SECRET.
Printed for the use of the Colonial Office. August 1895.
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MAURITIUS.
MAURITIUS.
No. 66.
Defence Scheme revised to January 1895.
Remarks by the Colonial Defence Committee.
(Not for communication to the Colony.)
THE Colonial Defence Committee in their remarks dated the 19th January, 1894, on a Report of the Local Joint Naval and Military Committee at Mauritius, recommended that the signal stations on the island should be placed as formerly in the hands of British soldiers or sailors; that the Governor should be definitely instructed from home to carry out this change, and that the garrison should be correspondingly increased.
No action can be traced on this recommendation, which the Colonial Defence Committee look upon as most important for the reasons given in the remarks referred to above, and for those contained in the latest revision of the Defence Scheme.
2. In their remarks on the same Report the Colonial Defence Committee also repeated their recommendation of the previous year that the garrison of the island should be always maintained at its approved war strength. This recommendation was indorsed by the Joint Naval and Military Committee on Defence.
The Colonial Defence Committee feel justified by the condition of affairs, prominently brought forward in the latest revision of the Defence Scheme and the correspondence attached to it, in again urging most strongly that action should at once be taken in this matter. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the gravity of the situation as explained in Chapter I of the Scheme, describing the strategic conditions of the island.
Coast defence works have been erected which amply guarantee the station against any probable attack from an enemy's war-ships. The topographical conditions of Port Louis are on the whole favourable for defence against a force attacking by land; but with the garrison of about 1,000 men at present in the island it is considered that an effectual resistance could scarcely be offered against the force which the French could bring against it from their stations in the Indian Ocean.
It seems probable that in the future a larger permanent garrison will be maintained in Madagascar than the 2,000 men that occupied Diego Suarez before the present expedition. There are also over 800 troops in Réunion.
In 1810, Mauritius was surrendered by the French, because with a force of [412]
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