BOOK NOTICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11797, 28 July 1900, Page 4

BOOK NOTICE

"London to Ladysmith, via Pretoria.", By Winston Spencer Churchill. London: Longmans, Green, and, Co. (6s). Mr Winston Churchill's book is at last to hand, and fully justifies all our expectations. It is one of the best, if not ths best, account of the war up £o the relief of Ladysmith that we have as yet seen. As brilliant as Mr Steevens's work, it is more accurate and connected, and it has more of the verve and "go" of personal narrative than Mr Bennet Burleigh's valuable book. The style is good, clear, terse, and vigorous. Of course, it is not given to every, war coi-respondent to suffer imprisonment for a good cause, and incontestably Mr Churchill's account of his capture and captivity will be the best' appreciated parts of his book. The fight with, and round, the armoured train when the author did yeoman service is excellently told. We wish it were possible to reproduce the whole in extenso —the triumph of the invaders in their tin-pot carriages; the sudden attack of the Boers with big guns and rifles; the. attempt of the driver to run away; the violent collision with a stone (placed across the line, for the purpose) ; the smash-up of the carriages"; then the

effort to extricate them while still under fire. Nothing of pure romance was ever more exciting. "Of many strange and varied experiences during the past few years, none had been so thrilling as this. To wait and struggle among these repding, clanging iron boxes; mid the repeated ex-

plosion of the shells'and the artillery;, the noise of the projectiles striking the cars; the grunting and puffing of the engine— poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which by penetrating the boiler might have made an end of all—the expectation of destruction as a matter of course; the realisation of powerlessness; and the alternation of hope and despair"—all this is most powerfully told. At last after almost superhuman efforts the engine was set free, and, as many

wounded as possible piled upon it, it began to steam homewards, "the woodwork of the firebox in flames and the water spoiyting from its pierced tanks ; the . firemen struggling alongside at the double." The soldiers and civilians tried to keep up, the Boers increased their fire, and a quarter of the small force was soon killed or wounded. " Order and control vanished," and "in direct disobedience to positive orders a wounded soldier waved his handkerchief," and the Boers called loudly on the little band to surrender; and then—after one last passionate struggle for freedom—our correspondent was a prisoner. Two days before he had written: " There has been a great deal too much surrendering in this war, and I hope people who do so will not be encouraged." And now it was his turn, though the fault. was not

his own; but throughout the volume lie > persistently repeats the same opinion : there ! were too many mistakes and tpo many t surrenders, mixed with deeds of heroic j bravery, individual or collective, such as i have seldom been equalled, and never surpassed. "The position of a prisoner of war is painful and humiliating. A man tries" his'best to kill another, and, finding' that he cannot succeed, asks his enemy for mercy. .. . All military pride, all in- , dependence of spirit must' be put aside. ' These may be carried to the grave, but not into captivity." Thus the iron entered into the brave man's soul. But the captors ; were kind and considerate. One told him not to walk too fast, another gave him a cap to keep oft the pel'; -'s: rain, a third "trusted that his fire had not annoyed us." So " they were not cruel men, these enemy. That was a great surprise to me. for I had read much of the literature of this land of lies, and fully expected every hardshrp and indignity." Other surprises of the same kind were in store for him. Through all the long, weary journey to Pretoria, and his imprisonment there, he met with nearly uniform kindness and consideration at the hands' of the soldier-farmers, to whose good qualities he does ample justice, for Mr Churchill sees clear])- —though many other j persons do npt—that to undervalue your : . enemy is to 'undervalue yourself. "I do ' not know how many men I saw, but cer- i ' tainly during this march not less than 5000. j Of this great- number, only two offered in- , suits to the gang of prisoners. One was a '■ dirty, mean-looking little Hollander. He , said, 'Well, Tommy, you've got your fran- ] chise, anyhow.'* The other was an Irishman, who used some obscene language to J one of the Dublin Fusiliers. The Boers ' ' silenced him at once, and we passed on." j ( At Pretoria the ragged, wearied prisoners ■ i became a show for the citizens, ; and " a j dozen cameras were soon clicking busily, < establishing an imperishable record of our shame. .. . Now for the first time j < since my capture I hated the enemy. The I * simple, valiant burghers at the front, fight- ! j ing bravely, for their farms, claimed re- ! | spect, if not sympathy. But here in Pre- j toria all was petty and contemptible. Slimy, sleek officials ov all nationalities — ; the red-faced, snub-nosed Hollander, the | , oily Portuguese half-caste — thrust or 1 wormed their way through the crowd to > look. I seemed to smell corruption in the air. Here were creatures who had fattened on the spoils. There in the fields 1 were the heroes who won them." Then < the British officers, including Mr Churchill, ■ joined the other prisoners of wai of similar ' rank in the prison, which had been' im- \ pro vised out of the State's Model Schools, • where they found ample accommodation, s and rations which they were allowed to t supplement. They were also permitted to i purchase clothes, and any other necessaries, ' i

