LETTER XIII
POPLAR GROVE
March 8, 1900.
We left our camp on Modder River at midnight of the 6th. The night was clear and starlit, but without moon. Moving down the river to take up our position in the flank march, we passed battalion after battalion of infantry moving steadily up to carry the position in front. The plan is this. The infantry advance up the river as if to deliver a frontal attack; but meanwhile the mounted troops, which have started during the night, are to make a wide detour to the right and get round at the back of the Boer position, so as to hem them in. The idea sounds a very good one, but our plans were upset by the Boers not waiting to be hemmed in. However, it is certain that if they had waited we should have hemmed them in. You must remember that.
The guns go rumbling past in the darkness. We are on the right of the column. Along our left we can just distinguish a long, black river of figures moving solidly on. It flows without break or gap. Now and then a jar or clank, the snort of a horse, the rattle of chains, rises above the murmur, but underneath all sounds the deep-toned rumbling of the wheels as the English guns go by.
Close in front of us is a squadron of Lancers, their long lances, slender, and black, looking like a fringe of reeds against the fast paling sky, and behind us there is cavalry without end. The morning is beautifully clear with a lovely sunrise, and that early hour, with horses fresh, prancing along with a great force of mounted men, always seems to me one of the best parts of the whole show.
As soon as we can see distinctly we make out that we have got to the south of the enemy's hills, and are marching along their flanks. They look like a group of solid indigo pyramids against the sunrise. Are those kopjes out of range? is a question that suggests itself as we draw alongside, leaving them wide on our port beam. Yes, no! No! a lock of smoke, white as snow, lies suddenly on the dark hillside, followed by fifteen seconds of dead silence. Then comes the hollow boom of the report, and immediately afterwards the first whimper, passing rapidly into an angry roar of the approaching shell, which bursts close alongside the Lancers. "D——d good shot," grunts the next man to me, with sleepy approval, as indeed it is.
The order to extend is given, but before the Lancers can carry it out the smoke curl shows again, and this time the shell comes with a yell of triumph slosh into the thickest group of them, and explodes on the ground. There is a flutter of lances for an instant round the spot, and the head and mane of a shot horse seen through the smoke as it rears up, but the column moves steadily on, taking no notice, only now it inclines a little to the right to get away from that long-range gun.
We march on eastward as day broadens, through a country open and grassy, rising and falling in long slopes to the horizon. Suddenly from the far side of one of these ridges comes the rapid, dull, double-knocking of the Mausers. The enemy are firing at our flankers; these draw back under cover of the slope, and we continue to advance, the firing going on all the time, but passing over our heads. Now the Major, curious as to the enemy's position, sends half-a-dozen of our troop up the slope to get a view. These ride up in open order, and are at once made a mark of by the Boer riflemen, luckily at long range. Wing, wing, with their sharp whirring note, came the bullets. They take a rapid survey and return to tell the Major that the scenery in that direction is exceptionally uninteresting, a long slant of grass stretching up for a mile or more, and somewhere about the sky-line Boers shooting. Then comes the usual interval while we wait for "the guns." The guns shortly arrive and a brace of Maxims. These open a hot fire at the top of the hill. They are rather in front of us, and fire back up the slope across our front; the bullets passing sound like the rushing of wind through grass.
After a bit the order is given to take the hill, and we advance firing as we go. Beyond the guns and Maxims other men are moving up. You notice that the Colonials shoot as sportsmen do. The regulars blaze away all the time, seeing nothing, but shooting on spec at the hill top; load and shoot, load and shoot, as hard as they can. Our fellows have a liking for something to shoot at. With their carbines at the ready, they walk quickly forward as if they were walking up to partridges. Now a man sees a head lifted or the grass wave, and instantly up goes the carbine with a crack as it strikes the shoulder. Another jumps up on to an anthill to get a better view. Every time an extra well directed shell falls among the prostrate Boers, one or two start up and run back, and noticing this, several of the Guides wait on the guns, and as each shell screams overhead on its way to the hill top, they stand ready for a snapshot. Wang! goes the shell, up leaps a panic-stricken Dutchman, and crack, crack, crack, go half-a-dozen carbines. Though absolutely without cover, the enemy keep up for some time a stubborn reply, and when at last we reach the crest, tenanted now only by a few dead bodies, we have lost nearly two precious hours. Below across the vast plain the Dutch are in full retreat. It is doubtful already if we shall be able to intercept them.
The doubt is soon decided against us. We are crossing the flat, kopjes in front and a slope on the right. Suddenly several guns open from the kopjes ahead, the shells dropping well among us. At this coarse behaviour we pause disgusted. An A.D.C. galops up. We are to make a reconnaissance (hateful word!) on the right to see if the slope is occupied. "Will the Guides kindly ...?" and the officer waves his hand airily towards the hill and bows. We are quite well aware that the slope is occupied, for we have seen Boers take up their position there, and several experimental shots have already been fired by them. However, "anything to oblige" is the only possible answer, and the squadron right wheels and breaks into a canter. Once on the rise the bullets come whizzing through our ranks quick enough. Down goes one man, then another, then another. Maydon of the Times, who is with us, drops, but only stunned by a grazing bullet, as it turns out. The Life Guards deploying on our left catch it hot, and many saddles are emptied.
A charge at this time would have scattered the Boers instantly (they were very weak) and saved both time and lives. Instead of this, however, it is thought more advisable to keep every one standing still in order to afford a more satisfactory test of Boer marksmanship. It is very irksome. The air seems full of the little shrill-voiced messengers. Our ponies wince and shiver; they know perfectly well what the sound means. At last the fact that the hills are held is revealed to the sagacity of our commanders, and we are moved aside and the guns once more come into action.
It is easy (thank goodness!) to be wise after the event. I find every one very discontented over this action, and especially the cavalry part of it. Had we made a good wide cast instead of a timid little half-cock movement, and come round sharp, we should have intercepted the Boer convoy. As it is, we lose two more hours at this last stand which brings us till late in the afternoon, and soon afterwards, on approaching the river, we see five miles off the whole Dutch column deliberately marching away eastward. Our failure stares us in the face, and we see with disgust that we have been bluffed and fooled and held in check all day by some sixty or eighty riflemen, while the main body, waggons, guns, and all, are marching away across our front. "The day's proceedings," says one of our officers to me with laughable deliberation, "afford a very exact representation of the worst possible way of carrying out the design in hand."
LETTER XIV
BLOEMFONTEIN
My last letter was written after Poplar Grove, and we marched in here six days later on the 13th. Of the fighting on the way I can give you no account, as I was knocked up with a bad chill and had to go with the ambulance. Unluckily we had two nights of pouring rain, and as I had left behind my blanket and had only my Boer mackintosh (with the red lining), I fared very badly and got drenched both nights and very cold. This brought on something which the doctor described as "not real dysentery." However, whatever it was (or wasn't), it made me as weak as a baby, and I was transferred to our ambulance, in which I lay, comfortable enough, but only vaguely conscious of my surroundings.
The next day, the 10th, they fought the battle of Spytfontein. All I remember of it was some shells of the Boers falling into the long river of convoy which stretched in front of me in an endless line, and the huge bullock and mule waggons wheeling left and right and coming back across the veldt, with long bamboo whips swaying and niggers uttering diabolical screams and yells. We lost a good many men, but did fairly well in the end, as our infantry got into the enemy among some hills, where there were not supposed to be any enemy at all, and cut them up a good deal.
