“We shall send more.”
“Almighty! am I to keep on shooting the Englishman all my life!” sighed the Dutchman, with his best air of braggadocio.
Such bumptiousness was not confined to himself. All his compatriots started on the campaign with identical bombast, for they took their cue from the attitude of those Continental nations with which they had lately become associated. Our neighbours across the Channel had found it convenient to persuade themselves we were a decadent race, that the Old Country was played out and her children effete. As with the empires of Xerxes, Alexander, Augustus, so with that of Victoria, they said to themselves; and since the wish is father to the thought, the idea was rapidly propagated that Great Britain was fast becoming a second-rate Power.
Almost the whole of Europe had indulged in objectionable comment on the subject of the campaign, and treated us to naked truths that, though unpalatable, were useful as an excellent opportunity to see ourselves as others see us, and correct a somewhat overweening passion for resting on British-grown laurels. But however good as a tonic the cosmopolitan criticism may have been, it was distinctly ill-timed and decidedly ungrateful. Our sneering foes should have patted us on the back, have applauded us. They might even have subscribed to help us to do the hard work of Europe, for, as the Norwegian showed, we were not fighting the Boer alone, but were attacking thousands of his mercenaries—the scum of Europe. We were scouring a veritable Augean stable. Ne’er-do-weels of every nationality were congregated under the Transvaal flag—vagabonds, for the most part, who had made their own country too hot to hold them, and who hoped by promoting a general upheaval to come down on their feet safely—somehow, somewhere!
Fortunately Lord Roberts’ masterly combinations had rapidly brought about a general disillusionment, and served to prove to our critical neighbours that our martial race—from officers to the most raw and fledgling “Tommies”—was the same race as of yore, “game for anything,” even when the thing might range between and include shot and shell, sickness and starvation! The object-lesson was a grand one, and could not pass unrecognised. For us the sad part of it was that the flower of our country, the valiant sons of brave men and the noble descendants of kings, should have had to risk their lives against such a mob of adventurers and filibusters, creatures who were actuated by none of the finer and natural impulses of the Boers to secure their independence, but flung themselves into the fight merely because the spirit of ruffianism which had driven them from their native soils was too rampant to be appeased by any other exercise. But there is no achievement without sadness—no success without pain. Lives must ever be sacrificed to maintain any great nation’s prestige, and now how much more noble seemed the sacrifice when it secured the prestige of a Power that had propagated equality and civilisation over the whole face of the world!
THE BRITISH OCCUPATION OF BLOEMFONTEIN—AN EVENING CONCERT IN MARKET SQUARE BY THE PIPERS OF THE HIGHLAND BRIGADE.
Drawing by A. Forestier.
The British once having put their hand to the plough, had stuck manfully to their work, not in hope of reward, but in the belief in the ministry of their great race. Beyond the minor considerations of franchise and political advantage, there had been greater and higher ends to be attained, and as the flag was fluttering over the capital of the Free State these great ends served to inspire and refresh those who almost fainted by the way. Where the British flag waved there was freedom, enlightenment, progress, evolution—there was emancipation from sin, injustice, and degradation; therefore at the cost of precious lives, and for no personal gain, the great end for which they toiled and suffered and died had to be achieved.
Every ideal, whether merely human or bordering on the divine, demands enormous sacrifices from those who desire to realise it, and the spread of civilisation calls for its ministers and martyrs, and will continue to call for them so long as there are men of heroic mould who, regardless of personal cost, are ready to prize and protect a great and national cause. Only this reflection could serve to hearten and brace our warriors at the front, for, at this time, Lord Roberts’ glorious position was far from a happy one. It was impossible to ignore the cost at which the prestige of his country and his splendid success was being secured. He found himself at Bloemfontein with the wreck of an army on his hands, with men dropping thick as flies from disease resulting from the terrible exhaustion of the march and from the insanitary conditions of the camp at Paardeberg. There the only water available for drinking purposes had flowed down from the Boer camp a mile and a half up the river, and was polluted by rotting carcases in various stages of decomposition, and, as a natural consequence of these conditions, Bloemfontein was suddenly filled with an appalling number of sick, some 2000 patients suffering from typhoid and enteric, in addition to a very considerable number of wounded at the fight at Driefontein. How to help the abnormal number of sufferers was a problem that taxed the medical authorities to the utmost, for it was impossible to meet the huge demand under the existing conditions. To improvise mere accommodation for so large an influx of sick within the narrow confines of Bloemfontein was a hard task in itself, and even the field-hospitals were inadequate, for owing to the rapidity of the march from the Modder no tents were carried with the force, and none were available until railway communication with Cape Colony could be restored. The Commander-in-Chief of this immense army in this dilemma had but a single narrow-gauge line of railway between himself and his base some 700 miles distant, and this line of rails was not yet available. The first duty was to utilise it for the bringing up of supplies sufficient to sustain the bare life of the healthy force, and prevent those who were sound from joining those who were already exhausted. Tents for the sick, nurses, doctors, hospitals were ordered up, but these could only arrive in their turn, and meanwhile the patients were distributed in all the public buildings, schools, &c. The town being small, this accommodation was meagre in the extreme, and quantities of the sick in the field hospitals had to place their blankets and waterproof sheets on the ground, and lie there huddled together in a condition that was grievous in the extreme. The mortality was tremendous, and the sufferings of those who were recovering were pitiable, but these things it was impossible to avert; they have belonged in all ages to the horror of war, and in other times were the natural and ordinary, and not, as in the present case, an abnormal consequence of an exceptional situation.