AFRICA, London, March 16.
In the debate in the House of Commons on the Army Estimates, Mr. R. B. Haldane, Secretary of State for War, justified the retention of the garrison in South Africa, and said that it could not be too clearly understood that what defined the size of the British Army was its garrisons overseas, We preserved at Hongkong, he continued, a garrison which was by no means in excess of the number of regiments required in the event of a rising like that of the Boxers. We no longer kept up a considerable emergency force in Great Britain, the reason being that we had organized the garrison in South Africa as the first reinforcement to go to the theatre of wi Our object in maintaining a garrison in South Africa was, in the first place, for the sake of South Africa; and secondly, to save the cost of keeping up an emergency force in Great Britain—Exclusive Service.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.