The following day I made the march on a bullock-waggon, which is really a very fine and imposing way of getting along. Your team of twenty strong oxen, in a long two-by-two file, have a most grand appearance, their great backs straining and the chain between taut as a bar, and the view you get over the field from your lofty perch among the piled-up kits and sacks is most commanding. There used to be an old print at home of Darius at the head of the Persian host "o'erlooking all the war" from the summit of some stately chariot or other, which much reminded me of my present position. I managed to mount my pony to ride into Bloemfontein, which we did on the 13th, and am now quite well.
This morning I sent you a wire to tell you that I had got my commission, thinking thereby to impress you with the importance of the event. The past five months of trooper life have not passed unpleasantly. There have been the inconveniences and hardships of the moment, "les petites miserès de la vie militaire," which sound trifling enough, but are rather a tax on one's endurance sometimes. The life of a trooper, and especially of a scout, is often a sort of struggle for existence in small ways. You have to care for and tend your pony, supplement his meagre ration by a few mealies or a bundle of forage, bought or begged from some farm and carried miles into camp; watch his going out and coming in from grazing; clean him when you can, and have an eye always to his interests. Your life and work depend so entirely on your pony that this soon becomes an instinct with you. Then there are your own wants to be supplied. You will be half starved often if you can't raise something to put in your pocket—eggs from a Kaffir, or a fowl, or a loaf of bread. Then there is the cooking question. Wood is scarce; unless you or your pal have an eye to this, you may go supperless for want of a fire. Another scarcity is water. Very likely there will be none nearer than a mile from camp, and this means a weary tramp after a long day. Then what about your bedding? You can carry only a blanket or greatcoat on your horse, so that, when you are away from your convoy, which is often enough, you have not much covering, and if it comes on to rain you have a poor time of it. Of clothes, too, you have only what you ride in. If wet, they dry on you; and few and far between are your chances of washing them. All these things sound and are trifles. A man would think little of them in a sporting expedition in the Himalayas; but after a long time the monotony tells. The heat tells. You are sometimes "a bit slack," and at those times the cooking of your wretched morsel of flesh, or the struggle for a drop of pea-soup coloured water becomes irksome.
The little star on your shoulder saves you from all that. You can tell the new commissioned man by the way he has of constantly looking over his shoulder. Poor fellow! he likes to catch the pretty glitter—the "twinkle, twinkle, little star"—that lifts privates' hands to him as they pass. Some one else cooks for him now, and there is the officers' mess cart with a few welcome extras and a merry gathering at meals and a batman to tend the pony (though you keep an eye on that yourself too), and extra clothes and blankets, and a shelter of some sort to sleep under, and a Kaffir boy to put out his washing things when he comes in hot and tired, and altogether life seems, by comparison, a very luxurious and pleasant affair. I am a bit of a democrat, as you know, and all for equality and the rights of man; but now I say, like Mesty, when they made him a butler, "Dam equality now I major-domo."
Bloemfontein is a pretty little place, but it takes you by surprise. The country round is, for endless leagues, so barren, a mere grassy, undulating expanse of prairie land, with a few farms at ten-mile intervals, that the appearance of a town seems incongruous. All of a sudden you come to a crowd of low bungalow-like roofs under the shadow of some flat-topped kopjes and realise the presence in this void of the Free State capital.
The place is suggestive, in its low single storey houses and pretty gardens, of quiet ease, and has a certain kindliness about it. It is pleasant to see the creeper grown fronts and flower patches, and few shady trees after our long sojourn in the veldt. But the one memorable sight of the place, the scene of a special and unique interest, is the Bloemfontein Club. This is the first time that the great army under Lord Roberts has found itself in occupation of any town, and the first time, therefore, that all its various contingents have had a chance of meeting together in one place. At the Bloemfontein Club the chance has occurred, and certainly never before, in any time or place, could you have seen such representative gatherings of the British race from all parts of the world as you will see if you stroll any day into the verandah and smoking-room and bar of the Bloemfontein Club. From the old country and from every British colony all over the world these men of one race, in a common crisis, here for one moment meet, look into each others' faces, drink, and greet and pass on; to be drawn back each to his own quarter of the globe and separated when the crisis is passed and not to meet again. But what a moment and what a meeting it is, and what a distinction for this little place. Organise your mass meetings and pack your town-halls, you never will get together such a sample of the British Empire as you will see any afternoon in this remote pothouse. What would you give for a peep at the show; to see the types and hear the talk? You would give a hundred pounds, I daresay. I wish I could take you one of these afternoons: I would do it for half the money.
You can see the great mountain of Thaba Nchu quite clearly from here, though it is forty miles away, and trace every ravine and valley in its steep sides, defined in pure blue shadows. We have been out there these last ten days on what is known as a "bill-sticking" expedition; distributing, that is, a long proclamation which Lord Roberts has just issued, in which he explains to the Free State Burghers that all their property will be respected, and they will be allowed themselves to return to their farms forthwith if they will just take a little quiet oath of allegiance to the British Crown. A few have done so and received passes, but the interest taken in the scheme seems less on the whole than one would have supposed likely. Some explain it by saying that the Boers are such liars themselves that they can't believe but what the English are lying too; while others think the move is premature, and that the Free State is not prepared yet to abandon the war or her allies.
We were by way also of endeavouring to cut off any stray parties of Boers who might be making their way north from Colesberg and that neighbourhood. Broadwood was in command of us. There was a stray party, sure enough, but it was 7000 strong. It passed across our bows, fifteen miles east of us, and we let it severely alone.
Meantime there is a general lull. In the midst of war we are in peace. I am going off to-morrow to our old original Modder River camp (having ridden in from Thaba Nchu yesterday), that cockpit where so much fighting was done and where we spent so many weary weeks watching the heights of Magersfontein, to get luggage and things left behind. It will be strange to see the old place deserted and to ride near the hills without being shot at. Buller is peacefully sleeping at or near Ladysmith; the sound of his snoring faintly reaches us along the wires. Gatacre slumbers at Colesberg. Kitchener has disappeared, no one knows exactly where; and Little Bobs has curled himself up at Government House here, and given orders that he is not to be called for a fortnight. What news can you expect in such times? There is positively none.
Bloemfontein gives one the curious impression just now of a town that has been unpacked and emptied of all its contents, and had them dumped down on the land alongside. The shops contain little or nothing. They have been bought up and have not had time to restock. But outside the town, on the veldt, a huge depot of all sorts of goods is growing larger and larger every day, as the trains, one after another, come steaming north with their loads of supplies. There is a street, ankle deep in mud, of huge marquees, each with a notice of its contents outside: "Accoutrements," "Harness," "Clothing," "Transit Store," and what not. Behind and between are vast piles of boxes, bales, bags, and casks heaped up, and more arrive every hour on loaded trucks along a branch rail from the station. It is a busy, animated scene. Orderlies run or gallop about; quartermasters and adjutants and others hurry here and there, with their hands full of papers from one marquee to another, collecting their orders; shopping as it were, but shopping on rather a large scale; and the big ox-waggons come creaking along and churning up the mud. This is where the cost of a war comes in. These are a few of the little things that our army will require on its way to Pretoria. There will be money to pay for this. We shall feel this some day, you and I.
