While the Scarlet Hussars were being “rounded up” on Wimbledon Common
by the staunch old Regals, another abortive rising was being crushed
with equal completeness.
The 6th Welsh Guards was the show battalion of the Household Infantry,
and never did it parade in finer form than on the morning after
L’Estrange’s hurried visit to Wellington Barracks on his way to concert
the mutiny of the Scarlet Hussars, the summary frustration of which has
just been described. It happened that some German officers were at this
time in London, and they were escorted to the Guards’ parade-ground
in Hyde Park by several of the field-officers of the Brigade, anxious
to prove to the Teutonic soldiers that elsewhere than in the German
armies could perfection of drill be attained by men enlisted for only
three years’ service. The Kaiser’s warriors were frank and outspoken
beyond their reserved wont as, under the surveillance of the smart and
peremptory adjutant, the battalion marched passed in divers formations.
This ceremony finished, Captain Falconer marched it across the Row
to the more open ground northward. After an hour’s sharp drill, the
battalion was halted about three hundred yards to the east of the low
elevation on which stand the police-station and the guardhouse. Its
halted formation was in open column of companies, the front of the
column directly facing the interval between the two buildings just
named.
During the brief “stand at ease”--the hour was just noon--there was
to be seen riding to and fro in the interval between the front of the
battalion and the rise crowned by the police-station and the guardhouse
a keen-eyed elderly gentleman, who, although in civilian attire, could
not be mistaken for any other than a soldier. The men in the ranks
recognised him at a glance as the General commanding the Home District;
and a Cockney lance-corporal remarked, “Hif hold Phil don’t cut his
lucky, we’ll give him ‘what for’ by and by!”
“Hold Phil” evinced no symptoms of an intention to “cut his lucky.”
He quietly beckoned the adjutant to him, said a few words, and then
glanced sharply toward where, in the interval between the two buildings
on the ridge, there stood an officer in the uniform of the Horse
Artillery. Then he nodded to the adjutant of the battalion.
That officer in a loud voice gave the consecutive commands--
“Attention!”
“Shoulder arms!”
“The battalion will return to barracks!”
Save for the colour-sergeants and sergeants, the battalion remained at
the “stand at ease,” and a jeering laugh ran along the ranks.
“Once again, Captain Falconer,” said the General with a composure in
which there was something ominous.
Captain Falconer called the battalion to “Attention!” a second time.
This time he was hooted, and a man pointed his rifle at him, but the
weapon was struck up by a sergeant. The battalion broke out into oaths
and shouts.
The General bade Captain Falconer order the non-commissioned officers
to fall out to the flanks; and then he raised aloft his right arm and
shouted, “Major Hippesley!”
Major Hippesley was the horse-gunner on the ridge. That officer did
not so much as turn his head, but the command he gave carried half-way
across the Park, so loud was it. And the sense of the command was as
truculent as was Hippesley’s tone--
“By hand, run out the guns! Action front!”
With a bicker and a rush there shot from out the police-station yard
gun after gun, whirled by stalwart artillerymen, till in a few seconds
six pieces filled the interval between the police-station and the
guardhouse, their sullen mouths pointed straight down on the dense mass
of guardsmen.
Major Hippesley glanced at the General, and saw that his right arm was
again in the air. At this signal, he bellowed--
“With case, load!”
A tremor agitated the ranks of the Foot Guard battalion. And at the
moment from the right and from the left came through the still air the
muffled noise of the hoof-beat on the sward of many horses galloping
furiously. From Cumberland Gate and from Victoria Gate the Blues were
racing on the battalion’s right flank; from Knightsbridge the Life
Guards were heading at a straining gallop towards its left. Clearly
there was to be no paltering. The swords of the massive troopers were
out and flashing in the sunshine. Destruction and death lay panting in
the dark cruel throats of the cannon up there, where the gunners stood
ready for the word to fire. And there was no ruth in the stern face of
the gray chief out on the left front clear of the line of fire, grimly
waiting for the “psychological moment.”
The battalion was writhing and heaving, a prey to the emotions of
terror, fury, and the sense of having been betrayed. On it, thus
agitated, fell like a sedative the General’s calm, firm command--
“Battalion, pile arms!”
