of another, for the busses were moving in two lines; the driver pulled up very smartly, and I escaped without even damaging a new cyclometer, my anxiety for which caused me to pick it up ere I scrambled from my perilous position.
This accident was my own fault, but the following curious one was not contributed to by me in any way. I was going eastwards one evening from Hyde Park Corner, intending to turn up Hamilton Place. The traffic being stopped, I was just moving the pedals, close in to a four-wheeled cab, when a driver of a hansom coming down fast looked over my head; the hansom’s off-wheel, grazing my knee, took the cycle away from underneath me, carrying it seventy yards before the driver could pull up. Strange as it may seem, whereas on being touched I was facing eastwards, the result was to land me on my feet in the road facing westwards. The cabman admitted to the Commissioner of Police it was entirely his fault, and that he, not looking down, failed to see me.