And poor unstuffed Bloemfontein lies there empty. There are all the shops, and here all the merchandise. You may guess that the tradesmen are indignant. Never has there been such a market. Here is the whole British army clamouring for all kinds of things; most furiously perhaps for eatables and drinkables, baccy and boots. All these things have long been bought up, and the poor Tommies can only wander, sullen and unsated, up and down the streets and stare hungrily in at the empty shop windows; while out of the empty shop windows the shopkeeper glares still more hungrily at them. I have heard how in the Fraser River the fish positively pack and jostle as they move up. So here; but the unhappy sportsman has nothing to catch them with. Brass coal-scuttles and duplex lamps are about all that remains in the way of bait, and these are the only things they won't rise to. He rushes off to Kitchener. "Give me a train a day. Give me a train a week." "You be d——d," growls Kitchener. Back he comes. The hungry eyes are still staring. Incarnate custom flows past. Never in all his life will such a chance recur. Poor wretch! It is like some horrible nightmare.
LETTER XV
MODDER REVISITED
BLOEMFONTEIN, April 9, 1900.
All the way from Modder River down the Kimberley line and up the central one from Naauwpoort, the most dismal rumours reached me at all stations, growing more definite as I neared Bloemfontein. Sanna's Post and Reddersberg! You have heard all about them by now. Nearly 1000 casualties and seven guns taken.
You remember I told you in my last letter that a big body of Boers marched north across our bows. Pilcher was out on that side and drew back. The Boers got wind of him, and wheeled west in pursuit. Broadwood, not strong enough to hold Thaba Nchu, moved in on Bloemfontein, the Boers after him.
It is no fun describing things one has not seen. The ground I know. It is a flat plain the whole way, but down the middle of it is a deep sluit or watercourse, some thirty feet deep, with steep, sudden banks, and through this the road dips down and passes. Broadwood halted on the east side of it, thus leaving it between himself and home. In doing this he gave a chance to an enemy who never throws a chance away. The Boer leader was Christian De Wet.
The first thing in the morning the enemy began shelling our camp. The convoy was sent on, not a scout with it. Meantime, during the night several hundred Boer marksmen had been sent round into the sluit, and were now lying right across poor Broadwood's retreat. The Boers, acting with their devilish coolness as usual, took possession of the waggons without giving the alarm. Our two batteries and Roberts' Horse came along, and were allowed to get to point-blank distance, and then the volley came; magazine rifles at pistol-shot range. For the moment the result, as at Magersfontein, was chaos.
Hornby dealt the first counter-blow. With the five manageable guns he galloped back a bit and brought them into action at 1000 yards. He showed first that it was going to be a fight and not a stampede. "Steady and hit back," said Q Battery. You should hear the men talk of that battery. It lost almost every man, killed or wounded, but it was the chief means in restoring some sort of order to the retreat. But the disaster was past retrieving. In killed, wounded, and prisoners we lost a third of our force, the whole convoy, and seven guns out of twelve. I can see the question you are dying to ask. Why on earth did Broadwood camp the wrong side of that ditch? That is exactly the sort of question that a "blooming civilian" would ask. And then came Reddersberg and the loss of another five hundred. Christian De Wet again! And all this within hearing, as you may say, of the main British army.
These disasters come most inopportunely for us. Many of the Orange Free State Burghers, when their capital was taken, seem to have thought it was all up and some of them took the oath. But this right and left of De Wet's has changed that impression. It comes just in time to fan into a fresh blaze embers that seemed dying out. We hear that all the farmers who had taken the oath are under arms again. They had not much choice, for the fighting Boers simply came along and took them.
My visit to old Modder River was very interesting. It was quite deserted; only a few odds and ends of militia, where, when I remember it last, there were stately great squares of ordered tents and long lines of guns and limbers and picketed horses, and the whole place crawled with khaki, and one felt around one all the bustle and energy of a huge camp. I felt quite melancholy, as when one revisits some scene of childhood changed beyond recall. Trains were running regularly up to Kimberley and ordinary citizens were travelling up and down. It seemed the war was forgotten. To me, who had been living in the head and front of a big army for seven months, all these old signs of peace and a quiet life seemed strange enough. There were some children going up with their papas and mamas. As we came one after another to the lines of hills at Belmont and Graspan they pointed and crowded to the windows, and papa began to explain that the great fights had been here, and to tell all about them, quite wrong.
The hills look peaceful enough now. The children press their noses and little india-rubber fingers against the glass, and chatter and laugh and bob up and down—
And I sit back in my corner ashamed of my dirty old tunic and the holes in it, and peer between two small flaxen heads at hills I last saw alive with bursting shell.
At Modder village I hired a horse and rode across the plain to Magersfontein. I must often have described the place to you—the great flat and the beak of hill, like a battleship's ram, thrust southward into it. Do you know, I felt quite awestruck as I approached it. It seemed quite impossible that I, alone on my pony, could be going to ride up to and take single-handed that redoubtable hill, which had flung back the Highlanders, and remained impregnable to all our shelling. I thought some Boer, or ghost of a Boer, would pop up with his Mauser to defend the familiar position once more. However, none did. I picked my way through the trench, littered with scraps of clothing and sacks and blankets, with tins and cooking things, and broken bottles and all sorts of rags and debris littered about. The descriptions of the place sent home after the battle are necessarily very inaccurate. Those I have seen all introduce several lines of trenches and an elaborate system of barbed wire entanglements. There is only one trench, however, and no barbed wire, except one fence along a road. There are, however, a great number of plain wire strands, about ten yards long perhaps, made fast between bushes and trees, and left dangling, say, a foot from the ground. They were not laid in line, but dotted about in every direction, and, in anything like a dim light, would infallibly trip an advancing enemy up in all directions. The single trench is about five feet deep, the back of it undercut so as to allow the defenders to sleep in good shelter, and the number of old blankets and shawls lying here showed it had been used for this. It followed closely the contour of the hill, about twenty yards from its base. Eastward it was continued across the flat to the river.
The "disappearing guns," in the same way, were not disappearing at all. They simply had strong redoubts of sandbags built round them, the opening in front being partly concealed by bushes. On each side of the gun, inside the redoubt, was a pit, with a little side passage or tunnel, where two or three gunners could lie in perfect security, and yet be ready at an instant's notice to serve their gun. As for the kopjes themselves, every rock and stone there was split with shell and starred with bullet marks. The reverse side of the slopes were steepened with stone walls here and there, as a protection against shrapnel, and sangars and lookout places were built at points of vantage. Altogether, though not so elaborate as one had been led to believe, the defences struck one as extremely practical and business-like.
I stayed there for two interesting hours. You can guess with what feelings I looked down on the plain from Long Tom's redoubt, poor old Joey's rival, and traced the long line of the river, with its fringe of willows, and marked, up and down, a score of places where we had skirmished or hidden, distinguishing the positions of our guns and pickets, and all the movements and manoeuvres of our army. For the first time one realised what a bird's-eye view the Boers had of it all, and how our whole position and camp lay unrolled like a map almost at their very feet.
I must add a word to tell you that the boxes have arrived! I only wish you could have been here to see the contents distributed. First (this was about a week ago) came a huge box full of good things to eat, raisins, figs, a great many tins of cocoa and milk, chocolate, and other things. We spread them all out on sheets in the verandah of the farm in little heaps, and very pretty and tempting they looked, the white sheets down the shady verandah, and little piles of sweetmeats and things dotted all over them. Each man drew a ticket and chose his eatable, some putting it carefully away, others bolting it immediately. One can get absolutely nothing in Bloemfontein, and the men were as keen as school children. It was an excellent idea sending such a lot of figs and raisins. They are soon gone, but they are so immensely appreciated while they last; they give the men the badly wanted holiday feeling. I almost think that, in the way of provisions, delicacies are more liked by men on service, and really do them more good than the more practically useful things.
