The first military necessity of the war was, as has been described, to place the bulk of the Egyptian army at Akasha.  In ordinary circumstances this would not have been a serious commissariat problem.  The frontier reserves of food were calculated to meet such an emergency.  But in 1895 the crops in Egypt had been much below the average.  At the beginning of 1896 there was a great scarcity of grain.  When the order for the advance was issued, the frontier grain stores were nearly exhausted.  The new crops could not be garnered until the end of April.  Thus while the world regarded Egypt as a vast granary, her soldiers were obliged to purchase 4,000 tons of doura and 1,000 tons of barley from India and Russia on which to begin the campaign.

The chief item of a soldier’s diet in most armies is bread.  In several of our wars the health, and consequently the efficiency, of the troops has been impaired by bad bread or by the too frequent substitution of hard biscuit.  For more than a year the army up the river ate 20 tons of flour daily, and it is easy to imagine how bitter amid ordinary circumstances would have been the battle between the commissariat officers, whose duty it was to insist on proper quality, and the contractors—­often, I fear, meriting the epithet ’rascally’—­intent only upon profit.  But in the well-managed Egyptian Service no such difficulties arose.  The War Department had in 1892 converted one of Ismail Pasha’s gun factories near Cairo into a victualling-yard.  Here were set up their own mills for grinding flour, machinery for manufacturing biscuit to the extent of 60,000 rations daily, and even for making soap.  Three great advantages sprang from this wise arrangement.  Firstly, the good quality of the supply was assured.  Complaints about bread and biscuit were practically unknown, and the soap—­ since the soldier, in contrast to the mixture of rubble and grease with which the contractors had formerly furnished him, could actually wash himself and his clothes with it—­was greatly prized.  Secondly, all risk of contractors failing to deliver in time was avoided.  Lastly, the funds resulting from the economy had been utilised to form a useful corps of 150 bakers.  And thus, although the purchase of foreign grain added to the expense, the beginning of the war found the commissariat of the Egyptian Army in a thoroughly efficient state.

Vast reserves of stores were quickly accumulated at Assuan.  From these not an ounce of food was issued without the Sirdar’s direct sanction.  At the subsidiary depot, formed at Wady Halfa, the same rule prevailed.  The man who was responsible to no one took all the responsibility; and the system whereby a Chief of the Staff is subjected to the continual bombardment of heads of departments was happily avoided.  Sufficient supplies having been accumulated at Akasha to allow of a forward movement, Firket was fought.  After Firket the situation became difficult, and the problem of the supply officers was to keep the troops