SOME WAR CORRESPONDENTS I HAVE MET.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 213, 7 September 1900, Page 5

SOME WAR CORRESPONDENTS I HAVE MET.

SOME OF THE JOURNALISTS IN

SOUTH AFRICA.

THEIR DRESS AND THEIR

METHODS,

MR BURLEIGH AND HIS FORAGE

THE TROUBLES OP A YANKEE

PRESSMAN, j

yßy W. D. CAMPBELL, M.A.' (Special Correspondent for the Star.)

Previous to the fall of Pretoria, South Africa would have been hard to beat as a place to study the special species of man known as the war correspondent. Round the carcase of the Boer war the journalistic eagles had fathered from every corner of the world, a great many in the legitimate pursuit of their profession, a great many, too, who had temporarily adopted the calling as a' means to an end. All told there were over seventy members of the Fourth Estate present with Lord Roberts' army in its advance from Bloemfontein to Pretoria, a little brigade as cosmopolitan in its. composition as the forces with which it was associated. It. was recruited on the "duke's son, cook's son ol a hundred kings" system, its ranks betas drawn from every class of society from a lord down to an ex-dairy farmer In between came the real working members of. the craft, a body of toilers about whom a good deal. hag been written, and of whom little is really known. '"Me Lud," as the Army Service Corps sergeant calls him when supplying him with forage or rations,

can .scarcely be classed in the category of ■ war correspondents;. ILe only wants a change from the annual ronnd jof the London season, and the grouse shooting- on Scottrish moors, and journals knowing- how many people t,here are that "dearly love a lord" gladly gratify his desire to accompany the army by accrediting him as their representative. And we cannot include tilie dairyman in the number either, for he is but a bubble on the journalistic stream, in spite of the literary strain in his composition. He is a refugee from Johannesburg-, eager to get back to his farm on the outskirts of the Golden City to see how his property has fared during his eight month's exile. So he has gladly accepted an offer to take the place of a correspondent who has gone under in the operations before the capture of Bloemfontein and arms himself with the ticket that places him on the roll of "Stanley's Horse."' "BATTLING" FOE A LICENSE, The corps of correspondents is an irregular troop that has no outward and visible sign in the shape of uniform and so forth. Numbers of them wore khaki clothes, but, of course, their dress was a pure matter of choice. I read the other day of a man who was said to be "entitled" to a khaki uniform because he was a war correspondent. As far as I ever found out a correspondent was en-. titled to nothing. How he Avas to dress, how he was to feed himself, how to move about the country, how to get his letters and telegrams away, all that was his own look out. When the authorities gave him his ticket they were done with him, excepting, of course, that they still had a duty to perform in the mutilation of his messages. "Battle for your license," said an old hand to me when I landed in Capetown. "If you get that shake hands with yourself and don't worry them any more." Before receiving your license you had to sign your name to a copy of the "conditions for correspondents accompanying the army in the field." This document was a ■ sort of journalistic ten commandments, only there was no commandment with promise. Nearly every condition was a "Thou shalt not," winding up with a. threat of the pains and penalties that would be dealt out to whoso should transgress the prohibition. I have forgotten most of the rules now; in fact, 1 never knew them, though I carried them for four months next my heart. But as long as you had a license to show on demand, and provided you did not commit the unpardonable sin of giving a Tommy a drink of alcoholic or spirituous liquor nobody interfered much with you. I was only called on to produce, my license once between Bloemfontein and Pretoria, and that was by a lieutenant in a. militia, corps of mounted infantry, which was approaching a Boer position. "Are yow a correspondent?" Jie said, seeing that I carried only a pair of field glasses. Then he wanted to see my ticket, which he returned with the remark, "You might have been going on to give information to the enemy, eh?" "Yes," I replied, "I look like it. 'Bpose you're, beginning to feel concerned now," and rode on. But the professional soldier, especially the man who has seen correspondents carrying out their duties in other campaigns, does not subject them to such paltry interference, and they are left pretty well free to follow the promptings of their own sweet will. HOW THE CORRESPONDENTS WERE DBESSED* . The late Mr Steevens wrote that in the Soudan the only restriction placed on correspondents in the field was to keep clear of the Sirdar. They were advised not to get in front of the firing line, but even that was not insisted on. In South.Africa, after Lord Roberts took command, newspaper representatives enjoyed complete freedom as far as their personal movements were concerned, but even then one's mode of dress was sometimes an important factor in saving- one from annoyance. In the case of the wellknown London correspondents this was, of course, unnecessary, but many of the colonial pressmen, of whom there was an extraordinary number, favoured a military cut in their clothes. The style most affected was the usual officer's patrol jacket Of khaki serge, which, in the absence of decorations, passed the wearer off as an officer. One man even went the length of carrying a pair of lieutenant's stars in his pocket, which he fixed into his shoulder-straps whenever he thought the device would be useful to him. Another colonial, n colleague of the one I have just mentioned, destroyed the good effect which might have been produced by his really irreproachable uniform. From the helmet to the puttees his clothes were a model of military correctness, but he evidently wished to go the whole hog, and had decorated himself with a brass badge. On either side oC his collar, probably because that was a more conspicuous place than the usual position on the shoulder-straps, he had letters of brass representing his colony and contingent, and his rank "War cors." Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to make wise, so nobody told him what a source of merriment he was to others of his craft. THE DISADVANTAGES 01? KHAKI. .To be candid, I must admit that my own appearance was unfavourably commented upon, until I abandoned the khaki cord in which the New Zealanders were dressed. You had only to practice cleanliness and have your tunic washed a few times, when the khaki material both shrunk enormously and also bleached to an absurdly light character. One of our lieutenants told me that if I came to his farm in New Zealand dressed as 1 was then, he would give me in charge as a dan-' gerous tramp. That confirmed me in my determination to chuck the stuff. As a protection against the cold, It was practically useless, and the ridiculous figures that men cut in it when it was shrunk up and bleached by sun and water were enough to condemn it even in the field, where little attention is paid to personal appearances. AN EXPERIENCED CAMPAIGNER. Leaving the "correspondents who affected military dress, most of the Englishmen Were extremely simple in their tastes. Mr Bennett Burleigh, who, as one of the pioneers of war correspondence, may be regarded as the father of the craft,, reminded one of the photographs of Louis Botha, the Commandant-General of the Transvaal. I have seen Mr Burleigh described as "one of the picturesque figures that hover on the outskirts of the Empire," whatever that may mean, but in reality there is not a great element of the picturesque about him. He is a Teat big man, about 16 stone in weight, with all the bluff joviality that big men generally possess. When he is not occupied in trying to entera town before it has surrendered, or in interviewing the enemy's commander-in-chief, you will find him m a shady spot enjoying the luxuries of which

