War's Brighter Side Part 7

_A Flesh-and-blood Miss Bloemfontein resents my Love-letter._

"THE FRIEND" of March 20th contained five advertis.e.m.e.nts for stolen horses, one of which described the favourite horse of one of the editors: picturesque justice, some will say, for our light and trifling att.i.tude toward the growing evil of horse-lifting. The editorial of the day, "Greater Britain," was one that I wrote, and the note of it was this: "It has been said that each of the preceding centuries during a long period of European history has ended in a great war. This one which closed the nineteenth century is not, and will not become, great, as wars are measured. But it will be recorded as phenomenally important in having given birth to Greater Britain."

We had been offering five shillings each for copies of the "curio"

numbers of March 16th. We now raised the offer to ten shillings a copy. A paragraph in the paper stated that a native (negro) police force had been established in town, with badges bearing the letters "B.N.P." "These police," we said, "have nothing whatever to do with white people."

A few words upon the subject of the natives will not be amiss. It will be remembered that even as the British troops were entering Bloemfontein the negroes were engaged in looting a semi-public Boer building. Lord Roberts felt obliged to stop the triumphal advance and order his staff to drive the ruffians away. Two or more lords carried out the order. After we had established ourselves in the town the negroes were included with the white people in an order requiring them to have pa.s.ses when they entered or left the town, and in order to be out of doors after nightfall. They deeply resented this, after making themselves as obnoxious as they were ridiculous, by their complaints.

They said that they had always been friendly to the English, and had hated the Boers for the way they had maltreated the blacks, but that it seemed the English were little better than the Boers.

The truth is that from Capetown to Bloemfontein they had traded upon a hatred of their Dutch masters, and, whether this was genuine or a.s.sumed, they had endeavoured to turn it to their account in every way. Everywhere that I found them they were too much impressed by the importance which they a.s.sumed, and which we too often encouraged. We paid them many times what was paid to "Tommy Atkins," and employed them in preference to the poor whites. In return they were often lazy, often impudent, sometimes treacherous. I know that they were too freely welcomed when they ran from the Boer lines to ours, and I also know that they sometimes ran back to the Boers with what they had learned. The Afrikanders in our ranks and in our employ often knocked them down for impudence, and the English were horrified; but I fancy the Afrikander knew what he was about in dealing with this especial sort of negro that followed the army.

Mr. Gwynne, in this day's issue, wrote a series of parodies of the despatches of the correspondents of all the leading London and local newspapers. It was the purest fun. It caricatured and exaggerated the methods of each of us so cleverly as to make the series altogether laughable and yet so as to suggest something recognisable in each man's style.

Mr. F. Wilkinson, of the _Sydney Daily Telegraph_, wrote about the Australians an article that is here reprinted. A correspondent of whose name I am not certain continued from the previous day an account of the expedition to the British forces southward of us. The article was so interesting and full of local and military colour that I wish I could give the author the credit he deserves.

The chief event of the day was the receipt of an angry answer to my love letter to Miss Bloemfontein. Even as we read the copy we supposed that some wag in the army had tried to perpetrate a joke upon us, but Mr. Buxton came in and, finding us reading the letter, said that he had received it from a leading man of Bloemfontein, whose talented daughter had written it. She was an earnest adherent of the Boer cause, and expressed her sincere sentiments in this letter, in which she waived aside my protestations of our friendship with something painfully like scorn. Her name was given to us in confidence, and we published her letter with my reply, all agreeing that as she was certain to write another answer, we would give her the last word, and then close the episode.

We were able on this day to announce the establishment of a regular daily train service to all points south. The country below had been cleared of Boers, but the bridge at Norval's Pont was still a wreck, and the trains ran over a temporary structure. Sir Henry Rawlinson arrived in Bloemfontein and took up his quarters at the Residency with Lord Roberts, who on this day announced that he would review the Naval Brigade on the following morning.

We published these three informing paragraphs:--

Note: the price of whiskey is 11s. a bottle, on a rising market.

A French Canadian member of the R.C.R. was doing sentry-go one night at Enslin (Graspan). The countersign for the night was "Halifax." Presently there came a strolling soldier whom our gallant Canadian promptly challenged.

"Who go dare?"

"Friend."

"Advance, fren, and pace on--and say 'Haversack'--all is vale."

There were many such sentry stories in circulation in the army.

Another one was to the effect that a Yorkshireman having to halt, and demand the countersign of a man he knew very well, acquitted himself of his task in these words: "Halt! who goes there. Say 'Majuba,' and toddle along--isn't it all blooming nonsense?"

Finally, there was this one other paragraph especially full of the local colour of our surroundings--

A captured Free Stater tried to impress a sense of his importance upon his captor by declaring that he was a Field Cornet. "I don't care if you're a field big drum. You're my prisoner, and you'd better be very civil and come on."

THE AUSTRALIAN CORRESPONDENT.

