WAR NOTES FROM LONDON.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2050, 11 January 1901, Page 6

WAR NOTES FROM LONDON.

[Fnou th® Evening Star’s Cohrespondbnt.]

November 16. THE RETURN OF SIR REDVERS BULLER.

It was a strange thing to see and hear that big, brawny, taciturn British bull-dog Sir Redvers Buller, with tears streaming down his brick-dust cheeks and his gruff voice choked with emotion. Yet this was what befell at the municipal function at Southampton last Saturday, tyhen the mayor and Corporation conferred on him the freedom or their city, the first of a long of honors awaiting the conquering hero. Sir Redvers was indubitably greatly touched by t e genuinely cordial character of his prodigious “welcome.” Lady Audrey, though, of course, pleased likewise, seemed by no means overcome. She doubtless remembered the time, not so many months ago, when her husband’s luck fell out, and a large section of these very huzzaing thousands would cheerfully have “ Tended him limb from I'm’l- - “ thank you ” sections of General Boiler's speech on this occasion may be set aside, but he afforded some interesting information as to the disabilities under which our troops labored in the Transvaal. The British were handicapped, Sir Redvers says, by two things they could not see so well, or speak so well, as their enemies. England is a small country, and many _ of our soldiers are town-born. South Africa is a country of magnificent distances, and the Boers, trained to the outdoor life of thejgrazing farm, and the chase, have their faculty of sight correspondingly lengthened. It is, says Gleneral Buller, an actual fact tbat the ordinary sight of a Boer in the field was at least two miles further than the ordinary sight of a Briton. In other words, the Boer rifleman saw the British soldier approaching two miles before the British soldier saM his opponent. To this cause General Buller ascribes the loss of many gallant scouts, and one of the many reasons why he found a great difficulty in advancing. (It is a curiously interesting point, and we are not sure that it is not capable of a wider application. The longer sight of the Boer was not confined to the rifleman on the veldt. Mr Kruger was longer-sighted also. He, as we have seen, was prepared for war a good deal before the British Government were ready.) General Buller’s other point referred to the linguistic superiority of the Boers. In the country through which he had to fight there are many Kaffir kraals, and the Kaffirs are carriers of other things than burdens —of news, to wit. Our enemies could speak the Kaffir language; we could not. Of course we tried to equalise the conditions by interpreters, but information obtained through an interpreter is not the same thing as information at first hand. Of course these points do not exhaust the list of our difficulties. General Buller said nothing, for instance, about the intractable nature of the country. On the whole, he believes that “the British Army operating in South Afrigj, 1,000 miles from their sea base, and 6,000 miles further from their base at Home, have had ,tq*encounter difficulties far greater than any army operating against an equally civilised enemy have ever experienced in the history of the world.” OLIVE SCHREINER’S SHRIEKS.

The best comments on the mischievous methods of Olive Schreiner and her following are to be found in the hysterical shrieks which this good lady from time to time addresses to the South African Press. No doubt they go to the ‘Manchester Guardian’ too, but extravagant pro-Boer though Mr E. P. Scott is, he has not grown crazed enough to follow Miss Schreiner’s latest phases and phrase*. The special commissioner of the ‘ Daily Telegraph’ culls some flowers of rhetoric from the fair Olive’s latest angry squeal. Writing on October 12 she says:—“ When the day comes, and it will come when foreign troops —Russian, French, or Germans —are upon the soil of England, when Englishmen gather to defend Richmond Hill and Hampstead Heath, as we have gathered to defend the hills and passes of our native land ; when the tramp of foreign soldiers is heard in the streets of London, and the ground is wet at the-Marble Arch and Hyde Pa rk corner with the blood of Englishmen ; when the cup she now presses to our lips is pressed to hers, and England stands where we stand to-day, then let her remember South Africa.” Again :—“ Finally, there is but one word more I would say. Bathed in blood and swathed in sorrow, as South Africa is to-day, the time is yet coming when this land will be the home of a strong and independent nation. It will take its place beside France and Russia and Germany and the United States of America among the nations of the future. . - . When that day comes,