Then, a day or two ago, came another great box full of clothing. Flannel shirts, socks, under-clothing, &c. There was, especially, in this box, a packet of little handkerchiefs with a card, and on it written: "Worked by Mrs. Hope and her little girls for the soldiers." The little present touched us all very much. I have kept the card with the intention of thanking "the little girls" if ever I get the chance.
We are only about a hundred strong now, and there were enough things to go round several times. If you had foreseen and planned the date of their arrival they could not have reached us at a more opportune moment. The men have scarcely anything to wear, for all our kit and clothes, everything we possess, was lost at the Sanna Post surprise party. I assure you they are grateful. I read them the names of the subscribers, and they all send their best thanks. Several came up to me and asked that their thanks might be sent to you for your trouble in getting the subscriptions, &c. No money that could have been expended in any charity could have been better spent than this. The men have done fearfully hard work, and were many of them literally in rags. It has been the greatest help. The Major has sent you a few words of thanks, but has asked me to write more particularly. You will let those know who have helped, will you not, how this Colonial corps of ours has appreciated your English present.
And now, farewell. They say we move forward in a week. I hope it may be true. They also say we shall finish the campaign in a couple of months. Fiddle-de-dee! is what I say. Tell H. to educate little S. as a scout among the Devonshire hedges, and give him a bit of practical training against the time he will be old enough to come out. There will be Boers to take him on.
LETTER XVI
JUSTIFICATION OF THE WAR
BLOEMFONTEIN, April, 1900.
Yes, certainly, my own reason for fighting is plain and strong. I am fighting for a united South Africa. A united South Africa will, in my opinion, justify the war. The Boers are genuinely patriotic, I haven't a doubt. They have every right and reason to fight to the last for their freedom and independence. But the continued existence of independent States on the pattern of the Dutch republics in the midst of South Africa is bound to be a perpetual irritation. The development of the resources of the country will be checked. The effort to remain separate and apart has obliged, and will more and more oblige, these States to build themselves round with a whole system of laws specially directed to hamper immigration; and the richer are found to be the resources of the country, the more harassing and stringent will this system of laws have to become. In fact, in this great, free, and undivided country, to hedge a State round with artificial barriers of this sort, in order that it may enjoy a kind of obsolete, old-fashioned independence of its own, soon becomes intolerable. It is unjust to all the rest of the continent. The country, if it is to have its due weight and influence in the affairs of the world, must be united and make itself felt as a whole. It is not fair on such a country, young but rapidly developing, to take two of the richest tracts of it right in its midst and to say, "You may go ahead with the development of all the rest, but these two portions are to be left on one side, to drop out of the running, to be withered and useless members, and instead of contributing to the total, and joining in with the progress of the rest, are to do all in their power to impede the general advance."
It is bad enough when any naturally separate State shows the retrograde temper and an inability to profit by its own resources, but when that State is an integral part of one great and young continent, then its action becomes intolerable. I think it is not only the people in a country that have claims, but the country itself that has a claim. If you want South Africa to ripen ultimately into a great first-class world Power (and that is its claim), instead of a bunch of fifth-rate antagonistic States, the first thing to do is to range the country under one Government, and as a British Government will be progressive, and a Dutch one will certainly be retrograde, you must put it under a British one. That is the first essential, and if any genuinely patriotic instincts are overridden in the process, it is very sad, but it cannot be helped. Better this than that the whole country should miss its destiny.
As for the Uitlanders and their grievances, I would not ride a yard or fire a shot to right all the grievances that were ever invented. The mass of the Uitlanders (i.e., the miners and working-men of the Rand) had no grievances. I know what I am talking about, for I have lived and worked among them. I have seen English newspapers passed from one to another, and roars of laughter roused by the Times telegrams about these precious grievances. We used to read the London papers to find out what our grievances were; and very frequently they would be due to causes of which we had never even heard. I never met one miner or working-man who would have walked a mile to pick the vote up off the road, and I have known and talked with scores and hundreds. And no man who knows the Rand will deny the truth of what I tell you.
No; but the Uitlanders the world has heard of were not these, but the Stock Exchange operators, manipulators of the money market, company floaters and gamblers generally, a large percentage of them Jews. They voiced Johannesburg, had the press in their hands, worked the wires, and controlled and arranged what sort of information should reach England. As for the grievances, they were a most useful invention, and have had a hand in the making of many fortunes. It was by these that a feeling of insecurity was introduced into the market which would otherwise have remained always steady; it was by these that the necessary and periodic slump was brought about. When the proper time came, "grievances," such as would arrest England's attention and catch the ear of the people, were deliberately invented; stories again were deliberately invented of the excitement, panic, and incipient revolution of Johannesburg, and by these means was introduced that feeling of insecurity I have spoken of, which was necessary to lower prices.
Not a finger would I raise for these fellows. And another war-cry which I profoundly disbelieve in, and which will probably turn out in the long run to be a hoax, is the "Dutch South Africa" cry. How any one who knows his South Africa, who knows the isolation of life among the farmers, and the utter stagnation of all ideas that exists among the people, can credit the Boers with vaulting ambitions of this sort, is always a surprise to me. I fancy such theories are mostly manufactured for the English market. Naturally I form my opinion more or less from the men in our corps who seem best worth attending to. They, most of them, have an intimate knowledge of the Colony and of one or both of the Republics, and I do not find that they take the "Great Dutch Conspiracy" at all seriously. Some people maintain that, though perhaps the Boer farmers themselves were not in it, yet their leaders were. But the farmers form the vast majority of the Boers. They are an independent and stiff-necked type; and it is as absurd to suppose that their leaders could pledge them to such vast and visionary schemes as it is to suppose that such schemes could have the slightest interest for them. As a matter of fact, what has given old Kruger his long ascendency is the way in which he shares and embodies the one or two simple, dogged ideas of the mass of the Burghers. "God bless the Boers and damn the British" are two of the chief of these, but they only apply them within their own borders.
But it's a case of the proof of the pudding. If this scheme for a general rising existed, why is not the Colony in arms now? What do you think the answer to that is? Why, that the plot did indeed exist and had been carefully matured, and that it would have come off all right if the Boers had marched boldly south; but that, for some unknown reason, their hearts failed them at the last moment, and they didn't dare go on and reap what they had sown. "If only they had marched on Cape Town, the whole Colony would have risen."
Doesn't it sometimes occur to you that, when his own interests are concerned, the Boer is a tolerably wide-awake gentleman, and that he knows how to look after those interests of his almost as well as we can teach him? Are you prepared to believe of him: first, that he laid down and organised this vast conspiracy; second, that he deliberately armed himself to the teeth with a view of carrying it out; third, that he chose his own time for war and declared it when he thought the moment was ripe; fourth, that he gained advantages to begin with, and had the Colony at his feet; and fifth, that he was seized with a sudden paralysis at the last moment, and found himself unable to march ahead and gather in the recruits who were on tip-toe to join him? No, no. If the plot existed, why didn't the plot work? It had every chance.
I will tell you what there was. There were a number of appeals and letters (some of them I have seen) from families in the north to their relations in the Colony, praying for sympathy, and perhaps for active help. But these were merely personal appeals. There is no hard and fast line, so far as the people are concerned, between the Colony, Orange Free State, and Transvaal. The same big families, or clans almost, have their branches in all three, and probably there is not a family of any consequence in either that has not a number of relations in the other two. Consequently as war drew closer the excitement and anxiety it caused spread southward from family to family. There was a good deal of sympathy felt, no doubt, by the Dutch in the Colony for their relations farther north, and there has been surreptitious help, information given, and sympathy. But there the matter has usually ended. There have been very few recruits, and there never was an organised conspiracy.