BY F. WILKINSON.

For one very obvious reason war corresponding has not had very much of a vogue in past years with Australian journalists; in fact, the fighting business altogether has been very much neglected. As a group of colonies or a nation--which we hope to be almost immediately--we are not old enough to invite anyone else to put up his hands, and we are too far away to take more than a languid interest in other peoples' sc.r.a.ps. We did send a contingent and a few correspondents to the London Show, in '86 I think it was, but we only got there in time to return and make ourselves look rather ridiculous. Since then the "professional correspondent" might have starved and pined comfortably to death for all the work he would be likely to get. He couldn't have kept up the lecturing dodge with such long intervals between sc.r.a.ps.

We didn't even think it worth while to send to the Philippine show, although it occurred almost at our very door.

You see, in some of our Australian legislatures we groan under the inflictions of what are known as "labour parties," and labour parties all the world over have a rooted abhorrence of anything which tends to the maintenance of law and order. Labour parties, moreover, are generally made up of men who have before their accession to Parliament led some big anti-capitalistic agitation and they know what the sensation is to find themselves confronted with rifles, and even bayonets. Consequently they dislike the military element with a mortal dislike. They make a dead set at raw military estimates every year, and laugh to scorn the military spirit. From all of which it may be inferred that war corresponding with us has not hitherto been one of the most lucrative of professions. Rich squatters don't choose it as a career for their sons, and poor people have still the Banks and the Church and Parliament to fall back upon. Those of us, therefore, who for our sins have been sent out of this show, come as mere "rooineks,"

or "new chums," to use the Australian equivalent. Strange to say, the only one amongst us who was also in the Soudan received a mortal wound the other day near Rensburg.

There is this to be said, however, in extenuation of our greenness to the business, that our early training is of the sort which ought to make for efficiency. The Australian pressman, like his cousin over here, is a child of the bush. His "beat" covers some thousands of square, solid, British miles. One day he is out in the wild West among wilder shearers, beside whom the average Tommy is a mere circ.u.mstance.

There is trouble in station sheds, and wild, uncivilised war between unionists and blacklegs. Blue metal in chunks buzzes past one's ears as thick as Mauser bullets at Magersfontein; railway carriages are quickly reduced to ruins, huts and gra.s.s fired for miles round; mobs of unionists carry havoc on the luckless blackleg and let slip the dogs of war--always blue metal. This is the stuff on which the Australian pressman is fed up.

Next day he may be sent up to the flooded north: a river has burst its banks and submerged some twenty miles of settled country; occupants of single story houses find themselves high and dry on their roof-tops, others have sought shelter in trees; their household goods float gaily downstream alongside dead cattle and horses. Rescue parties in flood boats pull frantically from house to house carrying provisions and clothing for shivering women and children. These floods occur quite frequently, and your pressman soon learns to live for weeks almost up to his waist in water. He manages to boil his "billy" in the bottom of his boat without springing a leak. He will make excellent "damper"

with arrowroot and Epsom salts if he can't get flour and baking powder. He will ride anything which will go on four legs, and after he has been lost on the trackless bush a time or two, he won't always travel in a circle.

He has a standing engagement in an annual encampment where 5,000 or 6,000 troops are concentrated for nine days' continuous training, and when general orders are issued beforehand notifying the exact time and spot where an engagement will take place, between so-and-so representing the enemy, whose position will be indicated by red flags, and such and such regiments representing the attacking force, who may be distinguished by blue flags. We manage those things better at Easter manoeuvres than we do on service. Here, they don't send round cards of invitation to correspondents when a fight is going to take place. One has to chase round the country after it, fighting staff officers on the lines of communication all the way. But that is another story. Since our present ill.u.s.trious Commander-in-Chief has taken over the conduct of the campaign we haven't been able to raise much of a grumble, and what happened prior to this is forgotten--at least for the time.

F. WILKINSON, _Sydney Daily Telegraph_.

MISS BLOEMFONTEIN'S ANSWER.

TO MR. ENGLISHMAN--A LOVELESS LETTER.

Come, tall Mr. Englishman, and sit down beside me, but for the love of heaven, do not look into my eyes, lest they scorch you with a fiery "hate of hate." The blue of mine eyes may be perilously near that blue which men have named electric, and such an electric shock of scorn would they shoot that you would wish yourself amidst the turmoil of war again, some of whose bolts and bombs have taken the lives of our fathers, brothers, friends! You will not wonder then that I do not like your whole army or any part thereof, although it may have done me the great and unwished-for honour of liking me--or you, the conqueror of the land, which is mine by the same right as your little island is yours--the right of old tradition which is so great a factor in the history of nations, and in which our land abounds; the right of residence which has been ours since our peacefully ruled and hitherto prosperous little Free State was created--the right of love for the land of our birth--the right of pride in our despised beaux, with their homespun suits and lavish beards and whiskers, who have gone out to fight with such bravery for their cause and country.

