"BANJO" PATERSON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6962, 28 November 1900, Page 1

"BANJO" PATERSON.

— » — WAR LECTURE AT THE CHORAL HALL. There was nothing of the pomp and circumstance of war about Mr A. B. Paterson last night when, metaphorically speaking, he shouldered his. crutch and showed a large and fashionable Christohurch audience how fields were won in South Africa. It was characteristic of the lecturer that he preferred to appear in the recognised garments of polite society rather than dn a kharki outfit fresh from the tailor's shears. The dislike of ostentation implied in this trifling detail ran through his whole address, and he took occasion to administer a raither severe rebuke both to some colonial volunteers and colonial journals for forgetting the limits of truth and decency in assessing the value of colonial assistance in the Avar. The letters, he said, which had heen published announcing that one Australian was worth two regulars were "a disgrace to the. men that wrote them, and to the newspapers that published them." Mr Paterson showed the same moral fearlessness in defending generals who have been the subject of public objurgation. After explaining the principle on which an army is managed, he expressed the opinion that history will exonerate Lord Methuen from blame for the disastrous attack at Magersfontein, and .that hardl as it is to condemn' a man in his grave, the real onus of that black day for Scotland lies upon General Wuuchope. Mr Paterson also spent some time in. disposing of aesertions which he says have been made that Lord Roberts did not plan, the brilliant operations which characterised the conduct of the war after he assumed command. The lecturer showed how completely the FieldMarshal exercises his authority over the 200,000 men, and 80 millions of money placed under him. The " grand old man," as Mi; Paterson described him, has no second in command ; the generals serving under him staSid in the relation of schoolboys to a master, and receive their orders almost hourly from him. The returned correspondent illustrated his meaning by showing how Lord Roberts, though 300 miles distant, directed the operations which ended in the capture of Prinsloo and 4000 Boers. His narration of how General Hunter kept in retirement for two days, after De Wet, with over a thousand men and his guns was allowed by General Paget's mistake to elude the clutches of the encircling columns, showed the absolute dread in which even the most exalted officers stood of their Commandex-in-Chief. This fact was perhaps most forcibly demonstrated! by Mr Paterson's description of Lord Kitchener's retirement from Paardeberg after his disastrous and futile bayonet attack on Cronje's trenches. " Tell Lord Kitchener," said the Field-Marshal! to a staff-officer, when the conqueror of the Soudan was sent away, " that Lord Roberts does not wish to see him before he goes." Mr Paterson's spirited vindication of Generals who have been under a cloud, and of the prime importance of the regulars in the war, as well as the arrangement of his lecture, stamp him as a historian rather than as a platform orator. A practised speaker would probably have contented himself with descriptions of the most dramatic incidents which Mr Paterson merely introduced in their chronological order. French's relief of Kimberley, and his heading off of Cronje, the subsequent gallant stand made by the Boera at Paardeberg, and the capture of Prinsloo, afforded scope enough for a> single lecture. It may be, as Mr Paterson declared, that war is not so exciting as people who have never seen it imagine, and that it does not lend itself to description. But from a lecturing point of view, the audience plainly showed what it wanted. Love of gore seems implanted in the most civilised breast, and Mr Paterson held his listeners spellbound while he enlarged to some extent on the gruesome sights of the ambulance train bearing away the eleven hundred wounded after Kitchener's attempt to secure the glory of Cronje's surrender for himself. He also arrested the interest of the audience by his happy descriptions of the many humorous incidents of camp life. Nothing could be more amusing than the accounts of the worries endured by the infantry who were being concerted into mounted troops, the men who thought it far easier to hump a seven-stone saddle on their backs than to ride, and yet, when they were ordered to become horsemen, tackled the job with the pluck with which " Tommy " would attempt to navigate a ship or do a sum in Algebra if he was told to-do so. Characteristic stories were told of the Irish regiments who had a habit of indiscriminately letting off the rifles in camp, and who were ordered by a Colonel to " fire in the air and not load! at all " j of the " Micky " who, when disturbed by a shell falling in the camp, rushed out of his tent, fired off five shots, and them demanded, " For the love of Heaven, where are they?" Mr Paterson concluded an entertaining evening by explaining some excellent lantern slides and cinematograph views. To-night he will lecture on "The Empire's Call, or New Zealanders and Australians in. Action." He will conclude his brief season to-morrow night.