It is curious to notice how the several sections of the Dutch were picked up just as they were laid down. The most determined spirits of all, the most bitter against English rule, the irreconcilables, had fought their way farthest north, and formed the Transvaal. South of them came the Orange Free State, just across the Colony border—independent, but not so bitter; while in the Colony itself remained all those weaker brethren whose hearts had failed them in the Great Trek days, and who had remained under our government.
The present war has revealed these strata just as they were deposited. The northern State was the leader and aggressor. The southern one, drawn in by its fiercer neighbour, was still true to the cause. And so, too, the Dutch of the Colony were exactly to-day where they had been sixty years ago. They could no more join the war than they could join the trek. And, in spite of individual appeals to relations, &c., you may be sure that the northerners knew pretty accurately how the land lay. Their own action shows this.
Therefore, I put aside utterly, so far as I am concerned, the Uitlander and Dutch conspiracy arguments, of which one hears so much, as things which, though they may occupy the attention of leading article writers in London, yet are not convincing, and have no smack of reality to any one who knows something about the Uitlanders from personal observation, and something about the Boers and Boer life from personal observation. I put these aside and come back to the only argument that will really wash, that has no clap-trap in it. And that is South Africa under one Government, and under a strong and progressive Government. Human nature is pretty much the same all the world over, and if the Boers have been to blame in the past, no doubt the Britons have been just as much to blame. Anyway, it is impossible and would be useless to strike a balance between them now. The fact that stands out salient and that has to be dealt with in the present is that South Africa is divided against itself; that it never can and never will step up into its proper place until it is united, and that, therefore, to fight for a united South Africa is to fight on the right side and in a good cause.
And one thing I much like this plain reason for is, that it makes it easy for one to do full justice to one's adversaries. I admire their courage and patriotism very much. I acknowledge fully their dogged obstinacy in defence and their dangerous coolness in retreat, and I am sorry for them, too, and think it a sad thing that such brave men should be identified with so impossible a cause. You must be careful how you believe the reports sent home by war correspondents. I suppose people like to hear harm of their enemies, and a daily paper's best business is to give the public what the public wants rather than what is strictly true. The consequence is that accounts of Boer fighting and of the Boers themselves (traitors and cowards are the commonest words) are now appearing which are neither more nor less than a disgrace to the papers which publish them. I don't know since when it has become a British fashion to slander a brave adversary, but I must say it seems to me a singularly disgusting one, the more so when it is coupled with a gross and indiscriminating praise of our own valour and performances.
LETTER XVII
THE MARCH NORTH
NEAR JOHANNESBURG, May 31, 1900.
"May 1st, 1900.—The long-looked, long-waited for moment has come at last. We march from Bloemfontein on a glorious autumn morning, in fresh cool air and the sky cloudless. Forty miles off Thaba Nchu, that hill of ill omen, might be ten, so bold and clear it stands up above the lower ranges. The level plain between the island hills is streaked with gauzy mist.
"North of Bloemfontein we get into a pretty, uneven country with several level-topped kopjes set end to end like dominoes, and thickets of grey mimosas clustering in the hollows. The great column is moving forward on our left. Big ambulance waggons, with huge white covers nodding one behind the other, high above the press; the naval twelve-pounders, with ten-oxen teams and sailors swinging merrily alongside; infantry marching with the indescribable regular undulation of masses of drilled men, reminding one of the ripple of a centipede's legs; field artillery, horse artillery, transport waggons, more infantry, more guns—they stretch in a long, dark river right across the plain.
"Now a halt is called. The men drop on one knee where they stand, or hitch up their knapsacks to ease their tired shoulders. Then on again, guns jolting, men sweating, marching at ease, with helmets on wrong side first to shelter their eyes, and rifles with butt-ends over shoulders. They have a rest after a few hours, and fall out by the wayside, fling off the heavy accoutrements, light pipes, and fall a-yarning, stretched on the grass, or pull out scraps of old newspapers to read."
That was written the day we left Bloemfontein, just a month ago, and 250 miles away. We have come along well, have we not?
Brandfort is a little town on the railway some forty miles north of Bloemfontein, overlooked by a big rocky kopje on the north. Here we find our dear friends once more assembled to meet us after this long interval, and we have a little battle with them, of which I will spare you the description. An incident of some interest was the appearance of the "Irish Brigade" from the Natal side, who held the hill above the town. Rimington got leave from Hutton to turn them out, which he did so cleverly, and taking us at them at such a pace that we did the business without loss, except, indeed, in horses, of which several were hit. I don't know if the two or three prisoners we took (and that we had some thought of shooting out of hand) were a fair sample of the brigade, but fouler-mouthed scoundrels I think I never set eyes on.
Our plan of advance has been all along very simple and effective. Our centre keeps the railway, while our wings, composed largely of mounted troops, are spread wide on each side, and threaten by an enclosing movement to envelop the enemy if he attempts to make a stand. These tactics have been perfectly successful, and the Boers have been forced again and again to abandon strong positions from a fear of being surrounded. A bear's hug gives the notion of the strategy. No sooner do our great arms come round than away slip the Boers while there is still time. The Vet River was probably their strongest position, and here they did make some attempt at a stand. This is how things looked that morning:—
"May 5th, 12.30.—We have just got to the big slopes overlooking Vet River. The enemy is in a strong position along the river-bed, which is thickly wooded, and in the hills beyond. Our left has touched them, and as I write this our pompon on that side has a couple of goes. Kaffirs tell us that the valley is full of Boers. Boers everywhere; in the river-bed, in the sluits on the far side, in the hills; and that they have plenty of guns. It is something like the Modder River position, but stronger, inasmuch as there are ranges of hills on the far side of and overlooking the river; so that they have two lines of defence, the second commanding the first. An excellent arrangement. Walking forward to the brow, a few of us had the whole panorama at our feet. We had no idea it was so strong, and you might notice a thoughtful look on more than one face as we walked back to our men behind the hill.
"We have now got the guns to a nearer rise, sloping to the river, and are standing in extended order waiting for the next move. This will take the form of artillery practice, and it is prophesied that we shall get it pretty hot, as they will certainly have better guns than our twelve-pounders. The sun is melting. Guns unlimber (1.15). Teams jingle back, and the guns open fire from edge of slope, each one as it delivers its shot starting back as if with surprise at its own performance.
"3 P.M.—Our guns are blazing away merrily now. The Boers, if they have guns, are very reticent. They have sent us a few shells, which have done no harm, mostly falling short. Hamilton is said to be at or near Winburg. If this is so, he will be threatening the retreat of the Boers here soon. Meantime a huge column, miles long, is crawling in the distance across the flattish grass sweeps far to the east. This is the main column, under Lord Roberts."
We thought, you see, that we were in for quite a big fight. We thought the same often later. At this river or this range they will make their stand. But always, as here at Vet River, we advanced on such a wide front that the enemy had to retire betimes to avoid being outflanked, and so the "stand" was never made. We joined Ian Hamilton at Kronstad, and while we were out with him on the east side the enemy once or twice attacked our flank or rearguard in the most determined manner. However, we held on our way very composedly, our waggons rumbling along sleepily indifferent, while the Boers with all their might would be hanging on to our tail. Usually, after we had towed them for a day or two, they would let go, and then another lot would come along and lay hold. The first party would then retire to its own village and district, feeling, no doubt, that it had barked us off the premises in great style, and lay in wait for the next army of ten or twenty thousand men that should happen to pass that way.
