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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.

Printed for the use of the Colonial Defence Committee.

SECRET.

No. 431 M.

C.O. No. 20794/10.

III.

EAST AND WEST AFRICAN PROTECTORATES.

Position in the Event of War with a European Power.

Memorandum by the Colonial Defence Committee.

THE Colonial Office have referred to the Colonial Defence Committee the question of the position of British Protectorates in East and West Africa in the event of a war with a European Power having African possessions adjacent to British territory.

2. Attention was drawn to this question by a Report of Captain H. 8. Hemming, late 3rd Battalion East Lancashire Regiment, dated 24th March, 1910, on the German military forces in German East Africa. The Report, together with some notes thereon by the General Staff, is printed as Appendix I to this Memorandum.

3. The question of the functions of the colonial military forces maintained in the British East and West African Protectorates was discussed in 1906, in connection with the establishment of the West African Frontier Force. It was then decided that the strength of the colonial forces should be fixed at the minimum force required to insure the maintenance of internal order and to deal with risings of the native population, and that the question of maintaining them at a strength sufficient to place them on an equality with the colonial military forces maintained by foreign Powers in adjacent territory should be disregarded.

As the stability of British rule increases, the practice has been pari passu to reduce the strength of the military forces maintained in the Protectorates, regardless of the strength of the foreign colonial troops in adjacent foreign territory. Provision has, however, been made in the local Defence Schemes of the several Protectorates for the disposition of the military forces actually available to the best advantage to meet external aggression in the event of war with a European Power.

4. The case of Sierra Leone is, to a limited extent, an exception to this general rule. An Imperial garrison is maintained in that Colony. In paragraph 2 of the Colonial Defence Committee's Memorandum No. 395 M, dated the 14th August, 1907, it was explained that :—

"The raison d'être of the Imperial troops in Sierra Leone is the defence of the coaling station; and the duty of providing a sufficient local force to maintain internal order and even protect the borders from hostile raids in time of war devolves on the local Government. In the case of any great emergency, such as a rising of the natives, that Government is no doubt justified in looking for assistance to the Imperial Government, but it is not justified in counting on the assistance of any particular portion of the Imperial garrison, whose functions are confined to protecting the coaling station. It is with a view to the more effective protection of Freetown that the War Office have authorised the quartering of companies of the West African Regiment at out-stations in the Protectorate. The role of these outlying companies is to act in time of war as a chain of outposts to the coaling station; and in case of an invasion in force to fall back on Freetown, harassing on the way, as opportunities offer, the advance of the enemy through the bush. As part of the garrison of the coaling station, they must not be considered as having any responsibility for the defence of the frontier of the Protectorate, which would be inconsistent with their paramount duty of defending Freetown.”

This exceptional case has therefore no direct bearing upon the question under consideration.

[817]

B

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