The battalion confessed its mutiny abortive in its prompt obedience to
the order. Escorted by cavalry and artillery, the disarmed guardsmen
were marched straight into the great inner yards of Millbank Prison,
where they remained encamped until their fate was decreed. A brief
Act temporarily permitting the use of the lash was passed in a single
day almost without opposition. It followed that, when the battalion
sailed for Aden, with out-stations at Perim and Socotra, it left few
prisoners behind, but took with it many men who were unable to wear
their knapsacks during the journey by river from Millbank to the Albert
Docks. It is needless to add that the revelations of an informer had
enabled the General to make the dispositions which were so quietly
effectual; they would have taken a wider range but that the informer
was not cognisant of the arrangement for a simultaneous rising between
the Scarlet Hussars and the Guards battalion.
A FORGOTTEN REBELLION
The following Reuter’s telegram was published in the morning papers
of the 12th February 1889: “Melbourne, February 11th. The death is
announced of Mr. Peter Lalor, formerly Speaker of the Victorian
Legislative Assembly.”
Some nine years ago, during the course of a visit to the Antipodes,
I happened to spend some time in Her Majesty’s and Lord Normanby’s
(the Vice-King of Victoria for the time being) loyal and prosperous
city of Melbourne. One afternoon I strolled into the public gallery of
the hall in the big pile at the head of Collins Street West, on the
floor of which are held the momentous deliberations of that august
assembly, the Lower House of the Victorian Legislature. Aloft on the
daïs in his chair of state I beheld the Speaker of the Victorian
Commons, a short, plump, one-armed gentleman in court dress; swarthy
of feature, lips full, chin indicative of some power, with a bright,
moist eye, and a countenance whose general expression was of unctuous
contentment and sly humour. In answer to my question, my neighbour
on the bench of the gallery informed me that the gentleman whom I
was regarding with interest was the Hon. Peter Lalor, an Irishman
of course--that his name betokened--a man held in high repute by his
fellow-colonists, a scholar, an eloquent orator, and possessed of great
political influence, which he always exerted in the furtherance of
steady moderation and sound legislation. It occurred to me to inquire
of my neighbour if he knew how Mr. Lalor came to be short of an arm,
the reply to which question was that he believed he had lost it in some
trouble on the gold-fields in the early days, the true story of which
my informant had “never rightly learned.” Subsequently I frequently
met Mr. Lalor, and conceived for him a great liking. We used to meet
at a little evening club off Bourke Street, and the worthy Speaker, as
often as not still in the old-fashioned single-breasted coat of the
court dress which he had worn in the chair of the Legislative Assembly,
smoked his pipe, drank his stiff nobbler of Irish whisky, sang his
song, and told stories always droll and often very interesting, chiefly
of his experiences on the gold-fields in the early “surface-diggings”
days. But he never alluded to the way in which he had lost his arm, and
it grew upon me in a gradual sort of way that the topic was one which
he would prefer should not be introduced.
It is the strange truth that this douce elderly gentleman, this high
functionary of the Colonial Legislature, was, in the year of grace
1854, the commander-in-chief of an armed force in a state of declared
rebellion and fighting under an insurrectionary flag against an attack
made upon it by regular troops in the service of Queen Victoria. It
was in the far from bloodless combat of the “Eureka Stockade” that he
had lost his arm--the loss caused by a hostile bullet; and but that,
wounded as he was, he escaped and lay hidden while recovering from the
amputation, he would have stood in the dock where many of his comrades
did stand, undergoing his trial on the charge of high treason, as they
actually underwent theirs.
I do not believe that in all the world, the United States of America
not excepted, any community has ever progressed with a swiftness and
expansion so phenomenal as has the colony which Her Gracious Majesty
permitted to take her own name when she granted it a separate existence
in November 1850. It had been but fifteen years earlier that the
first settlers--the brothers Henty, one of whom died only a few years
ago--came across Bass Straits from Van Diemen’s Land in their little
_Thistle_. In 1837 the town of Melbourne was laid out, and one hundred
allotments were then sold on what are now the principal streets. The
aggregate sum which the hundred allotments fetched was £3410. Two
summers ago the same allotments were carefully valued by experts, and
it was calculated that, exclusive of the buildings erected on them,
they could now be sold for nineteen and a half million pounds. This
stupendous increment has accrued in half a century, but in effect the
appreciation has almost wholly occurred during the last thirty-five
years. Before 1851, when the gold discoveries were made, Victoria
prospered in an easy gentle fashion. Its scanty population, outside
its two petty towns, were wholly engaged in stock-raising; almost
its sole exports were wool, hides, and tallow. The gold-find upset
as by a whirlwind the lazy, primitive social system of the bucolic
era. From all the ends of the earth, gentle and simple, honest man
and knave, hurried swarming and jostling to the new El Dorado. Mr.
