How Spreckley made us laugh, fooling around the piano as if he were just going to sing!
It is daily a source of wonder to me how the General manages to handle some of the local officers and men. Of course, with the better class it is impossible not to get on well, but there are certain individuals who to any ordinary Imperial officer would be perfectly “impossible.” Sir Frederick, however, is round them in a moment, and either coaxes or frightens them into acquiescence as the case demands; but were any general, without his personal knowledge of South Africa and its men, to attempt to take this motley force in hand, I cannot think there would be anything but ructions in a very short space of time. A little tact and give–and–take properly applied reaps a good return from Colonial troops, but the slightest show of domineering or letter–of–the–regulations discipline is apt to turn them crusty and “impossible.” A very good instance of the general feeling that seems to influence the local troops is shown in the following letter which the General has received. (The writer of it leaves it to the discretion of the General where to insert commas and stops.)
“To Mr. Frederick Carrington—General.
“Sir Seeing in the papers and news from the North the serous phase that affairs are taking I am willing to raise by your permission a set of Good hard practical colonials here that have seen service Farmers Sons and Chuck my situation and head them off as a Yeomanry Corps I have been under you Sir in the B.B.P (Bechuanaland Border Police) and am well acquainted with the Big gun Drill and a Good Shot with the maxim. We will consider it an honor to stand under you Sir but object to eye glasses and kid gloves otherwise
“Yrs to command
“H——“
“Eyeglass and kid gloves” standing in the estimation of this and other honest yeomen of the colony for “Imperial officer.”
Unfortunately the Colonials have had experience of one class or another of regular officers, which has not suited their taste, and his defects get on their nerves and impress themselves on their minds, and they are very apt to look on such individual as the type of his kind, and if they afterwards meet with others having different attributes, they merely consider them as exceptions which prove the rule.
No doubt there are certain types among us, and our training and upbringing in the service are apt to gradually run us in the groove of one type or another.
The type which perhaps is most of a red rag to the Colonial is the highly–trained officer, bound hand and foot by the rules of modern war, who moves his force on a matured, deliberate plan, with all minutiæ correctly prepared beforehand, incapable of change to meet any altered or unforeseen circumstances, and who has a proper contempt for nigger foes and for colonial allies alike.