BLOEMFONTEIN, MARCH 21, 1900.
RUDYARD KIPLING.
EDITORIAL BY H. A. GWYNNE.
To-day we expect to welcome here in our camp the great poet and writer, who has contributed more than any one perhaps towards the consolidation of the British Empire. His visit is singularly appropriate. He will find encamped round the town not only his friend Tommy Atkins, but the Australian, the Canadian, the New Zealander, the Tasmanian, the volunteer from Ceylon, from Argentine, and from every quarter of the globe. He will see the man of the soil—the South African Britisher—side by side with his fellow colonist from over the seas. In fact, Bloemfontein will present to him the actual physical fulfilment of what must be one of his dearest hopes—the close union of the various parts of the greatest Empire in the world. His visit, therefore, will have in it something of the triumph of a conqueror—a conqueror who, with the force of genius, has swept away barriers of distance and boundary, and made a fifth of the globe British, not only in title, but in real sentiment.
We, belonging to that portion of the Press to which is assigned the duty of witnessing and chronicling the deeds which make history, extend to the illustrious writer a welcome, sincere and whole-hearted. We feel, all of us, that his brush alone can do complete justice to the wonderful pictures of war which we have been privileged to see. We, who have been with Tommy Atkins on many a hard campaign, have long ago come to love him for his quiet, unostentatious courage and his patient endurance of hardships; but we feel that Mr. Kipling alone can translate to the world the true inwardness of Tommy's character. We feel sure that the Mulvaneys, the Learoyds, and the Ortherises will welcome him as heartily as we do, and we are hopeful that this fresh meeting of Tommy Atkins and perhaps the only man who rightly understands him, will be productive of fresh pictures of the British soldier.
THE SOBEREST ARMY IN THE WORLD.
BY H. A. GWYNNE.
The force which, under the command of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, left Enslin and occupied Bloemfontein will undoubtedly be known in history as the "Sober Army." Never before in the history of campaigning has there been known such an absence of excess in the way of drinking—and eating too, as far as that is concerned. Some people have dared to cast aspersions on the British army by insinuating that drunkenness is not unknown among its members. They have even gone further and declared that officers and men are very fond of their "tot" or their "pint" or their whisky and soda. I only wish some of these calumniators could have accompanied Lord Roberts' force. They would have recanted on the spot, and returned home convinced that the British army was not only the finest but the soberest in the world.
Their excessive sobriety and wonderful self-restraint in the face of temptation rather tempts one to delve deep down for the psychological reasons. I have myself made inquiries, but I must confess that I am at a loss for a real reason. My firm belief is that the British soldier is so actuated by a deep sense of duty that, having come to the conclusion that hard drinking and hard fighting were incompatible, he promptly dropped the former and devoted all his energies to the latter. It would have been expected that at the end of a long, dusty march the men would have, immediately after being dismissed, made a rush for the canteen. Nothing of the sort. They sat down to tea and coffee and left the canteen waiters kicking their heels doing nothing. It is true one or two soldiers have told me that they couldn't find the canteen; but the majority of the men chose, of their own free will, to ignore its existence, and actually never looked for it. But this noble continence, this splendid self-restraint has been very nearly spoilt by the folly and wickedness of some of the authorities. They actually issued rum to the men at intervals. Now one of Tommy's greatest virtues is obedience. He was ordered to drink rum and he did it—just as he advanced against a kopje spitting forth lead when he was ordered. But the task of swallowing the hateful stuff was distasteful in the extreme. I have seen him take his mug and get his tot and then look at his officer as much as to say, "Must I really take it?" The officer's answering glance was invariably a command which poor Tommy could not disobey, and he tossed off the liquor with one gulp to get it over all the quicker, and then held his mug upside down to show he had done the deed.
One would have thought, indeed, that this wonderful self-restraint would be destroyed in the wild rush of joy with which the army was filled the night that Cronje surrendered. Not a bit of it. The men lying on the soaking ground never touched a drop of alcohol, although many would say that the victory of our arms deserved an alcoholic celebration. But that night the canteens were as deserted as ever. One man, and one man only, fell. He was an officer's servant, and was discovered gloriously happy, delightedly drunk. His comrades kept hitting and punching him and asking him where he had found the liquor, it evidently being their firm intention to destroy it. He refused, however, to answer a word until his master found him and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him, and exclaimed with eager face, "Good Heavens, Jones, where the devil did you get it?" And Jones answered drunkenly to an eager crowd of expectant officers and men, "Meth'lated Shpirits, Shir. I'sh found it in waggon."