It is the convoy that always hampers our movements so, that dictates the formation of an advance and makes us almost a passive target to attack. Our convoy with Ian Hamilton must have been seven or eight miles long, and was often delayed for hours at fords and creeks, where scenes of wild confusion took place and you were deafened with yelling Kaffirs and cracking whips. This convoy has of course to be guarded throughout, which means a very attenuated and consequently weakened force, an attack on one part of which might be carried on without the knowledge of the rest of the column, or the possibility of its giving much help anyway. When we left Lindley we had a sharp rearguard action, and the Boers pushed their attack very vigorously. They did the same on the right flank, and the advance guard also had some fighting. Neither of these parties knew that the others were engaged at all, and probably the bulk of the main column were quite ignorant that a shot had been fired anywhere.
Lindley is one of those peculiar, bare, little Dutch towns, the presence of which on the lonely hillside always seems so inexplicable. It is even more than usually hideous. There is the inevitable big church, the only large building in the place, occupying a central position, and looking very frigid and uninviting, like the doctrine it inculcates; a few large general stores, where you can buy anything from a plough to a pennyworth of sweets, and some single-storey, tin-roofed houses or cottages flung down in a loose group. But around it there are none of the usual signs of a town neighbourhood. No visible roads lead to it; no fertile and cultivated land surrounds it; no trees or parks or pleasure grounds are near it. The houses might have been pitched down yesterday for all the notice the veldt takes of them. Spread out over the hills and valleys for some hundreds of miles each side this barren treeless veldt, which, after all, is the main fact of South African life, seems to carry these little unexpected towns on its breast with the same ease and unconsciousness that the sea carries its fleets of ships; surrounding and lapping at their very hulls; not changed itself nor influenced by their presence.
During our stay of a day or two at Lindley it became increasingly evident that the people of that neighbourhood resented our presence there. Our pickets were constantly engaged. There are some rather abrupt hills on the east side of the town, among the nearer ones of which our look-outs were stationed while the Boers prowled among the others. Here the Mausers and Lee-Metfords talked incessantly, and the conversation was carried on in a desultory way down in the river valley and among the rolling hills on the southern side. It was plain that the enemy was quite prepared to "put up a show" for us, and no one was surprised, when the morning of our departure came, to see the strong force of Mounted Infantry told off for rearguard, or note the presence of the General himself in that part of the field.
There are long slanting hills that rise above the village on its south side, the crests of which were occupied by our pickets. As the pickets were withdrawn, the Boers rapidly followed them up, occupied the crest in turn, and began to put in a heavy fire and press hard on our retreating men.
From a square and flat-topped kopje just north of the town we had the whole scene of the withdrawal down the opposite slopes before our eyes. Our Mounted Infantry were hotly engaged but perfectly steady. They lay in the grass in open order, firing, their groups of horses clustered lower down the hill; then retired by troops and set to work again. This giving ground steadily and by degrees is a test of coolness and steadiness, and it was easy to see that our men were under perfect control. At last they came under the protection of our hill. We had got our battery of guns up it, and it was a moment of great satisfaction to all concerned, except possibly the Boers, when the first angry roar rose above the splutter of rifles, and the shell pitched among some of the foremost of the enemy's sharpshooters. In a duel of this sort the interference of artillery is usually regarded as decisive. Guns, as people say, have "a moral effect" that is sometimes out of proportion to the actual damage they inflict. Anyway, skirmishers seldom advance under gun-fire, and the Boers on this occasion were decisively checked by our battery. Even when the guns left, we were able from the vantage-ground of the hill to keep them at arm's length until the time came to catch up the column.
On the right flank they were more successful, pressing home a heavy attack on the Mounted Infantry on that side. A squadron got cut off and rushed by the enemy, who rode in to it shooting at pistol-shot distance, and shouting "Hands up!" We lost pretty heavily in casualties, besides about fifty prisoners. These small mishaps are of no great importance in themselves, but they encourage the enemy no doubt to go on fighting. The story as it goes round the farms will lose nothing in the telling. Probably in a very short time it will amount to the rout of Hamilton's column, and the captured troopers will lend a colour to the yarn. Burghers who have taken the oath of allegiance will be readier than ever to break it. However, time no doubt will balance the account all right in the long-run.
From Lindley, fighting a little every day, we marched north to Heilbron, where Broadwood got hold of the Boer convoy by the tail, and succeeded in capturing a dozen waggons. From there we cut into the railway, and crossed it at Vredefort, passing through the main body of the advance in doing so. Anything like the sight of these vast columns all pushing in one direction you never saw. In this country one can often see thirty or forty miles, and in that space on the parched, light-coloured ground you may see from some point of vantage five or six separate streams of advance slowly rolling northward, their thin black lines of convoy overhung by a heavy pall of dust. As we closed in and became involved for a moment in the whole mass of the general advance, though accustomed to think no small beer of ourselves as an army, for we number 11,000 men, we realised that we were quite a small fraction of the British force. Endless battalions of infantry, very dusty and grimy, but going light and strong (you soon get into the habit of looking attentively at infantry to see how they march); guns, bearer-companies, Colonial Horse, generals and their staffs, go plodding and jingling by in a procession that seems to be going on for ever. And beside and through them the long convoys of the different units, in heavy masses, come groaning and creaking along, the oxen sweating, the dust whirling, the naked Kaffirs yelling, and the long whips going like pistol-shots. The whole thing suggests more a national migration than the march of an army. And ever on the horizon hang new clouds of dust, and on distant slopes the scattered advance guards of new columns dribble into view. I fancy the Huns or the Goths, in one of their vast tribal invasions, may have moved like this. Or you might liken us to the dusty pilgrims on some great caravan route with Pretoria for our Mecca.
We crossed the Vaal at Lindiquies Drift, being now on the west flank, and met the Boers the day before yesterday two miles from here on the West Rand. The fight was a sharp one. They were in a strong position on some ridges, not steep, but with good cover among stones and rocks. We came at them from the west, having made a circuit. Our advance was hidden by the rolling of the ground, but the enemy guessed it, and sent a few shells at a venture, which came screaming along and buried themselves in the ground without doing much damage that I could see beyond knocking a Cape cart to pieces. By 2 P.M. we had crawled up the valley side and got several batteries of artillery where they could shell the Boer position. The two great "cow-guns," so called from the long teams of oxen that drag them, were hauled up the slope. The enemy got an inkling of our intention now, and his shells began to fall more adjacent. Then our fire began. It was difficult to see clearly. The dry grass of the veldt, which is always catching fire, was burning between us and the Boers; long lines of low smouldering fire, eating their way slowly along, and sending volumes of smoke drifting downward, obscuring the view. Half the ground was all black and charred where the fire had been; the rest white, dry grass. The Boer position was only about two miles from our ridge; a long shallow hollow of bare ground, without bush or rock, or any sort of cover on it, except a few anthills, separating us from them. Our field-batteries opened, and then the great five-inch cow-guns roared out. We ourselves were close to these with Hamilton (we are acting as his bodyguard), and with the other officers I crept up to the ridge and lay among the stones watching the whole show. After a shot or two all our guns got the range, a mere stone's throw for the great five-inchers. Their shrapnel burst along the rise, and we could see the hail of bullets after each explosion dusting the ground along the top where the Boers lay. The enemy answered very intermittently, mostly from their Long Tom far back, which our big guns kept feeling for. I never heard anything like the report of these big guns of ours and the shriek of the shells as they went on their way.
