PRETORIA THE CITY OF ROSES
War and worship live only on barest speaking terms, and to the latter
the former makes few concessions; so it came to pass that Whitsunday,
like so many another Sunday spent in South Africa, found us again upon
the march, with the inevitable result that no parade service could
possibly be held. Everybody, however, seemed full of confident
expectation that the next day we should reach Pretoria, and perhaps
take possession of it.
[Sidenote: _Whit-Monday and Wet Tuesday._]
"If we take Pretoria on Whit-Monday," said one of the Guardsmen, "they
will get the news in England next day, and then that will be Wet
Tuesday"; which was a prophecy that seemed not in the least unlikely
to be fulfilled, inasmuch as an Englishman's favourite way of showing
his supreme delight is by accepting an extra drink, or offering one.
Others were of opinion that, with a ring of forts around Pretoria on
which hundreds of thousands of pounds had been expended, the Boer
commanders would make a desperate stand in defence of their much loved
capital, and so keep us at bay for many a day. But nothing daunted by
such uncertainties as to what might be awaiting them, our men were on
the march towards those famous forts early on Monday morning, and we
soon found a lively Bank Holiday was in store for us. Shortly after
noon, General French's cavalry having worked round to the north of the
town, General Pole Carew prepared to attack on the south and our
bombardment of the forts began, but drew from them no reply. All the
Boer guns were elsewhere; and a little way behind our own busy naval
guns, though hidden by the crest of the hill, lay the Grenadier Guards
awaiting orders to take their place and part in the fray.
Presently a sharp succession of Boer shells, intended for the
aforesaid naval guns, came flying over our heads, and dropping among
our men. One hit a horse, which no man will ride again; one struck an
ambulance waggon, and scared its solitary fever patient almost out of
his senses; one dropped close to where a group of generals had just
before met in consultation; but only one of these Boer Whitsuntide
presents burst, and even that, strange to tell, caused no casualties,
though it drove a few kilted heroes to run for refuge into a deepish
pit, near which I sat upon the ground, and watching, wondered where
the next shell would burst. When a little later the Guards moved
further to the right to take up a position still nearer to the town,
Boer bullets came flying over that same ridge and planted themselves
among our left flank men; but when we tried to pick up some of these
leaden treasures to keep as curios, so deeply imbedded were they in
the soil they could not be removed. Yet they were playfully spoken of
as _spent_ bullets.
[Sidenote: "_Light after dark._"]
This grim music of gun and rifle was maintained almost till sunset,
and then died away, leaving us in doubt whether the next day would
witness a renewal of the fight, or whether, as on so many former
occasions, the Boers under cover of the darkness would execute yet
another strategic movement to the rear. That night we slept once more
on the open veldt, made black by the vast sweep of recent grass fires;
and next morning, after a starlight breakfast, I as usual retired to
kneel in humble prayer, imploring the Divine guardianship and guidance
for all in the midst of whom I dwelt. Presently I was startled by an
outburst of wildest cheering from one group; and a moment after from a
second; so springing to my feet I found our lads hurling their helmets
in the air, and shouting like men demented. Not for the chaplains only
that glad hour turned prayer to praise, and thrilled all hearts with
patriotic if not pious pride.
An officer was riding post-haste from point to point where our men
were massed, bearing the delicious tidings that Pretoria too had
unconditionally surrendered. The news swiftly sped from battalion to
battery, and from battery to battalion. First here, then there, then
far away yonder, the cheering rang out clear and loud as a trumpet
call. Comrade congratulated comrade, while Christian men, with
tear-filled eyes, reverently looked up and rendered thanks to Him of
whom it is written, "Thine is the victory."
[Sidenote: _Why the surrender?_]
Remembering how feeble Mafeking was held for months by the merest
handful of men pitted against a host, it is not easy to understand
why this city of roses, so pretty, and of which the Boers were all so
proud, was opened to its captors after only the merest pretence at
opposition. Lord Roberts is reported to have said that in his opinion
it occupied the strongest position he had yet seen in all South
Africa; and to my non-professional mind it instantly brought to
remembrance the familiar lines which tell how round about Jerusalem
the hilly bulwarks rise. The surrender of such a centre of their
national life must have been to the burghers like the plucking out of
a right eye, or the cutting off of a right hand. How came it to pass,
without an effort to hinder it?
The German expert, Count Sternberg, who accompanied the Boers
throughout the war, declared that though considered from the
continental standpoint they are bad soldiers; in their own country, in
ambushes or stratagems, which constitute their favourite type of
warfare, "they are simply superb." He adds they would have achieved
much greater success if they had not abandoned all idea of taking the
offensive. "For that they lack courage; and to that lack of courage
they owe their destruction."
