Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 14, 5 April 1900, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

The present war in South Africa reminds us women in war. that the fighting instinct is not wholly undeveloped in the sex that is called gentle. Many a time and oft has the blood of women mingled with that of men in the red front of battle, especially in conflicts where racial hate or religious passion was associated with a high fever of patriotic enthusiasm. The average Boer woman is said to handle the rifle with a skill that is highly dangerous to the human target on which she • draws a bead.' * The women are well armed,' says an English correspondent in South Africa, ' and the average Boer woman is a Tartar to meet. I would rather attack a house full of Englishmen than a Dutch house full of hostile women.' Man's special libation to the war-god is blood ; woman's, tears. The idea of women -soldiers in action is repugnant to the finer feelings of the ordinary healthy mind. But even in the present South African campaign the blood of women has more than once mingled with that of men up the boulder-strewn kopjes. After all, the threat of Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger to place women in the trenches may be no mere idle phrase-making : he will probably be besieged by muscular and enthusiastic volunteers in petticoats anxious to • man ' both the outer and inner lines of defence of Pretoria. Some of the sturdy, brig-built Boer vroutos have already made their mark upon the field of battle — and left it there : the mark being a khaki-clad Thomas Atkins. One of the best ' marksmen ' in the attacks on Ladysmith was a patriotic old lady of some 70 summers, who, with her aged husband, was unable to hobble out of danger when the tide of battle carried the British bayonets like a foam-tipped breaker that way. Several soldier-women were slain in the Boer trenches by British shell-fire. One of the ' finds 'of Thomas Atkins in the captured trenches beyond Ladysmith was a healthy Dutch baby wrapped in a blanket. And among the defenders' of Oonje's last laager whose voices rang out ' no surrender ' longest were a number of Boer women who shared the fortunes of the struggle with their husbands, sons, and brothers. There probably never went to war a more loyal and devoted woman — and a better female shot — than ' Tante ' Joubert, wife of the late gallant Commander-in-Chief of the Boer forces. Her place by the dead leader's side was not, however, that of a stuffed human slaying-machine. She was his tender companion and cook and potato-peeler and all-round provider and counsellor — a very treasure of a great-hearted woman to the dead officer, and a gentle nurse and consoler to the sick and wounded burghers. She was by ' Piet's ' side in many a native war. She was with him at Majuba Hill, and her strong counsel made the memorable action there a Boer, instead of a British, victory. Few women alive to-day have looked more frequently and with less concern full square in the eyes of leaden death than 'Tante' Joubert. And the gracious message of condolence to her from Queen Victoria and from the British prisoners in Pretoria are tributes alike to the kindly feeling of the senders and to the unflinching bravery and touching affection of the great-hearted old Boer woman who is now mourning in widow's weeds.

Military history presents many such instances of wifely devotion amidst the uncongenial surroundings of the camp and the battle-field. During the late Spanish-American War the wife of Colonel Stotsenburg distinguished herself alike for her devotion to her husband and her gallantry against the foe. Throughout the fierce fighting around Manila she kept by her husband's side, gave first aid to the wounded, shouldered, on occasion, the rifle of a dead or wounded soldier and blazed

away with skill and cool judgment at the Filipinos, and finally, when her husband fell, brought his dead body back to America. American military history bears record of at least two other daring women who faced the chances of battle with the ice-berg coolness of the male veteran. The one was Mrs. Seelye, who died in Texas last year. She was a minor Ranee of Jhansi, was noted for her freaks of cool, if wild, daring as a scout, and was described as ' the bravest soldier in the American Civil War.' There also beat a brave heart within the breast of the charming little American actress-author that became the wife of the Prince Salm-Salm, of the House of Anhalt, in 1862. Her husband volunteered for the American Civil War. She forthwith contrived to secure for herself a captain's commission and pay, and side by side the happy young couple faced with light hearts all the varied chances of one of the greatest armed struggles in history. She was in the firing-line in many of the most stirring actions of that long-drawn campaign. She afterwards accompanied her husband through the Mexican campaign ; risked her life many a time in the interests of the ill-starred emperor, Maximilian, who had been given to the Mexicans as an emperor by the French ; and was standing in the firing line by her husband's side when he was struck down at Gravelotte by a Prussian bullet in 1870. When his rude grave on the battle-field had closed over his remains, the gallant little Princess organised a hospital brigade, says a writer of the period, ' went from battle-field to battle-field and from hospital to hospital, comforting the wounded and closing the eyes of the dying.' Her own eyes were closed to earth at Coblenz, on the Rhine, in 188 1.