when we, a free and united people, dominate in these southern seas and on this southern continent, and other and weaker nations and races are thrown into our hands, I would have it that we, who in the youth of our people have drunk to its dregs the cup of sorrow and groaned beneath the oppressor’s heel, remembering what we have endured, should deal mercifully with all weaker and smaller peoples. It is i-ighteousness that exalteth a nation. I would have it that the name of South Africa should stand first among all earth’s nations for justice and generosity to small and wronged races. I have this* lofty ambition for my people; and if so be that in our years of anguish and darkness we have learnt this lesson we shall nob have wept and bled in vain. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy—no, more than this, blessed are the merciful, for theirs is the infinite beatitude of extending mercy.” The ‘ Daily Telegraph's ’ commissioner (Mr Bennett Burleigh) comments thus: “ Two remarks I must make. The first is that when Mrs Croirwright Schreiner talks of ‘ my people ’ and ‘ pur nation ’ it must be remembered that she has not a drop of Dutch blood in her veins. She is AngloGerman, And, secondly, the exaggerated eulogies of Boer men and women provoke words which I would rather not have uttered. On the table before me as I write, side by side with the mutilated copy of the ‘ South African News,’ from which I quote, lies a mutilated little plaster bust of a lady. The eyes have been gouged out, the nose and ears cut off. The bust is that of Her Gracious Majesty, and was all that was left, except indescribable filth in a loyalist’s home at Newcastle after the Boers had looted it. Hardly the desecrated memento of a colonist’s loyalty is a woman’s bandolier, picked up in the trenches on Pieter’s Hill. It is filled with Mauser cartridges, about a third of which have been carefully filed and split in order to cause the most ghastly wounds, and there are also a number of softnosed bullets. And I am reminded of the photograph found on a dead officer at .Magersfonteiu of a lady and child, under which was written in a. childish hand ‘ Father, you promised to come home for Christmas’; across it was scrawled ‘Father has gone home to h j——and signed by a Boer now a prisoner on parole in Cape Town. On these subjects, silence is better, but Olive Schreiner compels one to break the silence.” TALES FROM TOMMY.—NURSES, NOURISHMENT, AND PILLS.

The private letters from the seat of war are (writes our London correspondent) still full of most interesting matter. There appeared one in an out-of-the-way paper in

Hunts (the ‘Ramsey Herald ’) the other day which narrowly escaped oblivion. It is the work of Private Hicks, of the 3rd Grenadier Guards, and confirms the stories already published of the march from Belfast to Komati Poort. Private Hicks says : “ The rations we had were three pounds of flour for five days, and if a man can live and march on that he is a good one. Whv can’t they keep us better than that? Stuff is lying against our walls, and we are starving. When we get to where there is some stuff we can't touch anything. Our officers sell it to us; one tin of cocoa for ss. It is shameful. They live better out here than they do in London, having the best of everything. They write in the papers how well we are living; but don’t you believe it.” Meanwhile, the correspondent who had already written of Tommy’s joys and sorrows, having returned to Pretoria with the Guards Brigade, sends some more tales from Tommy : “There are nurses and nurses. One of them was detailed to take the temperatures of six men. and put the glass in their mouths wrong end first. Her report showed the temperatures of all to be over 106. The doctor hurried down and told the men to lie down, as, according to their temperatures, they should be all dead. Explanations followed, and the nurse received a severe .lecture, and was put in another post. A certain general officer remarked that these amateur nurses would serve their country better if they could persuade the Boers to accept their services. He said the nurses’ sympathies could then be with the Boer sick and wounded, and so would ours! “ There was one nurse who was religiously inclined, and was continually drumming into the men the necessity of their following her ideas. She got down by the bedside of one of her patients (an army boxing champion) and tried to impress into him the idea of turning the other cheek. She said: ‘ Now, suppose a man came up and struck you without a cause, you would not retaliate, would you?’ ‘No, miss,’ answered the boxer. ‘ That’s right,’ said the lady encouragingly ; “ I am glad to hear you say that. What would you do ?’ ‘ A’d jest knock daylight out o’ ’im, Miss,’ replied the scrapper, and that course of religious instruction finished.