Ruxton, one of the Colonial historians, omits to particularise the
reputable elements of the immigration deluge, but in his caricatured
Macaulay-ese, he zealously catalogues the detrimental and dangerous
accessions. “From California,” he writes, “came wild men, the waifs of
societies which had submitted to or practised lynch law. The social
festers of France, Italy, and Germany shed exfoliations upon Australia.
The rebellious element of Ireland was there. The disappointed crew who
thought to frighten the British Isles from their propriety in 1848
were represented in some strength. The convict element of Australia
completed the vile ingredients.” And yet it was wonderful how small was
the actual crime of a serious character, when the utter disintegration
of restraining institutions is taken into consideration. In January
1852, when daily shiploads of gold-mad immigrants were being thrown
into Melbourne, only two of the city constables remained at their
duty. The chief constable himself had to go on a beat. In the country
the rural police to a man had forsaken their functions and made haste
to the diggings. In the first rush the capital was all but depopulated
of its manhood; there remained behind but the women and children,
who had to shift for themselves. An advance of 50 per cent of salary
did not avail to retain at their desks the officials in the public
offices. Servants had gone. Gentlemen and ladies had to carry water
from the river for household purposes, for the water-cart supply had
been arrested by the departure of the carters. It was said that poor
Mr. Latrobe himself, the amiable but weak Lieutenant-Governor, had to
black his own boots and groom his own horse. In the wholesale absence
of workmen no contract could be insisted on. The squatters shuddered,
too, as the shearing season approached, knowing that all the shearers
were digging or cradling in Forest Creek, or on Mount Alexander. It
was then that Mr. Childers, who at the time was an immigration agent,
made his famous bull: “Wages of wool-pressers, 7s. to 8s. a day; none
to be had.” To such an extent did prices rise that there was the danger
lest Government could not afford to supply food to prisoners in gaol.
A contractor for gaol necessaries claimed and got 166 per cent over
his prices of the year before, and, notwithstanding this stupendous
increase, had to default. In April 1852 fifty ships were lying useless
in Hobson’s Bay, deserted by their crews. Carriage from Melbourne to
Castlemaine was at one time £100 per ton.
Diggers who had “struck it rich” came down to Melbourne for a spree,
and it was a caution how they made the money fly. The barber I employed
used to tell me how the lucky diggers would chuck him a sovereign for
a shave, and scorn the idea of change. A rough fellow called a cab in
Bourke Street and wanted to engage it for the day; the cabman replied
that the charge would be seven pounds, which he supposed was more than
the digger would care to pay. “What is the price of the outfit as it
stands, yourself included?” demanded the latter, and forthwith bought
the said “outfit” for £150. When a digger and the lady he proposed
temporarily to marry went into the draper’s shop, the only question
asked was whether the tradesman had no goods dearer than those he had
shown. Ten-pound notes were quite extensively used as pipe-lights.
The additional expenditure entailed on the Colonial Government by the
immense increase to the Colony’s population, by the enhanced cost of
administration, and by the added charges for the maintenance of order,
it was perfectly fair should be met by a tribute levied in some manner
on the gold the quest for and the yield of which had occasioned the
necessity. An export duty would have met the case with the minimum of
expense in collection and of friction, but Latrobe and his advisers
preferred the expedient of exacting from each individual miner a
monthly fee for the license permitting him to dig.
While the gold-field population was small, the license system, although
from the beginning hated as an oppressive exaction, did not excite
active hostility. Every digger was bound to produce his license on
demand; but the officer or trooper charged with the inquisition did
not need to put it in force oftener than once a month in a community
pretty well every member of which he knew by sight. But with the swarms
of new-comers the facility for evasion and the difficulty of detection
were alike increased. In the throng of thousands, the demand for
production of the license might be repeated frequently, and give not
wholly unreasonable umbrage to the busy digger. It naturally angered a
man digging against time at the bottom of a hole, to have to scramble
out and show his license; it angered him worse to be peremptorily sent
for it to his tent if he had omitted to bring it along with him. And if
the license could not be produced at all, the defaulter was summarily
haled away to be dealt with according to the bye-laws. Men were to
be seen standing chained in “the camp,” as the Gold Commissioner’s
quarters were called, waiting for their punishment.