The traditions, if not the written records, of the British navy, contain a tale of wifely devotion which in a way savours somewhat of ' Bab's ' story of the bumboat woman and the crew of the ' Hot Cross Bun.' It relates to the wife of one of the gunners of Rodney's flagship in the victory which this hard-hitting old admiral won over the French off St. Dominica on April 12, 1782. 'By collusion among the sailors,' says one account, ' the woman was smuggled aboard before the fleet left England, and her presence was not discovered until the great battle was in progress. Rodney was on the quarter-deck, when, looking down, he saw to his amazement a woman aiding the service of a gun of the main battery. In the heat of the battle the admiral overlooked this extraordinary breach of discipline, but when the fight was won, he summoned the woman to his presence. " What are you doing here ?*' he demanded, with sternness. " Fighting the French," she answered, boldly. '* My husband was wounded and dragged below, so I took his place. Do you think I'm afraid of the French, just because I'm a woman ? " The admiral's discipline weakened for once. He reprimaned the woman, but his words were gentle. The gunner's wife sailed on the ship which carried to England the news of Rodney's victory, and in her pocket were 10 guineas from the admiral's purse.'

An altogether pathetic bravery was displayed in iB6O by the beautiful queen of Francis 11. of Naples at the moment when the conspirator Cavour, with the aid of Garibaldi's foreign adventurers and Victor Emmanuel's Sardinian troops, was treacherously robbing him of his crown and turning Naples and the two Sicilies from a kingdom into a province. Ferdinand's step-mother and certain others of his court told the wavering monarch that the life of a king was a precious jewel, and should be, so to speak, kept carefully wrapped in cotton wool. His minister of war gave bolder and better counsel : ' Sire, place yourself at the head of the 40,000 troops who remain faithful, and risk a last stake ; or, at least, fall gloriously after an honorable battle.' Such, too, was the counsel of his brave and loyal wife. During the siege of

Gaeta, when shells were raining into the place from land and sea, she went around the ramparts encouraging the artillerymen at their guns. And it is said of her that ' when bullets and shells were raining the heaviest around, she would calmly light a cigarette and infuse new courage into her soldiers by her contempt of danger.' There never was, perhaps, a cheerier disregard of shot and shell displayed by women in war than by the Catholic nuns in their battered conventhospital within the beleaguered lines of Mafeking. This is, however, a well-established tradition of Catholic nursing Sisterhoods in the present year of grace as it was in the 'SpanishAmerican War, the Franco-German War, the Great American Civil War (where several of them lost their lives on the battlefield), the Crimean War, the Anglo-American War of 181 2-15, when three Ursuline nuns who had been tending the American wounded within the zone of fire at New Orleans, were shot by British bullets on January 15, 1815. The records of the Legion of Honor, published by M. Alesson in 1888, show that out of 34 women who, up to that date, had been decorated, no fewer than 20 were Sisters of Charity who, like the famous Sister Martha in 181 5, had rendered noble services to the wounded in battle or to the plague-stricken in the days of pestilence.