“In one hospital the patients could do nothing right, and finally men refused to take their medicine. The nursing who was unpopular, was deposed, and a real nurse arrived. She was a strapping, deter-mined-looking girl, who spoke to Tommy in his own lingo. She told them she was going to buck them up, and if they didn’t get well soon she’d have her own opinion about them. They weren’t volunteers, she said, nor ‘ rookies,’ they were real soldiers, and she was a real soldier’s daughter, and had a soldier brother, and knew something. Soon the invalid faces grew brighter, and, while she scolded, coaxed, and ordered, she made herself everyone’s chum. The men were sorry to leave the hospital, and they were so grateful that the nurse is now at a loss to know what to do with all the Transvaal brooches, Kruger sovereigns, Scottish Gift Fund tobacco boxes, and Queen’s chocolate boxes she has since received from Tommy. Yet lam sorry to add that this real woman is looked down upon by the ‘lady nurses’ as a ‘forward person.’

“The doctor is always the ‘veterinary’ with Tommy. One doctor here has a great belief in the efficacy of his ‘ No. 99 ’ pill, and no matter what a man goes sick with ! e gets a ‘No. 99,’ with the result that a considerable portion of ground near the camp has been portioned off as a burial place. Lately a mule broke into the doctor’s tent, and got outside of all the ‘ No. 99’s ’ that the doctor had in stock. He was also foolish enough to attempt to digest a diploma that the doctor had carelessly left lying about. The next day the mule died, and it is ibe general opinion that the diploma did it. It was a fatal diploma, anyway. The ‘veterinary ’ has lately brought out a new pill with another number. It is practically the same as the ‘No. 99’ in range, and kills at the same distance.”

CONAN DOYLE’S TRIBUTE TO THE

AUSTRALIANS

In his history of the Great Boer War Dr Conan Doyle sings once more the wannest eulogy of'the gallant work of the Australians who held the Boers at bay at Brakfontein. on the Elands River. He refers to it us “ one of the very finest deeds of arms in the war,” and continues thus : “ The Australians have so split up during the campaign that, though their valor and efficiency were universally recognised, they had no single large exploit which they could call their own. But now they can-point to Elands River as proudly as the Canadians can to Paardeberg. They were only 400 in number, on an exposed kopje, with 2,500 Boers round them, and no help near. Six guns were trained upon them, and during eleven days 1,800 shells fell within their lines. The river was half a mile off, and every drop of water for man or beast had to come from there. Nearly all their horses and seventy-five of the men were killed or wounded. With extraordinary energy and - ingenuity the little band dug shelters, which are said to have exceeded in depth and efficiency any which the Boers have devised. Neither the repulse of Carrington, nor the jamming of their only gun, nor the death of the gallant Arnet, was sufficient to dishearten them. They , were sworn to die before the white flag should wave, above them. And so fortune yielded, as fortune will when brave men set their teeth, and Broadwood’s troopers, filled with wonder and admiration, rode into the lines of the reduced and emaciated, but indomitable garrison. When the ballad-makers of Australia seek for a subject, let them turn to Elands River, for there was no finer fighting in the war.” GOOD-BYE TO THE DUKE’S BODYGUARD. The London Infantry Contingents, who go out to Australia as samples of the British Army for the inaugural ceremonies connected with the opening of Australia’s first Federal Parliament—they are called the Duke of York’s Bodyguard by some—left the metropolis last Monday for Southampton, where they embarked on the Britannic for conveyance to Sydney. Their departure took place from Waterloo at eleven o’clock a very convenient hour, at which all the heavy morning traffic city-ward is pretty well done with. The London Contingent comprised 10 officers and 165 men, and in addition four officers and 100 men from Dover arrived at Waterloo in time to be coupled up with the South-Western “ special ” to Southampton. The metropolitans comprised the composite Foot Guards Company, consisting of ninetysix officers and men selected from the Grenadiers, Scots’, Coldstream, and Irish Guards, and a squad of the First Middlesex Volunteers (Victoria and St. George's Rifles). A detachment of the Fourth Norfolk Regiment, representing the Militia, also travelled with them. It was a chilly, damp, misty morning, giving an unpleasant foretaste of the winter which the departing troops will no doubt be glad enough to escape. The cold, however, was not sufficiently keen to necessitate the wearing of overcoats, except in the case of the Irish Guards, who had donned their thin khaki tunics and helmets, the rest of the Guards wearing their familiar red coats and bearskins. As they arrived the different sections were formed up on the platform, at the further end of Avhich were stationed the band of the Coldstream Guards and the drums and fifes of the Scots’ Guards. A finer body of men than the representatives of the Guards it would be hard to find. The Grenadiers, for instance, averaged 6ft 4in in height, among them being Private M’Culloch, who is over 6ft lOin, and is.said to be the tallest man iu the British Army.