Surely, Mr. Englishman, you of all men should be able to appreciate this factor in them, you who pride yourself on being the bravest man of the bravest of living nations. Were this factor missing in them, would you not have been here five long months ago? Surely you, I say, should be able to overlook such small matters as the bad cut of their coats and the length of their beards. You should know that greatness does not lie in outward seeming.

Please do not say "Miss Bloemfontein tripped out to meet us so enticingly;" say, rather, "little Miss Uitlander," who has, as you rightly think, by no means. .h.i.therto scorned our homespun youths, and to whom we extended a loving hand when she came, and who now, in return for this, unnecessarily flaunts your colours in our faces, and welcomes you too kindly. Much bitter sorrow was there, oh sir, when you entered this loved home of ours; I and my sisters, who felt as would your English dames, were another William Conqueror to take their island home from them, lay in dumb anguish and writhed when the word went forth, "we have fallen into bondage," "our enemy hath us in his grasp"--and our cup of bitterness was more than full.

We do cling to our old love, who left us with much misgiving to your tender mercies. Mr. Englishman, fain would he have stayed to protect us, but that he had his command to go;--and this is another thing which you, who think so much of discipline, should be able to appreciate. Though for fear of your displeasure we must hide our feelings, you are hateful to us, oh slayer of our brothers and taker of our home!

We will not forget, Mr. Englishman, and are truly grateful to you, that you behaved to us with common courtesy, and stood aside to let us pa.s.s; but surely you, the politest of polite men, would not take credit for that, which should be the birthright of all gentlemen. We dwell not in times of Sabine sisterhoods, good sir!

And if little Miss Uitlander bathe you in smiles, and lisp pretty nothings into your much-astonished ear, call but to mind that she comes from your own "far countree," and has here learned this way of welcoming the conqueror.

I am no Boadicea, say you. Oh, sir, you mistake grievously. I would smite you with mine own hands, were I able. Did you perhaps not catch a glimpse of me in General Cronje's laager, whither I went to share the danger with my brother, and cheer him in his arduous task?

True it is that homely comfort abounds in our cottages, and should it not be so? Perhaps there was a time too when your stately sister did not scorn to keep house, instead of attending theatres, soirees, musicales, at-homes. Evidently, Miss Uitlander forgot the divine music of Queen's Hall and Covent Garden, when she crowded to do justice to the awful and untuneful melodies, to which your English bandsmen treated her on the Market Square. But you see "It is so long since she left 'home,' and it is sweet to hear those sounds which come straight from dear old England." I, sir, stopped my ears with cotton wool (for, whatever Miss Bloemfontein is, she is musical, and even had I been pleased to see you, I could never have allowed myself to be tortured with those fragments of the divine art). Poor Pan! he stood afar on the topmost steeple of the Dutch Church, and played his pipes and wept, and had you not been so absorbed in "tripping to your gay tunes," you might have heard faintly stealing over our ancient towers "Heeft burghers t'lied der Vrijheid aan," while the organ within our "piously Presbyterian" edifice echoed the anthem, which was caught up by the instrument in your exclusively English cathedral, and Miss Bloemfontein heard the echo and was comforted.

And now, Mr. Englishman, do you fully realise that I am not pleased to see you, that I hate to have you here; I, a real daughter of the soil?

And if to-morrow I could turn you out, I would do so joyously, while little Miss Uitlander would stand by, her lovely eyes moist with grateful tears, and whisper, "That is right," or perhaps push you with her tiny left hand, while she once more extended her right to my badly dressed brothers, as they came over the top of the Bloemfontein Hill!

The gulf between the angry past and the still more angry present will never be bridged, Mr. Englishman. You have made Afrikanderdom by fighting us, and have awakened in our b.r.e.a.s.t.s the knowledge that we are of another sort than yourselves. Only now, with the "Schwanenlied"

sounding in our ears, do we feel what it is to have a country--to be a nation!

MISS BLOEMFONTEIN.

OUR REPLY TO THE LADY.

DEAR MISS BLOEMFONTEIN,--If there is doubt about which young lady it is who has made us welcome here, there is none at all about the genuineness of your letter and yourself. Its sheets exhale the subtle perfume of the mimosa flower, its strong, free writing reveals the confidence, health, and high spirits of the graceful rider of the veldt! Thank G.o.d (and thank you also, my dear) there is no line or phrase of resistance to our suit in all your letter but has a tender phrasing or carries a compliment--so that we know you do not dislike us a tenth so much as you hate the thought of seeming light-of-love, of feeling that we have dared to pity you, of fancying we think you are to be won for the mere asking.

Sweetheart, that was a clumsy letter of ours if it ruffled your maidenly sensitiveness with such misapprehensions. Henry V. was not the only one, or the last, of us Englishmen who could war with men better than he could woo women. And as Katharine looked through young Hal's rough armour into his warm and loyal heart, so we ask you to do with us.