But their flight, like their long after continuance in guerilla types
of warfare, points to quite another cause than this lack of courage.
The Boer is proverbially a lover of his own; and so, though with
liberal hand he laid waste bridge and culvert and plant, as he
retreated along the railway line through the Orange River Colony,
which was not his own, he became quite miserly in his use of dynamite
when the Transvaal was reached, which was his own, and which would
infallibly be restored to him, so he reckoned, when the war was over.
So was it to be with Pretoria too! To the very last the fighting Boer
believed that whatever his fate in the field of battle, if he were
only dogged enough, and in any fashion prolonged the strife
sufficiently, British patience would tire, as it had tired before;
British plans and purposes and pledges would all be abandoned as
aforetime they had been abandoned, and he would thus secure, even in
the face of defeat, the fruits of victory. The importunate widow is
the one New Testament character "the brother" implicitly believes in
and imitates. Her tactics were his before the war, in the matter of
the Conventions; and the wasteful prolonging of the war was a part of
the same policy. Great Britain was to be forced by sheer weariness to
give back to the Transvaal in some form its coveted independence, and
with it, of course, Pretoria also. So he would on no account consent
to let the city be bombarded. Our peaceful occupation was the best
possible protection for property that would presently be again his
own; and while he still went on with his desultory fighting we were
quite welcome, at our own expense, to feed every Boer family we could
find.
Thus, like our own hunted Pretender, he held that however long
delayed, the end was bound to restore to him his own; and he had not
far to look for what justified the fallacy. In 1881, for instance, as
one among many illustrations, an English general at Standerton
formally assured the Boers that the Vaal would flow backward through
the Drakenberg Hills before the British would withdraw from the
Transvaal. Three successive Secretaries of State, three successive
High Commissioners, and two successive Houses of Commons deliberately
endorsed that official assurance; yet though the Vaal turned not back
Great Britain did; and to that magnanimous forgetting of the nation's
oft-repeated pledge was due in part this new war and its intolerable
prolonging. It does not pay thus to say and then unsay. Thereby all
confidence, all sense of finality, is killed.
[Sidenote: _Taking possession._]
"Take your Grenadiers and open the ball," said Sir John Moore, as he
appointed to his men their various positions in the famous fight at
Corunna; and on this memorable 5th of June when the British finally
took possession of Pretoria the Guards as at Belmont were again
privileged to "open the ball." But whilst they were busy seizing the
railway station and stock, with other points of strategic importance,
I took my first hasty stroll through the city; and among the earliest
objects of interest I came upon was the pedestal of a monument, with
the scaffolding still around it, but quite complete, except that the
actual statue which was to crown and constitute the summit was not
there.
"Whose monument is that?" I meekly asked. "Paul Kruger's," was the
prompt reply; "but the statue, made in Rome, has not yet arrived,
being detained at Delagoa Bay."
That statue now probably never will arrive, and possibly enough some
other figure,--perchance that of Victoria the Good,--will ultimately
be placed on that expectant pedestal, so making the monument complete.
"Which thing," as St Paul would say, "is an allegory!" That monument
in its present form is a precise epitome of the man it was meant to
honour. It is most complete by reason of its very incompleteness. The
chief feature in this essentially strong man's career, as also in his
monument, has reference to the foundation work he wrought. It was the
finish that was a failure, and in much more important matters than
this pile of chiselled granite, the work the late President commenced
in the Transvaal its new rulers must make it their business to carry
on, and, in worthier fashion, complete. We cannot begin _de novo_. For
better for worse, on foundations laid by Boers, Britons must be
content to build.
Close by, forming the main feature on one side of the city Square,
stood a remarkably fine building, intended to serve as a palace of
justice, but, like the monument in front of it, it was still
unfinished. In the Transvaal there was as yet no counterpart to that
most important clause in our own Magna Charta, which says "We will not
sell justice to any man." Corruption and coercion were familiar forces
alike in the making and the administration of its laws. In more senses
than one the Transvaal Government had not yet opened its courts of
justice. They mutely awaited the coming of the new _regime_.
