This was the day upon which Mr. Landon, Mr. Gwynne, Mr. James Barnes, and myself were to entertain at dinner Sir Alfred Milner, Lord Roberts, and Rudyard Kipling. The menus had been printed under the eye of Mr. Landon, and were very distinguished examples of plain typography. As twenty-four were to be used, we gave twelve each to Mr. W. B. Wollen, R.I., and to Mr. Lester Ralph, war artists with the army, requesting these able friends to do their best to produce on each guest's menu a picture illustrative of some exploit or leading characteristic of the recipient. A very notable series of drawings resulted—so notable that the Field-Marshal, whose own card showed him in the act of receiving the Keys of Bloemfontein, asked to see them all. When, toward the end of the repast, each man wrote his name on every menu, you may be certain those bits of pasteboard bearing the simple words, "The Dinner of the 28th of March, Bloemfontein, 1900," leaped high in value, and in the jealous pride of every man who had one.
That was a dinner! An affair as unique and as singular an episode of war as—as, let us say, The Friend itself. Beside the great General, the High Commissioner, and the Poet of the Empire, we had with us General Pretyman, Military Governor of the town; General Forestier-Walker, the courtly commander of the Lines of Communication; the gallant, debonair Pole-Carew; the redoubtable flashing-eyed Hector Macdonald; the polished Sir Henry Colvile; Colonel Otter, the leader of the men with the maple-leaf; Lord Stanley, diplomat and censor; Lord Kerry; Colonel Girourd, binder of new Empire-fractions with threads of steel; Colonel Hanbury Williams, the High Commissioner's right hand; Colonel Neville Chamberlain, veteran at Empire building—and then our comrade-historians of the pen and pencil, W. B. Wollen, R.I., Lester Ralph, H. F. P. Battersby, A. B. Paterson, H. C. Shelley, and W. Blelock. We had invited Lord Kitchener, but he was away at Prieska. On his return he expressed his regret that he had not participated in this historic gathering. Excepting Lord Kitchener, whose field of endeavour was so ably represented, only Mr. Chamberlain, of all the great empire builders of the day, was missing.
We dined at the railway station, because it had the largest room and best cook in the new colony.
I hear the band outside. I see a carriage roll up, and Sir Alfred Milner springs out, spare-framed and visaged like an eagle. The Field-Marshal follows him, precise in movement, gentle of mien but erect and firm as steel, with long usage of command resting as light and firm upon him as if he was born with it. I see the two leaders halt and urge one another to take the lead, but Lord Roberts is the firmer and will not go first. Again at the door of the dining-hall the two great men halt and dispute with pantomimic gestures, each anxious to honour the other. When the toasts came, and Mr. Landon told Sir Alfred Milner that he was to be toasted first, the High Commissioner exclaimed, "It's absolutely wrong." Mr. Landon replied, "I am under orders. I must obey Lord Roberts," for the Field-Marshal had already been consulted. All the others are in the room, under the flaming flag and the huge paper roses. We dine—better than at the Residency—upon several courses and with good wine a-plenty.
I see my handsome and gifted colleague, Mr. Landon, rise to toast the High Commissioner. What's this we hear? He is welcoming the Viceroy as a brother in journalism, a newspaper man like ourselves. Up rises the man who lives in the heart of care and the furnace of dissension—pale, grave, concentrated, like one who thinks of but one thing and has but one thing to do—and that a thing gigantic. He replies that it is true that he was once a writer like ourselves; that he enjoyed those days; that he made delightful friends and spent glad hours in them; that he has had much to do with the gentlemen of the Press in Capetown, and that his relations with all have been without a flaw. After that he speaks but little of the heart of care where his official bed is laid, or of the furnace blasts of treason and of discord round his chair at the Cape, but, with unassumed modesty, calls our attention to the military magician across the table and to what he has done.
It is Mr. Gwynne who rises next—one of the very best-equipped war correspondents with the British forces, both as a campaigner and a critic of war, and high among the best as a writer. It is fitting that he should introduce the Field-Marshal, for he is liked and trusted by his distinguished guest, who has discovered, I fancy, that under the correspondent's khaki beats the heart of the soldier.
Lord Roberts replied that he was very proud to be the guest of the war correspondents. He liked to have them with him, and he was glad when they criticised whatever was amiss, for he profited by reading what they said. Turning to us, the Field-Marshal remarked, "You share all our hardships and exposure. All the troops do not engage in every battle, but you go to all, so that you experience even more danger than most of us. May I call you 'comrades'?"
I remember that he spoke earnestly of the work Sir Alfred Milner was doing, and credited that statesman with the most difficult task of any man who served the Empire. One other bit of his address I recall—a mere phrase, but a remarkable one: "The gentlemen I command—my gentlemanly army."
It was my good fortune to introduce Rudyard Kipling—a delicate as well as a proud task, because I knew that fulsome praise, or even the most honest appreciation, would make him uncomfortable. I remember that I spoke of the narrow compass of Shakspere's renown in his day, and the world-wide fame of a man like Kipling in these days of multitudinous newspapers and telegraphs and cables.