It is not found specially difficult to replace a fresh tune to an old number. On one occasion you might hear, in response to the order “Five,” selections from The Bohemian Girl; a few months later the same word of command would produce The Policeman’s Holiday.
You should see the Drum-Major, who is a native. He bears himself as though leading the Grenadiers, the Coldstreams, the Scots or the Irish Guards. His imposing staff is swung and twisted and twirled in the air, and presently balanced horizontally as he guides the front rank of the band wheeling, or he holds it aloft as a sign for the files to counter-march. He is quite conscious of his importance as regards his own men, I assure you; yet he knows his work so well that when Sergeant-Major Slaney, who had been detailed from the Coldstream Guards for Special Service instruction, told him how to take the band round the ground for kinematograph purposes, it was necessary to tell him only once.
That induces me to mention the admirable method followed in handling the men. All words of command by the whites, whether officers or non-commissioned officers, are given in quiet, cool tones. There is never any undue bustling in a manner to make the men frightened or nervous. Nor are they treated as automatons. Every opportunity is taken to develop the intelligence of those capable of exercising any. I noticed both at Zungeru and Lokoja that whenever an officer wanted a section to go through a movement he invariably gave the order to the senior native non-commissioned officer and allowed him to move the squad accordingly. In this way these non-coms become self-reliant and of immeasurably greater value in an emergency on active service, where they may be thrown on their own resources.
I witnessed a march of the Second battalion through Lokoja, traversing the native quarter. It was done for recruiting. How the drums and fifes and bugles brought the young women to line up on the route and gaze on the troops as they proudly swept by! And there were the small boys, as yet entirely minus clothing, trotting along to the martial sounds.
For days some of the bigger lads hung about the encampment of huts where the troops live, desirous of enlisting as buglers but not venturing to enter the trimly-kept compounds. At first they shrunk back with awe as a white officer or non-commissioned officer passed in or out. But as one of either class smiled at the youngsters or patted them on the head they gained courage and eventually several asked a native soldier how they could enlist. The majority of the youthful buglers are, however, sons of soldiers or of ex-soldiers.
The military spirit has a large influence among the civilian Hausa population. They classify all Europeans in the country into practically two classes: “Colour-Sergeant bature”—bature is Hausa for white man—and “Bombature.” The latter is equivalent to big white men—not in stature but status—and the former is the mark of subordinate rank. The “Colour-Sergeant bature” will be men of the class of overseers on the mines or second-class officials on the railway and others of corresponding rating in commercial concerns, as distinguished from their seniors. Occasionally there is an individual between the two classifications. He is provided for by the designation “Sergeant-Major bature.”
In the estimate of the Hausas, there are no whites to be ranked as Privates. All are regarded as in some degree above themselves. It behoves Englishmen who go to Nigeria to remember this and to bear themselves accordingly. That does not warrant arrogance but entails self-control.