except hats, -which for some inscrutable reason were forbidden. " But no degree of material comfort can balance the hateful degradation of imprisonment. Before I had been an liour in captivity I resolved to escape." And the story of this escape — the endurance, pluck, and determination of this one man, who, entirely ;ilone and unaided, effected his escape from, a prison protected by electric lights and not-to-be-brib'ed 'guards—reads like the wildest romance. Without £i map, without a plan, in utter ignorance of the road, arid worse still of the language, with no food but four slabs of chocolate, he started on his travels, and after many incredible hardships and hair-breadth escapes, finally crossed the Portuguese frontier and reached Delagoa Bay, " weary, dirty, hungry, but free once more." The details of the flight are marvellous, but we are told that the most wonderful are reserved. " I cannot now relate the strange circumstances which ' changed my nearly hopeless position intn one of superior advantage. But after the war is over I shall hope to lengthen this account, and so remarkable will the addition be that I cannot believe the reader will complain." While passing through the Dutch^ camps as a, prisoner Mr Churchill discovered —-as he thinks—the " true and original reason of the Dutch aversion to i British rule.'1 It is "the abiding fear and i hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man. British Government is associated in the Boer farmer's mind with violent social re- ] volution.' .' The servant is to be raised \ against the' master. The dominant race is to be deprived of their superiority: nor is a tigress robbed of her young more furious than is the Boer at this prospect." Ano- ! ther difficulty is the position of loyal naj tives, and the sons of loyal natives —the '. men who were told " to come out and fight, i or leave the country," whose hearts were j torn between duty to their mother land and duty to their nearest and dearest. To one such Mr Churchill said: " The Government .would have paid you compensation after- | wards." "Ah! that's what they told father i last time.' He was loyal, and helped to j defend the Pretoria laager. He lost every-' j thing, and had to begin all over again." ! Such is an example of "the ruined, abanI doned loyalist in the second generation," 1 and this is one of the difficulties with which we haVe had to reckon, and one which Itudyard Kipling, as well as the present writer, repeatedly warns us against in the future. After his escape Mr Churchill immediately returned to the seat of war, and accompanied the Ladysmith relief column. In the I detailed account which follows, he does full justice to Sir Redvers Buller's admirable qualities as a general, and points out, by the aid of maps and plans, the extraordinary natural obstacles offered by the coun- | try which our troops had to penetrate, and j the special 'dangers and difficulties-which attended the .crossing of the Tugela; but lie also notices the superior* tactics of the Boers, by which they were enabled to force its to fight "where they pleased." He speaks again and again of the exceptional heroism and endurance of our private soldiers " and regimental officers, " which have never been surpassad " ; but with the other hand he does not hesitate to strike those in authority and mete out to them a just reproof for many an ill-timed action, and many a mistaken or unsupported attack. Yet, as he himself adds, r< When all the bitter words have been said by the people who never do anything themselves, the wise and just citizen will remember that •these generals' were, after all, English' gentlemen, who were doing their best to carry out a task that might prove to be impossible, and was certainly the hardest ever set to men." His defence of Sir Redvers Buller is masterly and impartial, and carries the weight of personal knowledge and considerable experience. Mr Churchill was present at the texxible disaster of Spion Ivop, and bears witness to the undaunted heroism displayed in that "gigantic blunder." His thrilling account makes the blood tingle in the veins; it was, indeed, " magnificent,' but it was not war." Yet who shall say where the moral effect of such personal devotion ends? Perhaps the price j is not, after all, too high: for these are ! of the deeds that -win the Empire. Then after three failures came the final relief of Ladysmith, where victory was snatched .from defeat, and " the impossible " was actually achieved. Nothing in the book is more excellent than the last chapter, in which we get a resume of the position past and present, and in which the author renders a graceful tribute to his friend and fellow-correspondent, Mr G. W. Steeyens, " the brightest intellect yet sacrificed to this war" ; a man who was " modest, yet proud, wise as well as witty, cynical, but above all things sincere; a charming companion and a good comrade." The praise so freely bestowed on another rebounds on himself, and when we close tie book we feel that we too are parting frpin a "stout heart and an enduring spirit." '