We may yet hear of female rifle-shots at Mafeking. Who knows ? Considerable numbers of patriotic Frenchwomen offered to enroll themselves for the defence of Paris against the German besiegers in 1870. General Trochu, however, wisely declined their services. The Communards were not so squeamish. An eye-witness — an English medical student — tells how he saw at the savage struggle at Belleville 'a battalion of women fighting [against the Government troops] and firing admirably with Snider rifles. Among them were many pretty-looking young girls. They fought like devils — far better than the men ; and I had the pain to see fifty-two of them shot down.' One such incident as this in war is enough for a century. The English, Irish, and Scottish women who fought at Lucknow and other places in the Indian Mutiny were defending honor as well as life against a foe that showed a savage disregard for both. They loaded the guns, sometimes fired thtm — occasionally with remarkable skill, kept up the supply of ammunition, acted as ' look-out ' sentinels, tended the wounded, and in many other ways aided the professional fighters to hold fast by the policy of 'no surrender.' On the Sepoy side in the Mutiny there appeared an Eastern Boadicea whose exploits far outshone those of Dame Nichola de Camville, of the Countess of Salisbury and Jennie Cameron and Anna Maria Buhler and Virginie Guesqutiere and Maria Schelling and other fighting women. This was the Ranee (Princess) of Jhansi. Her career was a brief but brilliant one. After the fall of Delhi she led her squadrons of cavalry in the field against the British troops for several months and used the sword with great skill in personal encounters. At the battle of Gwalior she led charge after charge in right gallant fashion, till she fell ' with enough wounds in front,' says Justin McCarthy, 'to have done credit to any hero.' Her generous victor, Sir Hugh Rose, said in the general order issued to his troops after the battle that ' the best man on the side of the enemy was the woman found dead, the Ranee of Jhansi.' Readers of Napier's History of the Peninsular War will easily recall the stirring chapters which tell how the women of Saragoza and Badajos struggled with such desperate valor in defence of their native towns — how they stood up and answered the volleys of veteran soldiers in the open squares, how they fought from house to house, and fired out of cupboards and through the boarding of floors on their assailants. They recall that other famous instance in which the women of Limerick toiled and fought with such enthusiasm and determination for the defence of their beloved city against the Williamite troops in 1690. Store, the Williamite chaplain, wrote of them : ' The women rushed boldly into the breach, and stood nearer to our men than to their own, hurling stones and broken bottles right into the faces of the attacking troops, regardless of death by sword or bullet, which many of them boldly met. Before defenders thus animated it was no disgrace to the assailants to give way.' Valor such as this, appeals with great force to the sense of patriotism. That of Joan of Arc appeals to a still higher feeling. But generally speaking, woman's noblest work upon the battle-field and in the deadly imminent breach is that of the Sister of Mercy or of Charity : not to make wounds, but to soothe or heal them ; not to add to the sum of human suffering, but to act the part of ministering angels in assuaging it.

There is a good — or bad — percentage of our population that unconsciously hold fast by Mr. Basker's advice to Dr. Claudius : ' Pro-

CRUSADES AGAINST SWEARING.

fanity is the safety valve ot great minds. Swear loudly and put your whole mind to it.' The strength of the habit, whence once well acquired, is well illustrated by Huck Finn's remarks to his friend Tom Sawyer. Huck had been rescued from his wild life and adopted by a kind widow lady. The cramped life of civilised society was

too close a fit for Huek — above all for his free-spoken tongue which had been previously accustomed to volley out verbal projectiles at the rate of a Maxim gun. 'Well/ said the disconsolate Huck to the boy friend of his bosom, ' I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort ; I'd got to go up to the attic and rip out a while every day to get a taste in my mouth, or'} I'd a died, Tom.' That is just it. Such a habit is a mental and physical force that, when well entrenched within the territory of our personality, it takes a strenuous struggle to drive trom its vantage-ground. Cowper phrased this truth under a very striking figure of speech : — Habits are soon assumed ; but when we strive To trip them off, 'tis being flayed alive. As applied to swearing habits, this fact has not escaped the keen wit of the comedians. Perchance some of our readers may be acquainted with the short French comedy, Les Jurons de Cadillac. Much of it is occupied with the distressful experience of a naval officer — a singularly proficient swearer — who is constrained, in order to win the hand of his ladye-love, to abandon for one short hour the customary garnishings of his speech. This condition plunges Cadillac into the inky depths of black despair. ' Ask me anything but that!' he implores; ' only let me swear, or I shall go mad !' The very prevalence of this evil habit dulls the public sense of its enormity and thereby increases the difficulty of effectively coping with it. The Holy Name Society in' Albany (United States) has, however, instituted a locally successful campaign in favor of pure speech. It is a Catholic association, was organised last year for the purpose of crusading against profanity and its companion evil, obscene storytelling, and held a grand demonstration a few weeks ago at Albany. It proposes to call in the aid of the civil law against blasphemy and obscenity of speech. There is abundant scope for an anti-swearing crusade in these colonies.

