COLONIAL TROOPS IN BRITISH WARS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 173, 16 April 1919, Page 8

COLONIAL TROOPS IN BRITISH WARS

MR. FORTESCUE'S EXAMPLES. The Hon. J. W. Fortescno gave a lecture at the Royal Institution recently rn "The Empire's Share in , England's Wars." Mr. Fortescno began by referring to the pride with which we received the news that the Dominions, each of them of their own free will, had offered a contingent of troops for tho assistance of the Mother Country. Many people thought that this was a unique event in tho history of tho Empire, but this was not so. The first occasion on which the eolonien contributed military aid for an Imperial enterprise wns in Cromwell's Expedition to Jamaica in 1053-4. On that'occasion tho Barbadoes furnished 4000 men. The lecturer explained how it was that, through tho system of white,, apprentices, tiopical islands were in those days' able to furnish a. white militia; The . text instance came in the Carthagena Expedition of 1710, when the American colonies supplied a force of 4000 men. After that the American colonies helped consistently in tho conquest of Canada, until the final victory of Amherst in 1760. During that period the first two American regiments were placed in the British Establishment, and in 1758 were created the "Royal Ame-ricans,".-.which were still with ns as tho King's Royal Rifle Corps. Then tho American colonies were lost, and.everyone, thought that the British Empire had come- to an end. Immediately afterwards followed the war in which our losses in the-West Indies compelled us. to raise a regiment of African negroes, still with us as the West Indian Regiment. _ During the lfllli century the Empire was consolidated. The Canadians helped gallantly to defend their country from American invm-l-m from ISI2 to 181-1. , ho (lane Colonists joined.in the fights against the Kaffirs, aiid the New Zealand rolonisfs in the wars against the Maoris Then came the war in Iv-r.vpt, and for the first time Australia offered a battalion for that service. Then, came tho South African war, when practically all tho colonics sent continents.. And finally in tho present war, not only every part of tho Empire has given us freely of its men, but the descendants of Peninsula veterans in South _ America sent u« their sons, whoso native tongue was Spanish and who knew not a word <2 English, to fight for the old country.