he is'-'an experienced enough campaigner to carry an ample store. When he set out on an expedition'iii Africa he evidently mistrusted the ability of the small Boet- ponies to carry his weight, for you frequently saw-him dragging along a spare horse with him. But it was a lucky horse that belonged to Mr Burieigh, for if he had to work hard, he Avas at least certain of getting a good feed during the day, which, was more1 than the vast majority of the horses with the army coulcl look for. Mr Burieigh started out from Bloemfontein with a big waggon loaded up with forage, some of Avhicli, however, Avas consumed hy ponies that did not belong to him. I had the pleasure of listening to the famous correspondent's flowery remarks one morning when he caught "Tommy" Avalking off Avith some of his forage. One .of the troopers had appropriated some of the coveted feed, and told his mate where "to get it. "That old buffer over there has got a whole cartload of it. He came back triumphantly with n sheaf under his ami just as Mr Burleigh emerged from under the tarpaulin Avhich, spread over a cart, formed his tent. "You scoundrel," lie yelled, "you're looting my cart. I'll get you twelve days. You take that back," and the discomfited Tommy had to return the property amid the grins of a host of other soldiers AVho enjoyed the sport. AN AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT. In most of his specially daring exploits, Mr Burieigh Avas accompanied by another dare-devil sort of a journalist, Mr Scull, of Chicago. The Amerisan's enterprise, however, Avas frequently nipped in the bud by his uttier disregard for dress. He wore an ordinary pair of trousers with the bottoms shoved into short gaiters for the purposes of riding, a htig'e sack of a coat tied together by a broad leather belt round his Avaist, a. spreading felt hat Avhich\had long lost all pretensions to shape, and a beard. As a result of his wild appearance he ayhs arrested on an a.A'erag-e once a week on suspicion of being a Boer, and when he attempted to explain matters his Yankee drawl was sufficient to convict him of being an Irish American. Towards the end he began to get very bitter about his treatment. "It doesn't matter what I Iciioav about the blanky Avar," he used to say. "I can tell every movement of the army and produce any quantity of evidence tio slioav AvhO' I am, but I've got a beard—that's enoug-h; I'm a Boer." In Pretoria I strolled into the lobby of the Transvaal Hotel and saw a lanky, thin-faced individual spraAvled out on a conch. I didn't remember having- seen him before, and Avas passing on, when I heard him saying, with a nasal twang, "Hullo, Campbell! Don't you know your friends'?" It Avas Scull, shaved, clothed, a respectable citizen again of the Stars and Stripes." -Let's liquor," he said, and Aye elboAved v our way through the mixed crowd of officers, Hollanders and Boers, till we got near enough the bar to reach the glasses.