After the cannonade had been kept up for a bit, the infantry began their advance. This was, I think, the finest performance I have seen in the whole campaign. The Gordons did it; the Dargai battalion. They came up, line by line, behind our ridge and lay down along with us. Then, at the word "Advance," the front line got up and walked quietly down the slope, and away towards the opposite hill, walking in very open order, with gaps of about fifteen yards between the men. A moment or two would pass. Then when the front line had gone about fifty yards, the "Advance" would again be repeated, and another line of kilted men would lift themselves leisurely up and walk off. So on, line behind line, they went on their way, while we watched them, small dark figures clearly seen on the white grass, through our glasses with a painful interest. Before they had reached half way across, the vicious, dull report, a sort of double "crick-crack," of the Mausers began. Our guns were raining shrapnel along the enemy's position, shooting steady and fast to cover the Gordons' advance; but the Boers, especially when it comes to endurance, are dogged fellows. They see our infantry coming, and nothing will move them till they have had their shot. Soon we can see the little puffs of dust round the men, that mark where the bullets are striking. All the further side, up the long gradual slope to the Boer rocks, has been burnt black and bare, and the bullets, cutting through the cinders, throw up spots of dust, that show white against the black. Men here and there stagger and fall. It is hard to see whether they fall from being hit, or whether it is to shoot themselves. The fire gets faster and faster, our guns thunder, and through the drifting smoke of the veldt fires we can still see the Gordons moving onward. Then among the looking-out group, crouched near the guns, goes a little gasp and mutter of excitement. We catch on the black background, glistening in the sun, the quick twinkle of a number of little steel points. They are fixing bayonets! Now the little figures move quicker. They make for the left side of the ridge. A minute more, and along the sky-line we see them appear, a few at first, then more and more. They swing to the right, where the enemy's main position lies, and disappear. There is a sharp, rapid interchange of shots, and then the fire gradually lessens and dies away, and the position is captured. They have lost a hundred men in ten minutes, but they've done the trick.
Later on, Hamilton, one of the most beloved of our Generals, gallops forward, and on the hill they have won, as evening is closing, says a few words to the Gordons. "Men of the Gordons, officers of the Gordons, I want to tell you how proud I am of you; of my father's old regiment, and of the regiment I was born in. You have done splendidly. To-morrow all Scotland will be ringing with the news." This charge will, no doubt, take rank as one of the most brilliant things of the war.
Next morning at dawn, escorting the cow-guns, I came to where the Boers had held out so long among the scattered rocks. The Gordons were burying some of the Boer dead. There were several quite youngsters among them. One was a boy of not more than fourteen, I should think, like an English schoolboy. One of the Gordons there told me he saw him, during the advance, kneeling behind a stone and firing. He was shot through the forehead. There is something pathetic and infinitely disagreeable in finding these mere children opposed to one.
These infantry advances are the things that specially show up the courage of our troops. Each man, walking deliberately and by himself, is being individually shot at for the space of ten minutes or more, the bullets whistling past him or striking the ground near him. To walk steadily on through a fire of this sort, which gets momentarily hotter and better aimed as he diminishes the distance between himself and the enemy, in expectation every instant of knowing "what it feels like," is the highest test of courage that a soldier in these days can give. Nothing the mounted troops are, as a rule, called upon to perform comes near it. Knowing exactly from experience what lay in front of them, these Gordons were as cool as cucumbers. As they lay among the stones with us before beginning the advance, I spoke to several, answering their questions and pointing them out the lie of the ground and the Boer position. You could not have detected the least trace of anxiety or concern in any of them. The front rank, when the order to advance was given, stepped down with a swing of the kilt and a swagger that only a Highland regiment has. "Steady on the left;" they took their dressing as they reached the flat. Some one sang out, "When under fire wear a cheerful face;" and the men laughingly passed the word along, "When under fire wear a cheerful face."
LETTER XVIII
PRETORIA
PRETORIA, June 6, 1900.
It is generally considered rather a coup in war, I believe, to take the enemy's capital, isn't it? like taking a queen at chess. We keep on taking capitals, but I can't say it seems to make much difference. The Boers set no store by them apparently; neither Bloemfontein nor Pretoria have been seriously defended, and they go on fighting after their loss just as if nothing had happened.
For months Pretoria has been our beacon, and at first it seemed quite an impossibly long way off. Looked at from Bloemfontein, across 300 miles of dreary veldt and rugged kopjes and steep-banked rivers, and allowing for the machinations and devilments of ten or fifteen thousand Boers, our arrival here did seem a vague, indefinite, and far-off prospect. And yet in a day or two over the month here we are. Lord Roberts has brought us up in the most masterly way. He has moved with a big central column on the railway, while at the same time other columns, stretched far to right and left, moved parallel and threatened to outflank and enclose the enemy at every stand. So with wings beating and body steadily advancing, like some great kite or bird of prey, we have flapped our way northward.
Even here no stand was made. The town is strongly defended with several new forts, armed, we were told, with 10-inch guns, with a range of about twelve miles, which we supposed would put the noses of our poor cow-guns completely out of joint. The Boers had burnt the grass on all the hills to the south of the town, so that the blackened surface might show up the khaki uniform of our men, and offer a satisfactory mark, and things generally, as we slowly approached the tall black rampart of mountain south of Pretoria, seemed to point to a big engagement. But here, as so often elsewhere, it was borne in upon them that if they finally stayed and defended their capital, they would assuredly be surrounded and cut off; and so, though only at the last moment, we hear, they decided to leave. They put up an afternoon fight on the hills near the town, but this was only the work of a handful of men, probably intended to stave us off for a while while they finished their packing in Pretoria and got away. Lord Roberts got a battery up to the crest of a great big ridge, and we got a pompon up a still steeper one, and a vigorous cannonade was kept up and a good deal of rifle-fire indulged in till nearly dark. But this is often very deceptive. No doubt if it was the first battle you had been at, you would have put down the casualties, judging from the noise made, at several hundred. As a matter of fact, the peculiar thing about all this shooting is that, like the cursing in the Jackdaw of Rheims, "nobody seems one penny the worse." Loading is now so easy that it is not the slightest trouble to fire. The consequence is that a glimpse of a Boer's head on the sky-line a couple of miles off will find work for a battery of guns and a few score of rifles for the rest of the afternoon. About sunset time, when it begins to get cold, they will limber up and come away, and the report will go in that our shelling was very accurate, but that the enemy's loss could not be positively ascertained.
The day after the fight we made a triumphal procession through Pretoria, and marched past Lord Roberts and his staff, and all his generals and their staffs, assembled in the big square facing the Parliament House. We came along a long, straight street, with verandahed houses standing back in gardens, and trees partly shading the road, a ceaseless, slow, living river of khaki; solid blocks of infantry, with measured, even tread, the rifle barrels lightly rising and falling with the elastic, easy motion that sways them altogether as the men keep time; cavalry, regular and irregular, and, two by two, the rumbling guns. Mile after mile of this steady, deliberate, muddy tide that has crept so far, creeps on now through the Dutch capital. Look at the men! Through long exposure and the weeding out of the weak ones, they are now all picked men. The campaign has sorted them out, and every battalion is so much solid gristle and sinew. They show their condition in their lean, darkly-tanned faces; in the sinewy, blackened hands that grasp the rifle butts; in the way they carry themselves, with shoulders well back and heads erect, and in the easy, vigorous swing of their step.
I should like, while I am about it, to speak to you rather more at length about the British soldier. I should think my time spent on service, especially the five months in the ranks, time well spent, if only for the acquaintanceship it has brought with soldiers. In the field, on the march, in bivouac, I have met and associated and talked with them on equal terms. Under fire and in action I have watched them, have sat with them, long afternoons by rivers and under trees, and yarned with them on tramps in the blazing sun. Their language, habits, and character have to some extent grown familiar to me.
