paying tribute and furnishing troops, the officers of which were Carthaginians.
The system by which in the present age the British have soldiers of Indian, Egyptian and other nationalities, drilled and officered by British, grew at Carthage from similar small beginnings till it became practically the only dependable system. A Carthaginian citizen was regarded as too valuable a man to make a ranker of,[1] and the world was searched for the best material that Carthage could purchase. From the Balearic Islands came the best slingers, from Liguria the best infantry, African tribes made ideal light cavalry and the pick of all served in the fleet. When any military operations were in progress the commander-in-chief was invested with supreme command for no fixed term; and invested with almost dictatorial powers. But he was carefully subjected to the civil authority,[2] and always accompanied by a civil commission which had the sole power of making treaties and so forth.
- ↑ The Carthaginians were essentially traders and merchants, and so not physically fitted to be men of war. The government made consistent efforts to induce the citizens to embark upon military service, but failed to do so. The lesson is obvious, and one as clear to-day as then. There was a nominal army of 400,000 Carthaginians, but it was not of the best material, for the reasons stated.
- ↑ In the second war, Hannibal himself was so hampered directly failure began to appear.
As the parliamentary candidate for the Navy in the 1906 General Election, who went to the poll at Portsmouth, avowedly against much of the present British system of civil control at the Admiralty, I cannot but emphasise the vivid proofs of the danger of party control of a national service as evidenced in the tragedy of Carthage and the fall of