In one of the main streets leading out of the Square stood the
President's private residence; a gift-house, so it is said, accepted
by him as a recompense for favours received. Compared with the
Residency at Bloemfontein it is a singularly unpretentious dwelling
and was in keeping rather with the economic habits, than with the
private wealth, or official status, of its chief occupant. British
sentinels had already been posted all about the place, and on the
verandah sat a British officer with a long row of mausers lying at his
feet. There too, one on each side of the main entrance, crouched
Kruger's famous marble lions, silently watching that day's novel
proceedings. Not even the presence of those men in khaki, nor that sad
array of surrendered rifles, sufficed to draw from those stony
guardians of their master's home so much as a muffled growl. They are
believed to be of British origin, and I suspect that, so far as their
nature permits, they cherish British sympathies; for they certainly
showed no signs of lamenting over the ignoble departure of their lord.
All regardless of the griefs of his deserted lady, they still placidly
licked their paws; and as I cast on them a parting glance they gave to
me, or seemed to, a knowing wink!
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Mr Jones, Pretoria_
Dopper Church Opposite President Kruger's House Built by the Late
President.]
Precisely opposite the Residency is the handsome Dopper Church,
wherein the President regularly worshipped, and not infrequently
himself ministered in holy things. The church is nearly new, and like
much else in Pretoria is still unfinished. The four dials have indeed
been duly placed on the four faces of the clock tower; but in that
tower there is as yet no clock; and round those clock dials there move
no clock hands. No wonder Pretoria with its dominant Dopper Church,
and its still more decidedly dominant Dopper President, mistook the
true hour of its destiny, and madly made war precisely when peace
was easiest of attainment. Kruger, dim-eyed and old, lived face to
face continually with clock dials that betokened no progress, but,
merely mocked the enquiring gaze. Which thing, the Chelsea Sage would
say, was symbolical and significant of much!
[Sidenote: "_Resurgam._"]
In the centre of the before-mentioned Square is the large and usually
crowded Dutch Reformed Church, doomed long ago, we were told, to be
removed because of its exceeding unsightliness. Throughout the
Transvaal in every town and hamlet, the House of God is invariably the
central building, as also it is the centre of the most potent
influence. In both Republics the minister was emphatically "a Master
in Israel"; and in the welcome shadows of this great church I waited
to witness one of the most interesting events of the century--the
proclaiming of Pretoria a British city by the official hoisting in it,
as earlier in Bloemfontein, of the British flag; and by the stately
"march past" of the British troops.
Facing me, on the side of the Square opposite to that occupied by the
Palace of Justice, were the creditably designed Government Buildings,
including the Raadsaal, which was surmounted by a golden figure of
Liberty bearing in her hand a battle-axe and flag. On the forefront of
the building in bold lettering there was graven the favourite
Transvaal watchword,
EENDRACT MAAKT MAGT,
which, being interpreted means, "Right makes Might"; and that motto,
as every Britisher could see, precisely explained our presence there
that day. Inside there still remained, in its accustomed place, the
state chair of the departed President, in which, later on, I ventured
to sit; and all around were ranged the, to me, eloquent seats of his
departed senators. In that very hall, just nine months before, those
senators, in secret session, had resolved to hurl defiance at the
might of Britain; and so precipitated a war by which two sister
Republics were, as such, hurried out of existence. Now the very
corridors by which I approached that hall were crowded with Boers
wearied with the fruitless fight, and eager to hand in their weapons.
In the waiting crowd outside I found a friend who courteously supplied
me with a copy of a quite unique photograph--the only photograph taken
of the solemn burial, a few hundred yards from where I stood, of a
Union Jack, when that flag was hauled down in the Transvaal, and the
British troops ingloriously retired. As shown in the photograph, over
the grave was erected a slab, and on that slab was this most notable
inscription:--
IN MEMORY
OF
THE BRITISH FLAG
in the Transvaal; which departed this life
August 2nd, 1881.
Aged 4 years.
In other lands none knew thee
But to love thee.
RESURGAM.
No such burial had the world seen before, and few bolder prophecies
than that "_I shall rise again_," can be found in the history of any
land; but a few minutes it became my memorable privilege to witness
the actual fulfilment of that patriotic prediction. As in
Johannesburg, so here, it was Lady Roberts' pocket edition of the
Union Jack that was used; and we looked on excitedly; but the Statue
of Liberty looked down benignly, while that tiny flag crept up nearer
and nearer to its golden feet. Liberty has never anything to fear from
the approach of that flag!
While in Pretoria the following story was told me by the soldier to
whom it chiefly refers:--
[Sidenote: _A Striking Incident._]
At the Orange River a corporal of the Yorkshire Light Infantry
received a pocket copy of the New Testament from a Christian worker,
and placed it in his tunic by the side of his "field dressing." A
godless man, who had been driven into the army by heavy drinking, he
merely glanced at a verse or two, and then forgot its very presence in
his pocket till he reached the battlefield of Graspan a few days later
on. Then a Boer bullet passed right through the Testament and the
dressing that lay beside it, was thereby deflected from its otherwise
fatal course, and finally made a long surface wound on his right
thigh. That wound he at once bound up with one of his putties, but for
two hours was unable to stir from the place where he fell.
