For one very obvious reason war corresponding has not had very much of a vogue in past years with Australian journalists; in fact, the fighting business altogether has been very much neglected. As a group of colonies or a nation—which we hope to be almost immediately—we are not old enough to invite anyone else to put up his hands, and we are too far away to take more than a languid interest in other peoples' scraps. We did send a contingent and a few correspondents to the London Show, in '86 I think it was, but we only got there in time to return and make ourselves look rather ridiculous. Since then the "professional correspondent" might have starved and pined comfortably to death for all the work he would be likely to get. He couldn't have kept up the lecturing dodge with such long intervals between scraps. We didn't even think it worth while to send to the Philippine show, although it occurred almost at our very door.
You see, in some of our Australian legislatures we groan under the inflictions of what are known as "labour parties," and labour parties all the world over have a rooted abhorrence of anything which tends to the maintenance of law and order. Labour parties, moreover, are generally made up of men who have before their accession to Parliament led some big anti-capitalistic agitation and they know what the sensation is to find themselves confronted with rifles, and even bayonets. Consequently they dislike the military element with a mortal dislike. They make a dead set at raw military estimates every year, and laugh to scorn the military spirit. From all of which it may be inferred that war corresponding with us has not hitherto been one of the most lucrative of professions. Rich squatters don't choose it as a career for their sons, and poor people have still the Banks and the Church and Parliament to fall back upon. Those of us, therefore, who for our sins have been sent out of this show, come as mere "rooineks," or "new chums," to use the Australian equivalent. Strange to say, the only one amongst us who was also in the Soudan received a mortal wound the other day near Rensburg.
There is this to be said, however, in extenuation of our greenness to the business, that our early training is of the sort which ought to make for efficiency. The Australian pressman, like his cousin over here, is a child of the bush. His "beat" covers some thousands of square, solid, British miles. One day he is out in the wild West among wilder shearers, beside whom the average Tommy is a mere circumstance. There is trouble in station sheds, and wild, uncivilised war between unionists and blacklegs. Blue metal in chunks buzzes past one's ears as thick as Mauser bullets at Magersfontein; railway carriages are quickly reduced to ruins, huts and grass fired for miles round; mobs of unionists carry havoc on the luckless blackleg and let slip the dogs of war—always blue metal. This is the stuff on which the Australian pressman is fed up.
Next day he may be sent up to the flooded north: a river has burst its banks and submerged some twenty miles of settled country; occupants of single story houses find themselves high and dry on their roof-tops, others have sought shelter in trees; their household goods float gaily downstream alongside dead cattle and horses. Rescue parties in flood boats pull frantically from house to house carrying provisions and clothing for shivering women and children. These floods occur quite frequently, and your pressman soon learns to live for weeks almost up to his waist in water. He manages to boil his "billy" in the bottom of his boat without springing a leak. He will make excellent "damper" with arrowroot and Epsom salts if he can't get flour and baking powder. He will ride anything which will go on four legs, and after he has been lost on the trackless bush a time or two, he won't always travel in a circle.
He has a standing engagement in an annual encampment where 5,000 or 6,000 troops are concentrated for nine days' continuous training, and when general orders are issued beforehand notifying the exact time and spot where an engagement will take place, between so-and-so representing the enemy, whose position will be indicated by red flags, and such and such regiments representing the attacking force, who may be distinguished by blue flags. We manage those things better at Easter manœuvres than we do on service. Here, they don't send round cards of invitation to correspondents when a fight is going to take place. One has to chase round the country after it, fighting staff officers on the lines of communication all the way. But that is another story. Since our present illustrious Commander-in-Chief has taken over the conduct of the campaign we haven't been able to raise much of a grumble, and what happened prior to this is forgotten—at least for the time.
F. Wilkinson,
Sydney Daily Telegraph.
MISS BLOEMFONTEIN'S ANSWER.
TO MR. ENGLISHMAN—A LOVELESS LETTER.
Come, tall Mr. Englishman, and sit down beside me, but for the love of heaven, do not look into my eyes, lest they scorch you with a fiery "hate of hate." The blue of mine eyes may be perilously near that blue which men have named electric, and such an electric shock of scorn would they shoot that you would wish yourself amidst the turmoil of war again, some of whose bolts and bombs have taken the lives of our fathers, brothers, friends! You will not wonder then that I do not like your whole army or any part thereof, although it may have done me the great and unwished-for honour of liking me—or you, the conqueror of the land, which is mine by the same right as your little island is yours—the right of old tradition which is so great a factor in the history of nations, and in which our land abounds; the right of residence which has been ours since our peacefully ruled and hitherto prosperous little Free State was created—the right of love for the land of our birth—the right of pride in our despised beaux, with their homespun suits and lavish beards and whiskers, who have gone out to fight with such bravery for their cause and country.
Surely, Mr. Englishman, you of all men should be able to appreciate this factor in them, you who pride yourself on being the bravest man of the bravest of living nations. Were this factor missing in them, would you not have been here five long months ago? Surely you, I say, should be able to overlook such small matters as the bad cut of their coats and the length of their beards. You should know that greatness does not lie in outward seeming.