They are not, to begin with, a bit like the description I sometimes read of them in newspapers. In one of Kipling's books there is a description of a painting of a soldier in action; realistic and true to life; dirty and grimed and foul, with an assegai wound across the ankle, and the terror of death in his face. The dealer who took the picture made the artist alter it; had the uniform cleaned and the straps pipe-clayed, and the face smoothed and composed, and the ferocity and despair toned down to a plump and well-fed complacency, and made, in fact, all those alterations which were supposed to suit it to the public taste.
The newspapers describe the British soldier, I suppose, to suit the public too, much on the same lines. He is the most simpering, mild-mannered, and perfect gentleman. If you asked him to loot a farm, he would stare at you in shocked amazement. He is, of course, "as brave as a lion," his courage being always at that dead level of perfect heroism which makes the term quite meaningless. Except, however, when they are shining with the light of battle, his eyes regard all people, friends and foes alike, with an expression of kindness and brotherly love. He never uses a strong word, and under all circumstances the gentleness and sweet decorum of his manner is such as you would never expect to meet outside the Y.M.C.A.
This is about as much like our dear, old, real Tommy Atkins as Kipling's portrait was. Such a likeness does no honour to the man. It is simply lifeless. Whatever Tommy is, he is a man; not a round-eyed, pink-cheeked waxwork stuffed with bran. The truth is coarse and strong, but he can stand having the truth told about him.
Soldiers as a class (I take the town-bred, slum-bred majority, mind) are men who have discarded the civil standard of morality altogether. They simply ignore it. This, no doubt, is why civilians fight shy of them. In the game of life they don't play the same rules, and the consequence is a good deal of misunderstanding, until finally the civilian says he won't play with the Tommy any more. In soldiers' eyes lying, theft, drunkenness, bad language, &c., are not evils at all. They steal like jackdaws. No man's kit or belongings are safe for an instant in their neighbourhood unless under the owner's eye. To "lift" or "pinch" anything from anybody is one of the Tommy's ordinary everyday interests, a thing to be attended to and borne in mind along with his other daily cares and duties. Nothing is more common than to see some distracted private rushing about in search of a missing article, which he declares in anguished tones he has only just that instant laid down; his own agitation a marked contrast to the elaborate indifference of every one near him.
As to language, I used to think the language of a merchant ship's fo'c'sle pretty bad, but the language of Tommies in point of profanity quite equals, and in point of obscenity beats it hollow. This department is a speciality of his. Of course, after a little it becomes simply meaningless, and you scarcely notice it, but the haphazard and indiscriminate way, quite regardless of any meaning, in which he interlards ordinary sentences with beastly words, at first revolts you. Lying he treats with the same large charity. To lie like a trooper is quite a sound metaphor. He invents all sorts of elaborate lies for the mere pleasure of inventing them. He will come back from headquarters and tell you of the last despatch which he has just read with his own eyes (a victory or disaster, according to his mood at the moment), with all kinds of realistic details added; and you go and see for yourself, and there is no despatch at all. Looting, again, is one of his perpetual joys. Not merely looting for profit, though I have seen Tommies take possession of the most ridiculous things—perambulators and sewing machines, with a vague idea of carting them home somehow—but looting for the sheer fun of the destruction; tearing down pictures to kick their boots through them; smashing furniture for the fun of smashing it, and may be dressing up in women's clothes to finish with, and dancing among the ruins they have made. To pick up a good heavy stone and send it wallop right through the works of a piano is a great moment for Tommy. I daresay there is something in it, you know.
These are roughish traits, are they not? Sit down by this group of Tommies by the water-hole in the mid-day halt. They are filthy dirty, poor fellows. Their thin, khaki, sweat-stained uniforms are rotting on them. They have taken off tunics and shirts, and among the rags of flannel are searching for the lice which pester and annoy them. Here is a bit of raw humanity for you to study, a sample of the old Anglo-Saxon breed; what do you make of it? Are thieving, and lying, and looting, and bestial talk very bad things? If they are, Tommy is a bad man. But for some reason or other, since I got to know him, I have thought rather less of the iniquity of these things than I did before.
The day has been fearfully hot, as usual, and they have done a long march. They were up last night on picket, and have had nothing to eat all day as yet but a biscuit or two and a cup of milkless coffee. This sort of thing has been going on for months. They are tired and hungry and footsore. More than one falls back where he sits and drops into a sleep of utter exhaustion. But of any serious grumbling or discontent there is no sign. A few curse at the heat perhaps, but their hardships are mostly a subject for rough chaff and Cockney jokes. You thought you were roughing it a good deal, but look at the state these men are in. You gave yourself credit for some endurance, but look at their unaffected cheeriness. The whole army is the same. In their thousands, as you see them pass, the prevailing expression down all the swarthy faces is one of unfailing good-humour. They make no more of their hardships than Sandow of throwing about bars and bells that would crush an ordinary man flat. It dawns on one, the depth of manhood that is implied in endurance like this. "We sometimes get licked at first, but we mostly come out all right in the end." Tommy's good-natured face as he sweats it across the veldt gives some meaning to that boast.
In the crowds of his mates in the East End, in crowds of the unemployed and the like, you see the same temper—a sort of rough, good spirits, an indomitable, incorrigible cheerfulness that nothing, no outward misery, seems able to damp. In West End crowds (Hyde Park, for instance) you don't get this. There are smiles and laughs, as you look about at the faces, but they seem merely individual—one here, another there. In the crowd of roughs—though goodness knows there is little cause for merriment, so far as one can see—there is a quite different, deeper, and more universal feeling of bluff cheeriness, not put on, but unconscious, as though, in spite of present misery, things were going right for them somehow. I should say an East End crowd gave one a far deeper impression of animal spirits, of hope and cheeriness, than a West End one. And it is the same with soldiers. The officers are fine fellows, but in this point they yield to the soldiers.
And it means a lot. Of what use is even courage itself if it goes with impatience and a flash in the pan endurance? This quality of cheerfulness is really the quality that outlasts all others. It means not only that you have an army in good fighting trim to-day, but that this time next year, or the year after, you will still have an army in good fighting trim. In the long-run it wears down all opposition, but it is not a characteristic you notice at first. Gradually it makes itself felt, and gradually it governs your estimate of the whole army. And then the peculiar wickedness of Tommy (a child's naughtiness for superficiality) ceases to offend you so much. Rather your own regulation code seems a trifle less important than it did. Let's all lie and steal; what does it signify? I would lie and steal till the crack of doom to gain the serene endurance of the British soldier.[1]
Of his courage one need scarcely speak. It is a subject on which a great deal of rubbish has been talked. It is not true that all soldiers are brave, nor is it true that even brave soldiers will go anywhere and do anything. On the other hand, it certainly is true that our soldiers' courage—that is, their apparent unconsciousness of danger—strikes one as very remarkable. You need not believe more about the light of battle and the warrior's lust, and all that sort of thing, than you want to. There is very little excitement in a modern battle, and the English soldier is not an excitable man, but this only makes the display of courage more striking. Nothing can be more terrible than one of our slow charges, a charge in which all the peril which used to be compressed into a hundred yards' rush in hot blood is spread out over an afternoon's walk. I am sure any man who has ever taken part in one of those ghastly processions, and, at thirty yards interval, watched the dust-spots, at first promiscuous, gradually concentrating round him, and listened to the constant soft whine or nearer hiss of passing bullets, and seen men fall and plodded on still, solitary, waiting his turn, would look upon the maddest and bloodiest rush of old days as a positive luxury by comparison.