The license fee at first was £1:10s. a month. As expenses increased
Mr. Latrobe notified its increase to double that amount. Neither sum
hurt the lucky digger who was down among the nuggets; but the smaller
tariff was a strain on the unsuccessful man, with food at famine
prices and every necessary costing wellnigh its weight in gold. The
doubled impost was declared a tyranny to be resisted; the lower one
an injustice only tolerated on sufferance. Violent meetings were held
at Forest Creek and elsewhere, at which the new tax was vigorously
denounced; and poor Mr. Latrobe cancelled the order for it before it
had come into effect. He could not help himself; had he been prepared
to go to extremities, he had inadequate strength, with a handful of
soldiers at his disposal, to enforce the enactment. But, spite of
his temporising, a bitter feeling grew between the miners and the
gold-field officials. The Commissioner at Forest Creek burned the
tent of a camp trader, on a perjured charge of illicit spirit-selling
brought by an informer. Then followed an excited public meeting, and
the gold-field was placarded with notices: “Down with the troopers!
Shoot them! Down with oppression! Diggers, avenge your wrongs! Cry ‘no
quarter,’ and show no mercy!”
The informer was convicted of perjury and the authorities compensated
the burnt-out trader, but the ill-feeling was not mitigated. A
deputation of miners waited on the Governor to report the irritation
engendered by collection of the license fees by “armed men, many of
whom were of notoriously bad character”; to complain of the chaining
to trees and logs of non-possessors of licenses, and their being
sentenced to hard labour on the roads; and to demand the reduction
of the fee to 10s. a month. Mr. Latrobe simply told the deputation
he would consider the petition; and the deputation went out from his
presence to attend a public meeting of Melbourne citizens convened
by the Mayor. There some of the delegates spoke with threatening
frankness. “What they wanted, they would have; if peacefully, well: if
not, a hundred thousand diggers would march like a ring of fire upon
Melbourne, and take and act as they listed.” Under threat Mr. Latrobe
yielded, and announced that for the month of September no compulsory
means would be adopted for the enforcement of the license fee; at
the same time inconsistently sending to Forest Creek a detachment of
regular soldiers which had reached him.
In the beginning of 1854, not before it was time, the weak and
vacillating Latrobe was succeeded as Governor of Victoria by the
more peremptory Hotham, who was not long in office before he issued
a circular ordering the gold-fields police to make a strenuous and
systematic search after unlicensed miners, and soon after concentrated
several hundred regular soldiers at Ballarat, the centre of a densely
thronged gold-field, where an incident had exasperated the chronic
irritation of the diggers caused by the rigorous enforcement of the
license inquisition. In a Ballarat slum a digger was killed in a
scuffle by a fellow named Bentley, an ex-convict who kept a low
public-house. The police magistrate before whom Bentley was brought
promptly dismissed the charge. He was proved to be habitually corrupt,
and there was no doubt that he had been bribed by Bentley’s friends.
The miners, enraged by the immunity from punishment of the murderer of
one of themselves, gathered in masses round Bentley’s public-house, and
sacked and burned it in spite of the efforts of the police to hinder
them. Hotham dealt out what he considered even justice all round. He
dismissed from office the corrupt magistrate; he had Bentley tried and
convicted of manslaughter; and he sent to gaol for considerable terms
the ringleaders of the mob who had burnt that fellow’s house. The
jurymen who reluctantly found them guilty added the rider, that they
would have been spared their painful duty “if those entrusted with the
government of Ballarat had done their duty.”
The conviction of their comrades infuriated the miners, and
thenceforward their attitude was that of virtual rebellion. A “Ballarat
Reform League” was promptly formed, whose avowed platform it was “to
resist, and if necessary to remove, the irresponsible power which
tyrannised over them.” The League was not yet indeed eager for an
“immediate separation from the parent country ... but if Queen Victoria
continues to act upon the ill advice of dishonest Ministers ... the
League will endeavour to supersede the royal prerogative, by asserting
that of the people, which is the most royal of all prerogatives.” The
leading spirits of the League were of curiously diverse nationalities.
Vern was a Hanoverian, Raffaello an Italian, Joseph a negro from the
United States, Lalor--Peter Lalor, my friend of the Speaker’s chair,
the court suit, and the one arm--was of course an Irishman, H. Holyoake
(socialist), Hayes, Humfrays, and others were Englishmen. Delegates
were despatched to the other gold-fields to bring in accessions of
disaffected diggers. Holyoake went to Sandhurst; Black and Kennedy
to Creswick. With drawn sword in hand, Black led into Ballarat the
Creswick contingent, marching to their chant of the “Marseillaise.”