To the spectators the most interesting section was that of the new Irish Guards. As already remarked, they were in khaki, and wore long grey overcoats, while their khaki helmets and brilliant side plumes of St. Patrick’s blue added to the distinctiveness of their appearance. They were fine big fellows all of them, and as smart looking a lot of men as anyone would wish to see. When they had taken their places in the train the helmets were exchanged for the new broad-topped forage caps—bound round in their cases with green bands—which give the wearers a somewhat foreign appearance. The Irish Guards were in charge of Lieutenant R. C. A. M'Calmont, who before the train started obtained an armful of newspapers and magazines, which he distributed among his men. The gifts were received with open arms, and the kindly spirit which prompted it augurs well for the future relations betwixt the lieutenant and his men, and suggested to me that the M'Calmont would find great favor in Australian eyes. Lieutenant the Hon. Guy Baring was in charge of the Coldstream Guards, and Lieutenant Lord Falconer (a son of ex-Governor Kintore) of the Scots’ Guards. The Victoria and St. George’s Volunteers looked very fit. in their neat dark uniform, while the Fourth Norfolk, who were, of course, in scarlet, presented an exceedingly smart appearance.

Among the favored few who were allowed to parade the platform whilst the men were getting ready to entrain were Lord Kintore (who had come to see his son off), General Trotter, Colonel Fluyder, Major-general Stracey, Captain Earle, and a strong muster of “ gilded popinjays ” (as Mr John Burns, M.P., called them) in the shape of officers and ex-officers of the Guards. The train was sent off promptly to time, and the cheers of the spectators, mingled with those of others who were welcoming General Buller on another platform, were deafening.

The men embarked on the Britannic in the course of the afternoon, as did the Aidershot Contingent which arrived ;,t Southampton an hour or so before. The latter body included Household Cavalry, 21sb Lancers, Ist (King’s' Dragoon Guards, 7th Hussars, Telegraph Battalion R.E., Balloon Section R.E., Bridging Battalion R.E., and 60th Field Company, sections from the Black IV.itch (Royal Hig 1 ’anchors), Seaforth Highlanders, Highland Light Infantry, and Cameron Highlanders, and detachments of the Army Service and Royal Army Medical Corps. By half-past three the Britannic had engulphed the whole of her freight of army specimens ordered south, and soon after fouro’clock weighed anchor and stood out to sea in a driving drizzle. In spite of the inclement weather, thousands assembled to see the big ship depart, and the last sounds the Duke’s Bodyguard heard as they drew away from the White Cliffs of Old England were the hearty cheers of their friends ashore.