It was not until about two years later that, in the publication of evidence given before the commission appointed to inquire into the conduct of the South African war, the opinion of Lord Kitchener on the utility of motor transport in its then state of development was made public. His views were expressed as follows:
“We had (in South Africa) about forty-five steam road transport trains. As a rule they did useful work, but questions of weather, roads, water and coal distinctly limited their employment as compared with animal transport, to which they can only be regarded as supplementary. The motor lorries sent to South Africa did well. Thornycrofts are the best. They will in the future be found superior to steam road trains as field transport.”
From this it will be seen that the main result of South African experience was to indicate the superiority of the comparatively light self-contained motor vehicle over the heavy traction engine.
In 1903, a considerable number of cars and cycles supplied by members of the Motor Volunteer Corps were used in the British manoeuvres. The cars employed numbered forty-three, and averaged about 12 h.p. They were used mainly for staff work, and were very fairly effective. The attempts to use them for the carriage of searchlights were not very successful. Some thirty motor cycles were employed for carrying despatches, and behaved on the whole splendidly. Mr. J. F. Ochs, in describing, during a lecture at the Royal Automobile Club, the results obtained, made a somewhat prophetic statement in his remark that, “If Mr. Marconi could perfect his invention, how useful a car fitted with it would be.”
While the undoubted utility of motors for staff work and for scouting was recognised at least as a certainty of the future, progress in comparatively heavy military transport was for some years after this limited. The military authorities were averse to the use of petrol-driven cars, on account of the supposed danger of employing so inflammable a fuel. Efforts were made to use paraffin, but results were not particularly satisfactory. The Mechanical Transport Companies at Aldershot went on experimenting with and developing the use of steam vehicles, and particularly of steam tractors, which came to be regarded as, on the whole, more suitable for rough work than self-contained lorries. By 1906, the mechanical transport sections were in possession of adequate tractor-drawn workshops, to support the varied fleet of mechanical vehicles available for a variety of purposes, as well as the staff cars, a limited number of which had been purchased by the War Department.