A Flesh-and-blood Miss Bloemfontein resents my Love-letter.
"The Friend" of March 20th contained five advertisements 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 attitude 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 passes 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 assumed, 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 assumed, 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:—