Such an association has strenuous work before it when it sets forth to fling its energies against such a rock-wall of inherited evil habit as that of profanity. History, however, tells us that some such crusades in favor of clean speech effected much good when properly pushed home. Perhaps the most noted association of this kind was that which was formed in the first half of the fifteenth century by the famous Franciscan monk and preacher, St. Bernardine of Siena. He raised aloft a banner bearing the Holy Name inscribed above a figure of the crucified Lord, preached a crusade against the abhorrent blasphemy that was so prevalent in his day, and succeeded everywhere in winning men to abandon those jarring expletives of passion and irreligion that are now so common in these new countries. ]oan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, imposed upon her soldiers the most stringent orders against the u»e of profane language. She even succeeded in reducing to the bounds of strict decorum the language of the celebrated oathvolleying La Hire, who was a very Boanerges among th« sturdy swearers of his time, and who considered thunderous blasphemy as an indispensable qualification of a leader of men — just as it is in these new countries regarded by some as a necessity for the driver of the slow-paced ox-team. Under the gentle influence of the saintly Maid of Orleans La Hire so far amended the style of his lingual gymnastics as to swear by nothing else than his marshal's baton. St. Louis of France, the Lollards, the Puritans, and the Quakers all waged a war to the knife against swearing. In the year 1700 there was founded in England what was known as the Society for the Reformation of Manners. One of the principal objects of its institution was the abolition of the flippant and vituperative blasphemy so common at that period. Julian Sharman tells us that its membership roll comprised, in addition to the King Consort, a number of persons who were ' distinguished alike for a laxity of their own morals and a tender solicitude for the welfare of other people's.' They proceeded criminally against blasphemers, etc. But they were not the sort of people to work a reformation in the habits of the nation, and after much noise and bluster and show of activity, the Society for the Reformation of Manners — which had forgotten to begin by reforming its own — fell to pieces, leaving the profanity of the time as prevalent and as gross as before.

One curious feature consists of the stupid or ludicrous imitation oaths which have been called ' the stalking-horses of blasphemy.' In this way, says one quaint author before us, many people ' have contrived so to compound with their consciences as to become swearers in practice without being blamphemers in intention.' We find instances' of this form of expletive being, so to speak, codified into a sort of system which enabled people to sport and dally with swearing without directly ruffling modesty or shocking innocence. The Bob Acreses and the Captain Absolutes and the Bobadils and the Feesimples of their time were preceded by the framers of the whimsical code of rules for oath-taking that appeared in the popular mediaeva satire, the Ship of Fools. And ages before — in the far-off times when Attic thought and Attic art held highest sway — Grecian philosophers and men of letters did

not disdain to indulge in the folly of playing fantastic lingual pranks on the risky borderland of sheer profanity. Socrates is said to have been a dSep and voluble swearer. But he swore by the dog, the caper, the plane-tree, and — the cabbage ! The last-mentioned oath lingers on to the present day in the mitigated form of the popular Italian exclamation Cavoli ! Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, also swore by the caper ; Pythagoras by the number four ; the lonians by the cabbage and colewort ; Lampon by the goose ; and at one time — as we learn from Aristophanes' Birds — nobody in Attica used to swear by the gods, but all by the birds. Here was indeed ludicrous side in the changing fashions of Greek swearing. But it had its fantastic counterpart in the ' male ' and ' female ' oaths of Rome and of seventeenth century England. Sir John Hazlewood in the play merely reflected a fashionable whim of his day when he said : ' If ever I should betake myself to swearing, I shall give very little concern to the fashion of the oath. " Odd's bodikins will do well enough for me, and " lack-a-daisy " for my wife.' When Lady Percy (in King Henry IV., part I.) says ' in goodsooth,' Hotspur chides her for swearing ' like a comfit-maker's wife,' and urges her to 'swear like a lady,' 'a good mouth-filling oath.' Who can explain why the women of ancient pagan Rome used to swear freely by Castor and never by Pollux, and the Roman men by Pollux and never by Castor ; and why neither men or women swore by Hercules, but boys did — provided that the expletive was uttered in the open air ? If a Roman boy swore by that reverential name within the four walls of his father's house or in the court-yard thereof, he ran serious risk of being soundly thrashed for his temerity. Such problems resolve themselves into this : that there is a fashion in folly as well as in skirts and head-gear. But who gives the fashion in any of these things let others say. The answer lies far beyond the uttermost bounds of our little knowledge.

