Frederic Villiers.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5334, 12 August 1895, Page 1

Frederic Villiers.

A TALK WITH THE FAMOUS WA: ABTIST.

Mr Frederic Villitrs, who, after having gone through nine campaigns, has come fresh from the last war to tell us, from the lecture platform, of the wild Bcenes amid which a large part of the last twenty years of his life have been spent, came to Chriatchurch-from Timaru yesterday with Mr Hugo Fischer, an old soldier of the Franco-Prussian war, but now representative of the "much-travelled" Mr \ B. 8. Smythe. Mr Villiers went to th& \ 'Ghristchurch Club, where, in the a*ter- \ Boon, a member of the Btaff of this journal Nailed on him to meet with a reception crafrteoußly hearty, just such a reception aVis accorded to a friend by the typical Englishman. Englishman — of the type whit* Britishers like to consider as the typ& !$r excellence of the race, Mr Villiers oertaittyis. In the prime of life— he is forty-t&ee years of age — of middle size and stuity build, with fresh complexion, brown ha* and crisp, light beard and Jnoußtaohe,«, keen but kindly eye, and a manner at \n C c alert, positive and frank, he is jnat thexnan one wculd expect to be a famous war and artist. Yet he is unassuming withal, and genial, a good fellow aaVell as a keen votary of a dangerous calling; THE EVOLUTION^ a. WAB ARTIST. *• I was a Btudent <* the Royal Academy of Arts in London,"\ a id Mr Villiers, in •reply to our representative's first question, "and my first sketohw for an illustrated paper were done for the Sporting -and Dramatic News, then edited by my old friend, Byron Webber/ My first rapid work— purely special artist work— was a sketch of the burning of tke Alexandra Palaoo, over twenty years ago, which I sent to the Graphic. My health gave way from over-study, and for a ohWe and to pull myself together, I aocep^ed an engagement to go out as special wtist for the Qraphic to the Servian war. I have been through eight campaigns for that paper, but in ay laat one L was artiat for Black and Whiit, and special correspondent for the Stanford. In Heivia I met a friend whom I am glad to uy I have kept all these years, Archibald Forbeß. W« campaigned together . for three years— in the Servian, the KaasoTurkish, and part of the Afghan war. As a war correspondent he is far ahead of any other. When you know him thoroughly, and he is in anything like decent health, he is one of the /finest fellows there can possibly be. When he came through the oolonies he was in wretched health, . which, I should say, ' accounts for ' some people thinking him grumpy. I look upon him and the correspondents of his day as the very ideal of what such men should be— men who! went everywhere and saw everything for j themselves. In our days men do not go to tho front so much, and therefore they do not get; such authentic material. 1 In the war between ' China and Japan there were only four * European correspondents at the frontMr Cowan, of the Times, who arrived in time for the fight at Port Arthur— Mr Creelman, an American and a moat conscientious worker, a Frenchman and myself. I was the only special 'artist, and yet- all the illustrated papers had war piotures— r 'by our special artist'— fakes in Fleet Street. Anyone who had really seen what took place could tell that. For instance, one 'sketch' represented Chinese prisoners leaving Post Arthur. There were officers among them.' Now, not a single Chinese officer was taken prisoner at Port Arthur; they all bolted four hours before the fightiDg began. However, I think the occupation of the special war artist is gone; in the next campaign there will probably be so many >' officers with cameraa. I shall go aa correspondent, most; likely for the Standard. THE NEXT "WAS. Mr Villiere looks for the theatre of the next war in the realm of the Turk. The troubles in Macedonia and Armenia he considers aa in great measure due to the intrigues of Russia,. intrigueß which, however, he believes will be stopped, or at least slackened, now that a Conservative Government is in power in England, for he deems the foreign policy of the Liberals .weak and particularly liable to tempt ' foreign nations to break the peace of Europe. As to the atrocities in Armenia, he considers that we have heard only one aide— a great deal about the cruelties of 1 Turks to Christiana, and nothing about the • atrocities practised by Christian rebels 'upon Tarks; and in his. campaigns in the Turkish Empire he saw suffi- j cient to convince him that the per- - petration of atrocities waa not by 1 any means confined to the Moslems. He -„ law quite enough of Turkish cruelty, how- j * ever, and towards the close of the Servian war his life waa in danger on account of . his outspoken condemnation of it. But this is a digression. THB COLONIES IN THE NEXT WAB. The next disturber of the European peace will, Mr Villiers seems to think, be j either France or Bussia, and, should j England be the object of their resentment, ! there are, he believes, more improbable things than that the first blow might be struck in our part of the world. Modern international law, he points out, does not require a formal declaration of war, and a French or Russian shell falling in an Australasian oity might be the first intimation of hostilities which the Empire , ' would receive. " Whenever," said Mr Villierß, "one of the Great Powers goes

