War's Brighter Side Part 20

For glint and gleam and flash and flare Will all afford a mark; The better plan, in modern days, Is just "to keep it dark."

We ask no more that you shall shine; Be dull if you would win.

I mean, of course, in outward show-- Lucidity within.

For "slim's" the word now most in vogue (That's "sly," if read aright); From head to heel be dull and dim, Your brain alone be bright.

It is no joy that you should smash Your head against a wall; "We're known to be extremely brave,"

So pray be wise withal.

Be lion-mettled--as you were; But not too proud to scout; And if the foe is right in front, Why, go a mile about.

Go forth in strength of intellect, Shining with all your wit; So shall you baulk the wily foe-- Unhit, shall make a hit.

E. T.

CHAPTER XI

OUR VERY MIXED PUBLIC

_A Study of Tommy Atkins, the Inscrutable--Our Dutch Compositors Arraigned._

The lady who signed herself "Miss Uitlander" was also kind enough to write for us an article on "Tommy in a Lady's Eyes." It was clever.

She said that Tommy walked the streets looking as if he always had walked them--and that was true. It is also true that Tommy did everything else in the same way. Wherever you put him or he found himself he uttered no comments or exclamations, but at once adapted himself to the situation. During the seven months I was with him I never could fathom the operations of his mind. Sometimes I suspected that he had none; at other times I envied him the kind of mind he had.

Our lady reporter said that Tommy "loves to make an impression on the feminine heart--but, alas! his khaki uniform does not suit him. Like country, like dress. We now see ourselves as others see us, a khaki-coloured people in a vast khaki-coloured land." Of the officers she said, "their amiability, patience, and high breeding are a treat to come in contact with in a country such as this, where Jack is considered as good as his master; in his own estimation, a very good deal better."

"Bloemfontein is khaki-mad," she concluded; "Tommy is everywhere. The shops overflow with him--and _how_ he spends his money! It will be an object-lesson to those who, a few short weeks ago, were sure that England was on the verge of bankruptcy. The streets abound with him.

The place is a beehive of soldiery, and never again will be any other, I most fervently hope and trust."

I copy this bit of a long article because it brings strongly to mind and in full swing and colour the daily scenes in the streets of Bloemfontein. Whenever we ran out of THE FRIEND office to the hotel or the printing works or the Club, we saw the same endless parade of soldiers up and down the pavements, the same motley cavalcade of mounted men in the streets. At the sound of drums we all ran out--for civilisation was far away, and the natural man was welling up strong in us--to see a regiment marching in, or out--or, too often, to view a funeral procession leading a poor bundle of the dust of a hero strapped upon a gun-carriage.

In the shops we found a wall of soldiers before every counter. They were in swarms like flies in all except the drinking places. There they could not go; poor fellows, to whom a drink would have seemed so much more than to us, who could have it whenever and wherever we wanted it.

I will say again, here, as I have said elsewhere once before, that though we underwent more danger than many of the soldiers (who were not sent, as we were, into every battle), and though we endured hardships sufficient to break many strong men, we correspondents had this advantage over the rest--that, no matter how light was the marching-kit ordered for the troops, we were usually followed by our carts, and when these came up with us, we had abundance--and some luxuries.

It was my good fortune to be able to replenish the larder of one regiment more than once when, between battles, it entertained a general or the Commander-in-Chief. We in Roberts's and Methuen's army, were never criticised for living as well as we could, but there is a story current in army and war correspondent circles to the effect that the hero of Omdurman severely rebuked certain correspondents for living on a scale which provoked the envy of the officers, and demoralised them. One correspondent of the little mess that was thus criticised--a man who drank very little himself--is said to have utilised one camel solely to carry the champagne with which he entertained his friends among the officers. I do not say what I might have done had this story been told me earlier, but, as it was, I had no camel, and the champagne that kind friends sent me from England never reached me.

My stores consisted of poultry in tins, puddings, jams (how good those Cape jams are, by the way; they should have a great sale in all civilised parts), tinned vegetables, bully beef and bullier tongue and ham, preserved fruits, biscuits, figs, cigarettes, cigars, and a little most evanescent whisky.

But to get back to the streets of soldier-burdened Bloemfontein; how surely, as we a.s.sembled in the corner by the office, did the soldiers recognise their poet and friend. He looked at all of them in general, but all of them stared at him in particular. They pa.s.sed the word from rank to rank, "There's Rudyard Kipling!" and then marched on, leaving their eyes on his face while their bodies pa.s.sed along, until it looked as if they must dislocate their necks before they had their fill of seeing him.

He was like a comrade when he talked to a private, and talk to them he did. Jack tar, Colonial, regular, and Pathan, he talked to all alike.

"How are you getting on? Is your camp all right? Near here? Where was your last fight?" So he both introduced himself and set them talking and at ease--all in a breath.