Whatever place the swearing of the Greeks and Romans may have occupied in the moral order, there can be no doubt that there is a large body of swearing in Christian countries that is merely coarse and sinful and brutal — without even the thin pretence of being harmless or sportive. One of its most disgusting features is that irreverence to the Sacred Name which aroused the zeal of St. Bernardine, and even excited the disgusted satire of Addison in the Spectator. It was fearfully prevalent among all classes in England — men and women alike — from the days of Henry VIII. to the Commonwealth, and again from the Restoration to the beginning of the present century. Elizabeth was a sturdy and accomplished swearer. Lord Thurlow declared that he ' could not have got on without swearing.' The Duchess of Marlborough 'swore like a lady of quality' — we nowadays say 'like a trooper.' Charles 11. is credited with the shame of having taught the ladies of his court to ' swear like parrots.' And so on : the habit permeated all ranks of society. Legislation against swearing and blasphemy has been, when duly enforced, able to compel good behaviour within certain limits, to aid in forming a public opinion against the vice, and to protect children and others from much bad example. Such legislation has usually taken its tone from the temper of the times during which it was passed, and has been frequently of a very stringent character indeed, recalling some of the provisions of the old Jewish code against sins of blasphemy. For instance, Justinian's code made swearing by the limbs of God punishable by death. In Scotland the tongues of swearers were cut out, by virtue of the statutes of Donald VI. and Kenneth 11. In France impious oath-taking was punished by the drowning of the offender in the Seine. St. Louis of France had such a horror of swearing that in his time every such offender, upon conviction, had the sinning member branded with a red-hot iron. The Scottish Act of 1551 was, in all reason, sufficiently severe. One of its enactments provided that ' a prelate of kirk, earl, or lord,' should be fined twelve pennies for the first offence, and for the fourth banishment or imprisonment for one year. A searching system of fines, imprisonments, and corporal punishments was drawn up by the kirk. Under the Puritan regime an Act passed in 1606 provided a penalty of £\o for irreverence towards the name of God. An Act of the Scottish Parliament passed in 1645 raised the penalty to £20 Scots for a nobleman. Four years later an amending Act was passed which provided that the cursing of a parent should be punishable by death. George Colman, the censor, went so far as to expunge the exclamations ' la !' and ' lud !' from dramatic productions submitted to him ; one William Harding, of Chitt Champton was fined for saying ' Upon my life !' and one Thomas Buttand for incautiously exclaiming •On my troth !' The British Acts of 1625 and of 19 Geo. 11., cap. 21, were much milder than those of Scotland. But convictions and fines were nevertheless sufficiently frequent to lead Dean Swift and others to formulate plans to increase the national revenue by a systematic crusade against the wealthy class of swearers and blasphemers. One of the literary curiosities of these economists was a treatise written in 1746 by Matthew Towgood Upon the Prophane and Absurd use of the Monosyllable Damn. Swift's droll project of a 'Bank of Swearing* like his * Modest Proposal ' to supply the flesh of butchered Irish

babies for the English markets, was never realised. Happily swearing is no longer considered an accomplishment for a gentleman, much less for a lady. It has practically gone out from the upper rungs of society. The time will come, we trust, when this coarse vice will also disappear from the other end of the social ladder. And the coming of that good day would undoubtedly be hastened by the spread of associations like that of the Holy Name.