It was while I was visiting the sick and suffering laid, of course without beds, on the bare floor of this extemporised House of Healing that our ever busy commander-in-chief called on a similar errand of pitying kindliness. Fortunately for all concerned the master-mind of the whole campaign is of a devout as well as kindly type. Lord Roberts not only encouraged to the uttermost all army temperance work, being himself the founder of the A.T.A., but like Lord Methuen took a lively interest in the spiritual welfare of the troops. Yet never was a general more loved by his men, or more implicitly trusted. They reposed so much the calmer confidence in his generalship because of their instinctive belief in his goodness, and as an illustration of that belief the following testimony sent by a certain bombardier appeared in a recent report of Miss Hanson's Aldershot Soldiers' Home:—
"Lord Roberts! Well, he's just a father. Often goes round hospital in Bloemfontein, and it's 'Well, my lad, how are you to-day? Anything I can do for you? Anything you want?' and never forgets to see the man has what he asks for. Goes to the hospital train—'Are you comfortable? Are you sure you're comfortable?' Then it's 'Buck up! Buck up!' to those who need it. But when he sees a man dying, it's 'Can I pray with you, my lad?' I've seen him many a time praying, with not a dry eye near,—tears in his eyes and ours. It don't matter if there is a clergyman or anyone else present, if he sees a man very ill he will pray with him. He is a lord!"
Whether in this story there is any slight touch of soldierly imaginativeness, I cannot tell, but happy is the general about whom his men write in such a fashion; and happy is the army controlled by such a head!
On the Friday evening, a few hours before our arrival, President Steyn stood in the drift of the Kroonstad stream, sjambok in hand, seeking to drive back the fleeing Boers to their new-made and now deserted trenches; but the President's sjambok proved as unavailing as Mrs Partington's heroic broom. The Boer retreat had grown into a rout; and the President's own retirement that night was characterised by more of despatch than dignity. He is reported to have said, "Better a Free State ruined than no Free State at all." For its loss of freedom, and for its further ruin, no living man is so responsible as he. But for his sympathy and support the Boers would have made less haste in the penning of their Ultimatum, and war might still have slept. Steyn's ambition awoke it!
Whilst its President-protector fled, Kroonstad that night found itself face to face with pandemonium let loose. The great railway bridge over the Valsch was blown up with a terrific crash. The new goods station belonging to the railway, recently built at a cost of £5000, and filled with valuable stores, including food stuffs, was drenched with paraffin by the Boer Irish Brigade, and given to the flames; while five hundred sacks of Indian corn piled outside shared the same fate. No wonder that, as at Bloemfontein, the arrival of the Guards' Brigade was welcomed with ringing cheers, and the frantic waving by many a hand of tiny Union Jacks. Our coming was to them the end of anarchy.
It is however worthy of note that the Boers who thus gave foodstuffs to the flames, and strove continually to tear up the rails along which food supplies arrived, yet left their wives and children for us to feed. About that they had no compunctions and no fear, in spite of the fabled horrors ascribed to British troops. They knew full well that even if those troops were half starved, these non-combatants would not be suffered to lack any good thing. Even President Kruger, though careful to carry all his wealth away, commended his wife to our tender keeping. Some of us would rather he had taken the wife and left the wealth; but concerning the scrupulous courtesy shown to her, no voice of complaining has ever been heard. When we ourselves were famished we fed freely the families of the very men who set fire to our food supplies; and their children especially were as thoughtfully cared for as though they were our own. War is always an accursed thing, but even in this dread sphere the Christ-influence is not unfelt.
A Sunday at last that was also a Sabbath.
To my intense delight after so many Sabbathless Sundays, I found myself privileged to conduct a well-attended parade service for the Nonconformists in the Guards' Brigade at 9 A.M., and for the men of General Stephenson's Brigade at a later hour. In the afternoon I paid a visit to the native Wesleyan church which has connected with it about twelve hundred members in and around Kroonstad. The building, which is day school, Sunday school and chapel all in one, is already of a goodly size, but it was about to be enlarged when the war began. I found a capital congregation awaiting my appearing, the women sitting on one side, the men on the other. There were three interpreters who translated what I said into Kaffir, Basuto and Dutch; an arrangement which gives a preacher ample time to think before he speaks; though once or twice I fear I forgot when number two had finished that number three had still to follow. I noticed when the collection was taken, there seemed almost as many coins as worshippers, and all the coins were silver, excepting only two. Yet this was a congregation of Kaffirs!
At night, assisted by the Canadian chaplain, I took the service in the Wesleyan English church, where the singing and the collection were both golden. So also was the text; and delightsomely appropriate withal. "The Most High ruleth the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever He will." Of the sermon based upon it however it is not for me to speak. So ended my first Sunday in Kroonstad, where I was the favoured guest of Mr and Mrs Thorn, late of Bristol, and still Britishers "to the backbone the thick way through."