LAST SATURDAY NIGHT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11986, 7 June 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

LAST SATURDAY NIGHT.

[by TOHUXGA.] ;■■■-• .j ' Last Saturday night, at. Pretoria, while the sun was westering over London town and rising reluctantly Auckland way. the stage j ' was set for a one-act drama. For all the world's a stage, you know, and the greatest i men are only players and the greatest things j only plays. That is, of course, as long as' , you can sit still in the auditorium. . Some- j how, it seems more than a play when your own folk are performing in a little tragedy, j and it is altogether real when your own fingers get hammered by the stage-earpentens This one-act drama was set in one of the rooms of those great Government offices which Kruger built. From those offices, perhaps from that very room, it had been intended to bear rule over the " rooinek," and to make him throughout South Africa, the humble and fruitful taxpayer for which a Boer Providence seemed once to have designed him. The man who built it had dreams of setting his foot upon all South Africa, and the men who humoured him had notebooks full of the figured gains of profitable monopolies, and the men who made him drilled and drilled and drillad, so that some day they might march victoriously to the sea, from which their fathers came, and sail over it to make Pretoria the capital of a tribute-paying world. What scheming that room had seen! What wild, insane designs, what calm, sane organising! In it, perchance, the word was spoken that loosed the dogs of war as in it last Saturday night was spoken the word which made Sunday sacred to the angels peace. In the offices that Kruger built—and where was Kruger? Where were the Hollanders with their little notebooks and big bank balances? And why that gathering of the chief of those who'had drilled and drilled and drilled, who in hopeful years had not thought it, madness to plan the riding of their ponies down Cheapside and the division of the gold held in the great Bank.' Impossible! "Yes, but once the Boers thought nothing impossible. The "Godfearing farmer" believed himself chosen for world-dominion, and the man who believes himself chosen may ride far and strike hard. If there was one'thing in the infinite universe that the Boer once thought " impossible." if there was one thing which never occurred to his imagination, which in his most grotesque visions never came to frighten him. it was the event of last Saturday night. Men like Jouberf. provisioned repulse, not defeat, failure, not utter overthrow. If one had arisen in Pretoria and had proclaimed: "Yet three years and Krugerism shall be utterly destroyed!" who would have believed him? But if he had foretold that Kruger would live as an ignored refugee, and that" the-' last remnant of the " chosen, with their bravest and stoutest captains, would sign there a surrender of independence, and pledge fealty to Britain, men would have passed him by as mad. Yet it happened. It happened last Saturday night. ; . There it lav in the moonlight, crouched in the wintry weather, .the city of Kruger, the pseudo-capital of South Africa. And in the room aforesaid the one-act drama progresses. Have a good look at it! Since Grant and Lee met at Appomattox there has been no such momentous play among the Englishry. Since the Prussians made thenKing an'emperor in the heart of conquered France there has been no such meaningful drama in the world. * A company of veldtsmeu—bronzed with the sun and roughened by wind and ram, bearded as bards, clothed and booted in any fashion that served, of all heights and all sizes and all figures— that none were fat— such as you might see in a droving camp, if vou could imagine a droving camp made wholly of "bosses." Among them the two great guerilla chiefs whom the public instinct has singled out of- all the otters as the greatest, not a man who has not .eel his commando through good and ill fortune, who has not fought on to the finish of this war against hopeless odds. Perhaps not a man among them who, if De Wet and De Is Rev were "still determined to fight on, would not swing into the saddle and follow then] where they would. Fine faces few, crude faces many, brutal faces some, but strong faces all. " For two years and more the leaders of our foemen," but our friends anc fellow-citizens since last Saturday night. Men with great hands, sitting awkwardly on chairs with knees asunder, keeping eye in their minds the last inculcations of her arch-leaders, those forceful inculcations