“HIGH PRESSURE”

Taranaki Daily News, 8 July 1929, Page 7

“HIGH PRESSURE”

WAR CORRESPONDENT’S LIFE ADVENTURES OF A JOURNALIST. SOME INTERESTING PEN PICTURES. The life of the war correspondent thirty years ago must have been a pleasantly adventurous one. Those were the days of Mafeking and Ladysmith, when the correspondent of the Daily Mail proceeded from campaign to campaign equipped with a “larder that wag tinned by Fortnum and Mason, that included everything from turtle soup to plum nudding,” when the correspondent of the Daily News boasted “one camel devoted exclusively to laager beer and another carrying an ice-machine and its necessary adjuncts.” Colone'l Lionel James tells us of that halcyon period in his book of reminiscences, “High Pressure,” a vivid account of his experiences as special correspondent for Reuter’s, and later, The Times, in the Boer and Russo-Japan wars. Colcfnel Janies tumbled intojournalism when fn the ’nineties in India he found himself penniless—thanks to an Australian jockey who lost a race for him that ought to have been a “certainty.” And so he sold out his stable and found —thanks to some friends —a job as a war correspondent during one of the campaigns on the frontier. So creditably did he acquit himself that he obtained a commission with Reuter’s and was later to act for many years as one of the “star” correspondents of The Times. YOUNG WINSTON CHURCHILL. Here in this book of adventure we meet with many of the great ones of later-day history who were then still in the ’prentice stage—Mr. Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir lan Hamilton, Sir William Robertson, Lord Roberts, Mr. Winston Churchill, and Jack London. Mr. Churchill, then a subaltern in the 4th Hussars, he found a rather tempestuous youth with a ready tongue that was much given to laying down the law. Soldiers smiled at him, and said that he had been spoiled by the colonel of the regiment, who had given him more rope than was good for a subaltern. Perhaps his colonel was wiser than his generation, for no one at Peshawar saw in this over-energetic youth, who early affected the then novel Jodhpur breeching, the future great Minister of State. The story Colonel James has to tell of the siege of Ladysmith is an odd mixture of comedy and tragedy. Those who remember London during the air-raids in the last war will be amused at the somewhat easy-going methods of the besieging Boers and their “big gun”:— An official bugler was stationed to observe the discharge of the big gun. As soon as this musician saw the pillar of white smoke he sounded a short call — right about wheel —and the immediate neighbourhood understood that they had twenty seconds in which to run to o-round. It was curious, however, to remark how soon the shelters .fell into disuse. The civilians became acclimatised to this innocuous type of shell fire, and their general attitude towards any special effort at' self-preservation w' one of ca ne vaut pas la peine. CREATOR OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. In those far-off days Colonel James came into intimate contact with Mr. Budyard Kipling, from whom he borrowed £5O, and who contributed to the Bloemfontein Friend, a paper produced by English correspondents at the request of Lord Roberts. After the death of the famous war correspondent G. W. Steevens, Mr. Kipling composed a verse to serve as the heading of Colonel James’s obituary notice of him: — Through war and pestilence, red siege and fire, Silent and self-contained he drew his breath, Brave, not for show of courage —his desire Truth as he saw it, even to the death. Here is Colonel James’s earliest recollection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, then “attached to the army on some medical mission”; — I remember on one occasion, as I sat either sub-editing Reuter’s news-tele-grams or passing proofs for press, that a great heavy individual thrust himself in upon us, and threw down a manuscript of most' neatly written script, with the remark, “Mind, I want that copy back again.” I looked at the eignature. It was “A. Conan Doyle.” Thia was my first meeting with the creator of Sherlock Holmes. THE ESCAPE FROM PRETORIA. There is an interesting variant here of the story of Mr. Winston Churchill’s escape—he was then acting as correspondent of the Morning Post —from Pretoria. Mr. Churchill has himself told us the story, but hardly eo graphically as Colonel James: — By climbing upon freight cars at night, and by crawling in the shadows, Churchill hail accomplished some part of his journey to the Portuguese frontier; but at last his brave heart even was beaten. Starving and dead beat, he came to the conclusion that it would be better to return to Pretoria and imprisonment than to die of exhaustion and exposure on the veldt. He made up his mind to surrender to the first Dutchman he met. It was dark and he saw the lights of a hamlet before him. He selected one lighted window and went to the door and knocked. The door was opened, not by a Dutchman, but by & Scotsman who had settled in the Transvaal after the Majuba Campaign. This Scotsman, though a nationalised burgher, saw Winston Churchill through and got him to the frontier. If he had chanced upon any other house in the hamlet he would have fallen amongst thieves. Could an escaped prisoner have had a greater stroke of luck than this ? AN AWKWARD MOMENT. During the South African War Colonel James rode up to a lonely Boer farmstead. An unearthly silence prevailed, there was no response to his knocking. He stood outside, his hand on his mauser. At last a girl opened a shutter timidly and Colonel James James felt instinctively that he was being watched. At length the girl appeared, glass in hand: As I put out my hand to receive the glass, with one motion the girl dropped her elbow and soused the contents of the glass full into my face. “Hands up!” came the command from the open doorway in stentorian tones, and betwec soothing my startled

horse and my wits I saw, through the white mist of milk, that I was looking into the business ends of two rifles in the hands of rough-bearded burghers. The girl stood aside convulsed with laughter. The metal throat of the rifle, a few inches removed from the breast, has a considerable- effect upon one. I was a captured man. But for a moment only. Something swished past me, and I saw a great star appear in the whitewashed plaster, just above my capturers’ heads. The girl’s laughter died out, the two Dutchmen ducked and instinctively made for the cover of the doorway. Rimington’s “Tiger” had risen to the occasion. Rimington’s “Tiger”—we need hardly {idtf. —was one of Colonel James’s guides. TRYING TO BUY THE TIMES. -It was in the Russo-Japanese War that Colonel James found himself in the act of being bribed by a Russian spy w ith a bundle of notes to the value of £20,000! . The Times—on Colonel James’s advice—had chartered a steamer and installed on it a wireless apparatus. The Russian, who gave his name as “Baron Lubavin,” asked James if he would wireless a short message to General Kuropatkin in Port Arthur: On sayino- this he took out of another pocket a great wad of bank-notes, which he put upon my table. I looked at the pile in astonishment. It was of amazing thickness. Baron Lubavin nodded his head. “It is such a little massage,” he said, “and these notes represent twenty thousand pounds sterling. You see, it is a very vital message. Will you take these notes? They are yours.” I was hypnotised by the sight of so much money; and I was so flabbergasted by the proposal that it took me quite a little time to catch hold of myself. When I could bring myself to speak, I said: “Baron, you have made a mistake. You are trying to buy The Times. The Times is not to be bought!” The Baron offered to increase his bribe, but Colonel James remained adamant. Not only did he remain adamant, but all that night stood on guard with his Colt outside the wireless station. In the middle of the night, he tells us—*I saw two figures separating from the -might shadows. “Halt!” I said. “You cannot come any nearer to the station, Baron. lam armed.” “Have you reconsidered my proposal, Captain? It is only such a tiny message ! ” “There is nothing to reconsider, Baron, and I must ask you not to trespass on my station.” The two men turned and went down the zig-zag path. I do not know who the second man may have been. “I kept solitary vigil on that hilltop,” Colonel James adds, “until the sun rose in magnificent splendour away in the east, way back from over Pekin somewhere.”