Generals, colonels, majors, captains, subalterns, privates, war correspondents who had not connected themselves with our venture, naval officers—all ranks and all sorts, suddenly rushed to our support, in consequence of my wail for help, and The Friend took on an interest and importance proportionately greater, I think, than that of any newspaper then published in the language. Its circulation rose among the thousands whereas the largest daily distribution had been only 400 copies before the war.
We numbered the paper of March 24th "No. 6," though it was in reality the eighth copy we had published, six being the number since we had enlarged it to its final size. I marvel at our success as I look back upon this number.
Sir William Nicholson, K.C.B., wrote an appreciation of the character, life, and work of the late Sir William Lockhart; General Sir Henry E. Colvile sent us a double acrostic, which the Dutch ones among our eccentric compositors ruined so far beyond repair that it would not be just to reproduce its mangled remains; Mr. Lionel James, who had come over from the Natal side to further distinguish the staff of the Times, wrote upon the death of our gifted colleague, George W. Steevens. Rudyard Kipling contributed to this number the first of his delicious "Fables for the Staff"; a distinguished officer, who shall remain nameless in this connection, contributed an article on "Beards in War"; and Mr. Gwynne began a series of letters entitled "Is the Art of War Revolutionised?" written solely to interest the Army and spur its thinking men to respond.
Mr. H. Prevost Battersby, of the London Morning Post, was another distinguished contributor to this number.
Mr. Kipling now became a regular harnessed member of the four-in-hand team that pulled the paper. With pen in hand and pipe in mouth he sat at the larger of the two tables in our editorial poke-hole, and beginning with a "Now, what shall I do? Write a poem, fill out cables, or correct proofs?" would fall to and toil away with an enthusiasm born of the long time it had been since he had "smelled the sawdust of the ring."
"Oh, how good it is to be at work in a newspaper office again!" he exclaimed on the first day, doubtless with recollections of the sanctum of the Allahabad Pioneer strong upon him, and the memory of the time when the precursors of the "Plain Tales" and of the Barrack Room Ballads were demanded of him almost every day, and gave him the practice to produce the carefully finished and matured work we are now seeing in the novel "Kim," at which he was at work—in the laboratory of his mind—even as he sat with us in Bloemfontein.
We wondered at his enthusiasm, and, perhaps, had it not been of his doing, we should have resented the impetus it gave us to toil as never war correspondents worked before—all day for The Friend and far into the nights to catch the mails with our home correspondence. But we soon came to see that the same tremendous energy and ceaseless flow of wit and fancy were his by nature, and would have found expression as well in a tent on the veldt as in that office. He was always while with us like a great healthy boy in spirits and vitality, good humour, and enterprise.
With us he yelled "Haven't any; go to Barlow's shop around the corner," to the Tommies who trod on one another's heels to get copies of the paper from us who had not got them. With us he consigned the Dutch compositor to æons of boiling torment for the trouble his errors gave us. With us he entertained Lord Stanley, who now came, out of kindness, at noon every day, to save us the trouble of sending our proof-sheets over to him at his office. And from us he insisted upon taking all the "Tommy poetry," as we called it, that came to the office. When we derided much of it as outrageous twaddle, he praised its quality. On this day, I remember, we were belittling a particular poem that he was reading, and he called out, "Why, that is splendid stuff! Listen to these lines—'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves: Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!'" The reader will not find this particular poem in this book, though it was put in The Friend by our distinguished poetry editor.
THE FRIEND.
(Edited by the War Correspondents with Lord Roberts' Force.)