trains, ammunition columns, supply and transport trains are organised, field hospitals equipped, bearer corps brought up to war strength, provisions for the troops and forage for the horses collected at convenient places along the lines of railway and at the final point of concentration, and arrangements made for the billeting and sheltering of men and beasts both at that point and at the towns where halts are likely to occur; whilst immense quantities of locomotive engines and rolling stock of every kind are brought together at the stations where regiments and corps are ordered to entrain.
Lord Roberts believes that, under cover of the General Autumn Manoeuvres, these preliminary steps can be taken "without any fuss," by which he means, without exciting remark or suspicion; but even the lay reader will have his doubts as to the probability of concealing the object of such
