Be lion-mettled—as you were;
But not too proud to scout;
And if the foe is right in front,
Why, go a mile about.
Go forth in strength of intellect,
Shining with all your wit;
So shall you baulk the wily foe—
Unhit, shall make a hit.
E. T.
CHAPTER XI
Our Very Mixed Public
A Study of Tommy Atkins, the Inscrutable—Our Dutch Compositors Arraigned.
The lady who signed herself "Miss Uitlander" was also kind enough to write for us an article on "Tommy in a Lady's Eyes." It was clever. She said that Tommy walked the streets looking as if he always had walked them—and that was true. It is also true that Tommy did everything else in the same way. Wherever you put him or he found himself he uttered no comments or exclamations, but at once adapted himself to the situation. During the seven months I was with him I never could fathom the operations of his mind. Sometimes I suspected that he had none; at other times I envied him the kind of mind he had.
Our lady reporter said that Tommy "loves to make an impression on the feminine heart—but, alas! his khaki uniform does not suit him. Like country, like dress. We now see ourselves as others see us, a khaki-coloured people in a vast khaki-coloured land." Of the officers she said, "their amiability, patience, and high breeding are a treat to come in contact with in a country such as this, where Jack is considered as good as his master; in his own estimation, a very good deal better."
"Bloemfontein is khaki-mad," she concluded; "Tommy is everywhere. The shops overflow with him—and how he spends his money! It will be an object-lesson to those who, a few short weeks ago, were sure that England was on the verge of bankruptcy. The streets abound with him. The place is a beehive of soldiery, and never again will be any other, I most fervently hope and trust."
I copy this bit of a long article because it brings strongly to mind and in full swing and colour the daily scenes in the streets of Bloemfontein. Whenever we ran out of The Friend office to the hotel or the printing works or the Club, we saw the same endless parade of soldiers up and down the pavements, the same motley cavalcade of mounted men in the streets. At the sound of drums we all ran out—for civilisation was far away, and the natural man was welling up strong in us—to see a regiment marching in, or out—or, too often, to view a funeral procession leading a poor bundle of the dust of a hero strapped upon a gun-carriage.
In the shops we found a wall of soldiers before every counter. They were in swarms like flies in all except the drinking places. There they could not go; poor fellows, to whom a drink would have seemed so much more than to us, who could have it whenever and wherever we wanted it.