Then he managed to limp back to his battalion, and piteously begged
his adjutant not to let his name be put down on the casualty list,
for, said he, "my mother is in feeble health, and if she saw my name
in the papers among the wounded she would worry herself almost to
death, as years ago when she heard of my being hit in Tirah." That
brave request was granted, and he remained in the ranks marching as
one unwounded.
Yet neither this Providential deliverance nor the terrors that soon
followed at Modder River sufficed to lure to either prayer or praise
this godless, but surely not graceless, corporal. On the 27th of
August, however, which happened to be his thirtieth birthday, a devout
sergeant had the joy of winning him to Christian decision; and that
day, as he told me in Pretoria, he resolved to find out for himself
whether after thirty years of misery the mercy of the Lord could
provide for him thirty years of happiness.
[Sidenote: _No canteens and no crime._]
On board the _Nubia_, amid piles of literature put on board for the
amusement of the troops during the voyage, I discovered a quantity of
pamphlets entitled "Beer Cellars and Beer Sellers," the purpose of
which was to prove that the beer sellers were England's most
indispensable patriots; that the beer cellars were England's best
citadels; and that the beer trade in general was the very backbone of
England's stability. It was horribly tantalising to the men in face of
such teaching to find that there had been placed on board for them not
so much as a solitary barrel of this much belauded beverage. Through
all the voyage every man remained perforce a total abstainer. Yet
there was not a single death among those sixteen hundred, nor a
solitary instance of serious sickness. What does Burton say to that?
As at sea, so on land, the authorities seemed more afraid of the
beloved beer barrel than of the bullets of the Boers; and for the most
part no countersign sufficed to secure for it admittance to our camps.
An occasional tot of rum was distributed among the men; but even that
seemed to be rather to satisfy a sentiment than to serve any really
useful purpose. At any rate, some of the men, like myself, tramped all
the way to Koomati Poort, often in the worst of weather, without
taking a single tot, and were none the worse for so refraining, but
rather so much the better.
The effect on the character of the men was still more remarkable; and
while in Pretoria I was repeatedly assured that some who had been a
perpetual worry to their officers in beer-ridden England, on the
beerless veldt, or in the liquorless towns of the Transvaal, speedily
took rank among the most reliable men in all their regiment. To my
colleague, the Rev. W. Burgess, a major of the Yorkshires, said
"Nineteen-twentieths of the crime in the British army is due to drink.
As a proof I have been at this outpost with 150 men for six weeks,
where we have absolutely no drink, and there have been only two minor
cases brought before me. There is no insubordination whatever, and if
you do away with drink you have in the British army an ideal army.
Whether or not men can be made sober by Act of Parliament, clearly
they can by martial law!"
With the men so sober, with a field-marshal so God-fearing, the
constant outrages ascribed to them by slander-loving Englishmen at
home, become a moral impossibility; and to that fact, after we had
been long in possession of Pretoria, the principal minister of the
Dutch Reformed Church in the Transvaal bore ready witness in the
following letter sent by him to the Military Governor of Pretoria:--
Not a single instance of criminal assault or rape by
non-commissioned officers or men of the British army on Boer
women has come to my knowledge. I have asked several gentlemen
and their testimony is the same.... The discipline and general
moral conduct of His Majesty's troops in Pretoria is, under the
circumstances, better than I ever expected it would or could be.
There have certainly been cases of immoral conduct, but in no
single instance, so far as I know, has force been used. They only
go where they are invited and where they are welcome.
(Signed) H. S. BOSMAN.
When such is the testimony of our adversaries, we need not hesitate to
accept the similar tribute paid by Sir Redvers Buller to his army of
abstainers in Natal:--"I am filled with admiration for the British
soldiers," said he; "really the manner in which they have worked,
fought, and endured during the last fortnight has been something more
than human. Broiled in a burning sun by day, drenched in rain by
night, lying but three hundred yards off an enemy, who shoots you if
you show so much as a finger, they could hardly eat or drink by day;
and as they were usually attacked by night, they got but little sleep;
yet through it all they were as cheery and as willing as could be."
Men so devoted when on duty, don't transform themselves, the drink
being absent, into incarnate demons when off duty; and no dominion,
therefore, has more cause to be proud of its defenders than our own!