But, as I have said, "Tommy" is inscrutable. I stepped one day into a German tobacconist's across the street from, and farther along than, the Club, and found it packed by soldiers who were being served by an insolent German with a portrait of ex-President Steyn in his coat lapel.

"Take that picture out of your b.u.t.ton-hole," said I. "What do you mean by wearing a thing like that when you are under British rule, and have been both protected and generously treated?"

"I vill vear vot I shoose," said he.

I made a mental promise to see that he did not wear that emblem much longer, and then turning to the soldiers I said, "Men, did you not see what this man is wearing? Why do you spend your money on a man whose sympathies are with the Boers? Give his shop the cold shoulder, and he will soon see that he is making a mistake."

The appeal was in vain. The men instantly began to look very uncomfortable. They rolled their eyes up to the ceiling or pinned their gaze on the floor. No one said a word or even shot a glance of approval in my direction. They did not care. Tommy does not care--never cares--about anything, apparently.

I tried to keep my promise. Search was made for that tobacconist, but he never served behind his counter after that visit of mine. He saved the military the trouble of sending him to Capetown.

Lively days were those for rebels and irreconcilables. The men who had most ardently furthered the cause of the Bond and the Transvaal war party, and who had the indecency to loiter in the town, were quickly weeded out and sent to the Boer prison camp near Capetown. If we could not always tell who were our friends, these mischievous wretches were worse off, for, ofttimes, their old neighbours, tired of the war and awake to the folly of keeping it up, pointed them out to the military, and retailed their nauseous histories.

"I feel a little like a lieutenant of Fouche," said one correspondent to me. "I had pointed out to me a former editor of one of the local papers whose pen was used with vitriol and who did as much as any man to degrade and spoil this little country. I was told that he is still talking angrily and abusively of us, and I was indignant. I mentioned the case to a prominent military officer and in three hours the man was a prisoner on his way to Capetown. I feel as if I was living in Paris in the French revolution--very creepy and uncomfortable. I shall keep my discoveries of such rascals to myself after this."

In this number mine was the leader ent.i.tled, "Do we Spare the Rod too Much?" A friendly visitor, whose signature "L. D.-J." unfortunately fails to recall his full name to my mind, wrote a very interesting sketch called "Towards War," which shows with fidelity to the truth how the mere process of going to war prepares one for the war itself.

Mr. Landon wrote the first true account most of us saw or heard of the mishap at Karree Siding, where four of our officers were shot, on March 23, while riding over the country on a search for forage. Lieut.

Lygon, who was one of the killed, was an intimate and beloved friend of Mr. Landon, who mourned him deeply and most lovingly looked after his burial and the proper marking of his grave. Death had come too close to all of us far too often, but never quite so close to any one of us as in this instance.

Mr. Gwynne's thoughtful essays on the revolutionised science of war produced a first reply in this number, from an officer competent to discuss the subject. General Sir Henry Colvile wrote with much good humour twitting us for the blundering of our compositors, who had made a botch of the double acrostic he had so kindly sent us some days before. The fact that we were as much to blame as the compositors he managed, with extremely clever wording, to make us feel, though he did not say so. Those compositors!--were ever men so badly served as we were by them? They doubled our work, and though we corrected every error they made they often spoiled our efforts at the last by failing to carry out our corrections. They were so ingenious as to spell struggle "strxxlg," and then to insist that it should appear so in THE FRIEND. They invented the new rank of "branch colonel" to take the place of brigadier-general or lance-corporal, I cannot remember which.

I used to think they made this trouble on purpose, for I knew that some were Dutch and all had been with the Boers before we came. And when secret pro-Boer circulars and incentives to disorder were found to have been printed in the town, I had a sneaking suspicion that I could guess who were the printers.

We cut the Gordian knot of one of our troubles in this number by reducing the price of THE FRIEND to one penny to men of all ranks alike.

THE FRIEND.

(_Edited by the War Correspondents with Lord Roberts' Force._)

BLOEMFONTEIN, TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 1900.

BY THE EDITORS.

_To Correspondents._--Please do not write on both sides of your letter sheets when you contribute to THE FRIEND.

It's all right to take a kopje on both sides, but you should not send it in on both sides.

Some of the Editors are sufficiently profane already.

CONCERNING ACROSTICS.

BY MAJOR-GENERAL SIR H. E. COLVILE.

SIR,--"We don't hexpect hart and we don't hexpect hacting, but yer might jine yer flats."

It is perhaps too much to expect that the gentleman who sets up the type of THE FRIEND should know the usual structure of a double-acrostic, or that he should trouble himself with such details as my punctuation and spelling; but he might have let my lines continue to scan and retain some germ of meaning; and, even if he did not realise that the _proem_ was intended for verse, he might have let it stand as English prose. His statement that "according to the writer" the answer gives "the most appropriate cognomen," &c., is interesting, as anything must be that falls from his stick. It further reveals a wealth of imagination of which his previous efforts gave us no hint.