We entered Bloemfontein on March 13th. Two days later I was asked by Mr. F. W. Buxton, of the Johannesburg Star, to attend a meeting of some other correspondents and Lord Stanley in Lord Stanley's office on that day. I had caught up with the army by a dangerous journey with only two companions across the veldt from Kimberley, where an injury to my leg had laid me up. I had reported myself to Lord Stanley, the censor. I had previously carried on some correspondence with him, but our personal acquaintance had not been of more than five minutes' duration. I could not, therefore, know at that time that he was to prove himself the most competent of all the censors appointed to supervise the work of us correspondents. In saying that he was the "most competent" I mean that he ranked above all the others in every quality which goes to make up fitness for this unceasing and exacting work. He had quick intelligence, great breadth of judgment, unfailing courtesy, unbroken patience, and all the modesty of a truly able man.
Hardly can the average reader estimate the degree of satisfaction with which we correspondents came quickly to realise the admirable qualities of this first and only fair and considerate censor that most of us had known in the war. At one place we knew a censor who read the letters which came to officers and privates from their wives in England, and who used to regale his chance acquaintances with comparisons between the sterling virtues and deep affection of the letters to Tommy, and the colder, more selfish, and even querulous messages of the wives of officers.
At another place we had a censor who obliged us to hand to him our letters to our wives and sweethearts unsealed, and in one case this censor kept for twenty-four hours a letter I had written to my family.
Still another censor showered his contempt upon certain correspondents who, in every way which goes to make up refinement, self-respect, and dignity, were many times better men than he. It amused him to take the despatches of a Colonial lad, who was doing his best to enter upon an honourable career, and throw them in his waste basket daily for ten days without informing the youth of their fate. It pleased him to insult me by telling me that the only message I could send to England must be a description of a sandstorm; while to Mr. E. F. Knight, a man Lord Methuen said he "was proud to have with his army," this censor said, "There is only one thing I will allow you to write—that is, a description of a new Union Jack which has just been run up over the headquarters."
With such ill-chosen, mistaken men had we undergone experiences, and now, at last, we met with Lord Stanley, who had the most intense likes and dislikes for those around him, yet never let these hinder or temper his unvarying fairness; who was as firm as iron and yet always gentle; a stout, strong, stalwart man in build, hearty and kindly in manner; a man who took command as easily and exercised it as smoothly as if he had been a general at birth.
I speak of him at some length not merely because his case proves that the one well-equipped censor appointed in the armies on the west side of the continent was a civilian, and not only because this one competent censor gave equally complete satisfaction to both the Army and the Press, but because he assumed a conspicuous and important part in the story I am telling.
His office was as nearly literally a hole in a wall as a room in a house could well be. It was in the corner of the Free State Post Office building, facing the great central square of dirt, in the middle of which stood the market, under whose open shed the mounted men of the City Imperial Volunteers lived among their saddles and bridles, and slept on the tables of the greengrocers, whose place this once had been. On the Post Office side of the square was the Free State Hotel, the best in the town. On the opposite side, an eighth of a mile away, was the Club. Between the two ends ran a double row of such shops as one looks for in a small village, and behind one of these was the office of a newspaper called The Friend of the Free State.
Lord Stanley's office was a wretched poke-hole of a room. It boasted a door with glass panels and no window. Its floor was of bare boards. Its walls were partly made of soiled plaster and partly of bare boards. Opposite the door, in the corner, stood a kitchen table which was never used, and in the other dark end of the room was another kitchen table, behind which, on a kitchen chair, the ex-Guardsman and Whip of the Unionist Party sat nearly all day, and some hours of every evening, with one hand full of manuscript and the other holding the little triangular stamp with which he printed the sign manual of his approval upon nearly every despatch which was written by those correspondents who kept within the law governing the cabling of news to their journals. A kerosene lamp, an inkpot and pen, and a litter of papers were the other appointments of the room. The censor was clad in khaki like all the rest of us, but the collar of his tunic bore on each side the short bit of red cloth which marked him as a staff officer.
To this office, at the censor's invitation, came Perceval Landon, correspondent of the Times, H. A. Gwynne, of Reuter's Agency, F. W. Buxton, of the Johannesburg Star, and myself.
"Gentlemen," said Lord Stanley after the door had been closed and locked to keep out the current of "Tommies" with telegrams which flowed in and eddied before the desk all day, "Lord Roberts wants to have a daily newspaper published for the entertainment and information of the Army while we are here. I may tell you that we are likely to stay here four weeks. You four are asked to undertake the work of bringing out the newspaper. Will you do it?"