wind translated in parlous English mean, ' lak, vour medicine like men !" And they talc. "it like men. That dream of theirs lies snat tered and broken, and they came to bury it For that dream they gave the lives of thei sons the homes of their wives, everythin; they held sacred and loved. For that drear thev left the peaceful walks of life and too to the warpath. . For that dream they hav had no home but the bare earth, no fco but what thev wrung from us. no refug save in unending flight from the ceases "drive." And this is the end! Io tie it all to surrender it all, to acknowleclBritain and to dream the Boer dream n more. ' Once they themselves would hi" said that Death would come easier, but Deal has passed them by and there is a limit t human endurance for what is only, a drear. And their desolated homes rise before lne ; and the kindred gone from them and It: little children they will never see again And so thev sit silent, stern, express.onles self-control'led-men of pur own Northei stock, proving blood-kindred, doing exact what Ave ourselves in their, place would ti to And our meu-Milner. Kitchener, the aides and secretaries! Looking solemn at sterner and more like a funeral and mo indifferent to each other, than tie Boer Biting holes in their tongues with then ha, teeth to prevent themselves from smilm one minute, because of the jubilation th sang in their ears! Wanting to tear t surrender up and tell the Boers to take whole blooming continent next minute, I. cause of the generous pity that kept surgi un for the men who doing a hard tin well But always showing no feelin coldly courteous of voice, slow of moveme. blank of face-thus Milner in his cmli dress and white shirt, Kitchener in his v dress' - and buttoned-up coat, both shavt band-boxed, blue of eye and clear-cut. visage! They were at the crowning mome of tEei'i lives-and knew it felt, bathed it, thinking of England and its bells, of t booming of cannon in distant forts, of t world-wild nutter of flags, of what a shr would go up as the new* flashed round—a you couldn't have told that they also Wi hot among the surrenderers. God forgive for our many sins, but we need no forgi i ue«s for anv' national habit of rubbing !t to those who fling up the sponge after m 1 ine us respect them ! i So they signed the last surrender. I Saturday night, in Pretoria, whence world was to he governed, signed it though they were all wooden images worl by wires. And when they had all sign and the Boers were ready to go, Kitclie cot up and they knew he had a word them They were beaten men, surrender. conquered, and this was the man with whin. Can't you imagine how the jj set his teeth and sat to drink the cup bitterness to the dregs, waiting to hear 1 chener lay down the law. ■_ v Said Kitchener, to this effect: 1 ou en. don't want to go away feeling sore Yoi done all vou could for your side, and noo in the wide world could have done m. I'd never want to have better men with We all ought to be friends I think, 1« to be. Can't we all try to be and get oil to That' broke the Boers up. To be 1 addressed was the last thing in their m feast of all by the silent general, so J Upraise and so quick to find fault, have the true situation thus seen and 8 pathised by him took them by surprise a moment it was sauve qui pent, lhey "sore," they had done all they could, 1 idol-dream was gone. But Batch brought the tears to eyes that had look hundred times at death, and sobs to thi Sat were like brass to all hardships, aenerous words to mouths that had Sed in gall. All men are. human;

liuman soul answers like a harp if you only find the proper string. And the Boers answered Kitchener in kind last Saturday night, and went away with wondering minds hit softened hearts, being simple for all their slimness; and ringing in their ears were sounds that an hour before they would have Jenied as impossible, their own voices cheering for the new order of things; and their lands still felt an unexpected pressure for diese defeated dreamers had wrung in friendship the hands of their conquerors. | And our men ! Ring up the certain again, just as the despatches are sent, and Kitchener and Milner find themselves alone. They sit for ten minutes, sullen. Then they valk: — I "Well, Milner, old man!" | " Well, Kitchener, old man !" | A faint smile, as if they were each ashamed if so much display of feeling. Then Milner jets up and produces v. decanter and two lasses. ' " |" I suppose we may as well," he says. l" I think we've earned it," Kitchener "says. Vherewith the curtain finally falls on the o"e-act drama.