:to war with England, she will strike at the weakest part of the Empire, at Australia or New Zealand, and would try there to oonquer a bit of British territory. Just think of the tremendous moral effeot upon India, and indeed, on the world generally, of the capture of a British colony. Tasmania, for instance, would be a moat valuable prize to an enemy, who couldi in a very short time, so fortify it that the English fleet would be unable to turn him out, and who would use it, with its weapons and resources, as a base of operations, from which to go waltzing round against the rest of the coloniea — not taking the trouble to conquer them, but harrying and plundering them. It is perfect madness, therefore, for the Parliaments of Australia to disband and reduce their little armies as they hare been doing. They have made their countries practically defenceless ; and all the European Powers and the Japanese, too, know it." Mr Villiere' idea of a scheme for the defence of a colony, our own included, is— a few good guns and properly equipped fortifications at the principal ports, a force, not large but well trained, of mounted rifles— all good shots — and plenty of Maxim guna. It will be gratifying to the New Zealand volunteers to know that this experienced campaigner considers the Martini-Henry rifle, with which our forces are now being armed, is, for all practical purposes, as good a weapon as there is in existence. The thin, pencil-shaped bullet of the new rifle will not, he points out, always stop an enemy when it hits him. A man wild with the excitement of battle will, as some of the Chitralis have actually done, rush forward even after such a mißsile had gone through him. The magazine of the new weapon is not, in Mr Villiera' eyeß, an advantage, but merely a contrivanoe for wasting ammunition. OHINBBB AND JAPANESE. Though Mr Villiera prefers to tell on the lecture platform moat of what he has to tell about his last campaign, he had much of interest to say about Chinese and Japanese. For many qualities of both he ha 3 great admiration. The Chinese troops certainly did more running than fighting, but, as he remarked, " at Fort Arthur they had six different kinds of rifles, many of them condemned weapons purchased from European Governments. They would not shoot straight np to 600 yds, and what could you expect of man armed with them when opposed by an enemy with a rifle which could kill them ftt 1000 yds P " Mr Villiera thinks that the Ckinaman well-armed, trained and drilled might do much better than he did in the last campaign, when in all these aspects he was as badly off as he could be. The famous artist has found Cbineaa men honest and faithful, and Chinese women — well, many of them committed suicide in order to save their honour when their. country waa overrun by the Japanese armies. The Japanese soldier he regards as a real fighting man, not, as some oritica have said, merely a docile, well-drilled coolie. The Japanese, are, he says, honestly striving to advance in ' civilisation, but at Port Arthur there was a dreadful backsliding. The atrocities there were not, as some of the apologists for Japan have asserted, the aofis solely of coolies and camp followers. Japanese soldiers took a full share in the fiendish work which waa perpetrated in cold blood, three day* aftar fighting had ceased, and on a defenceless and unoffending population. They were not, like the excesses of European soldiery, done in hot blood, and had ghoulish- char act a tis tics which hare never marked even the worst acts of Europeans. No one was punished for them ; but when Mr Yilliera and his fellow - correspondents exposed them, the Japanese had the grace to be ashamed of themselves. "They went about," said he, "like naughty boys who have been found out ; and when they captured Wei-hai-wei they behaved exceedingly well, though, to be sure, there was no fighting on land there." There was more, and of as much interest, in Mr Villiers* conversation, but to repeat it would be to anticipate the lectures which ha is to begin in the Theatre tomorrow night.