On 29th November more than 12,000 miners gathered in mass meeting on
“Bakery Hill,” just outside Ballarat. An insurrectionary flag was
unfurled, and one of the leaders who advised “moral force” was hooted
down as a trimmer. Peter Lalor, at that time in the enjoyment of both
his arms, made himself conspicuous at this meeting, which ended with
shots of defiance and a bonfire of the obnoxious licenses. But the
miners, although they had pretty well by this time drawn the sword,
had not yet thrown away the scabbard. Governor Hotham was a resolute
man, and had the full courage of his opinions. He had concentrated at
Ballarat about 450 regular soldiers and armed police, the command
of which force he had given to Captain Thomas of the 40th Regiment,
with instructions “to use force when legally called upon to do so,
without regard to the consequences which might ensue.” As his retort
to the “Bakery Hill” manifesto, he sent instructions that the license
inquisitions should be more diligently enforced than ever. If he were
convinced that the trouble must be brought to the definite issue
of bloodshed as the inevitable prelude to the tranquillity of the
defeated, he probably acted wisely in this; and doubtless he had
calculated the risk that might attend this policy of forcing the game.
One of the Gold-Field Commissioners, duly escorted by police, went out
from the camp on the 30th, on the hunt after unlicensed miners. He
and his police were vigorously stoned; more police came on the ground
led by a specially resolute Commissioner. He ordered the diggers to
disperse; they would not; so he read the Riot Act, and sent for the
soldiers. Shots were fired--it is not said that anybody was wounded by
them; but a policeman had his head cut open. The mob dispersed, and the
Commissioner triumphed in making sundry miners show their licenses.
It was then that war was declared, at a mass meeting held on the
“Bakery Hill” on the afternoon of the 30th. Who was to command?
Peter Lalor, fired by enthusiasm--sarcastic persons have hinted at
whisky--volunteered for the duty, and was nominated Commander-in-Chief
by acclamation. Hundreds swore to follow and obey him. Drilling was
immediately commenced. Lalor was said to have recommended pikes to
those who had no firearms. The words attributed to him were that the
pikes would “pierce the tyrants’ hearts.” He set himself systematically
to requisition horses, arms, food, and drink, designating himself in
the receipts he gave as “Commander-in-Chief of the Diggers under arms.”
After the 30th there was no more digging for a time on any gold-field
in the vicinity of Ballarat. A reinforcement of soldiers for Thomas was
reported on the way from Melbourne, and patriots were sent into the
roads to notify its approach so that it might be intercepted. Arms and
ammunition were taken wherever found, and a thousand armed men paraded
Ballarat in full sight of the camp, robbing stores, forcibly enrolling
recruits, and seizing arms. It was reported that the camp--the
enclosure in which were quartered the authorities, the soldiers, and
the police--was to be assailed in force, and on the night of 1st
December dropping shots were actually fired into it. Captain Thomas
forbade reprisals. Like Brer Rabbit he “lay low.” The world wondered
why the Thiers Government in Versailles delayed so long to give the
word to the troops to go at the Communards in Paris. The delay was at
the suggestion of Bismarck. “Keep the trap open,” he said in effect,
“till all the anarchical ruffianhood of Europe shall have gathered
inside it; the time to close it is when the influx of scoundrels
ceases. Once in we have them to a man; nobody can get out--the German
cordon prevents that.” Captain Thomas, in a small way, reasoned on
the Bismarckian lines. He refrained from attacking while as yet the
miners were straggling all over the place, and waited calmly, spite
of provocation and appeals to do otherwise, until they should have
concentrated themselves into a mass.
Lalor, however, was not drifting around Ballarat; he was seriously
attending to his duty as rebel “Commander-in-Chief.” The summit of
Eureka Hill, about a mile and a half from the town, was rather a
commanding position, and there he was engaged in the construction of
a hasty fortification with entrenchments and other obstacles, such
as ropes, slabs, stakes, and overturned carts. This construction is
known in the history of the Colony as the “Eureka Stockade.” Captain
Thomas did not allow the rebel chief much time in which to elaborate
his defences. He kept his own counsel rigorously until after midnight
of 2d December; at half-past two on the morning of the 3d he led out
to the assault of the “Eureka Stockade” a force consisting of 100
mounted men, part soldiers, part police, 152 infantry soldiers of the
line, and 24 foot police; all told, 276 men exclusive of officers.
Approaching the stockade he sent the horsemen round to threaten the
rebel position in flank and rear, while his infantry moved on the
front of the entrenchment. The defenders were on the alert. At 150
yards distance a sharp fire, without previous challenge, rattled among
the soldiers. Thomas ordered his bugler to sound “Commence firing,”
sent the skirmishers forward rapidly, caught them up with the supports,
and rushed the defences with the words “Come on, Fortieth!” The
entrenchment was carried with wild hurrahs, “and a body of men with
pikes was immolated under the eye of the commander before the bugle to
cease firing recalled the soldiers from the work to which they had been
provoked. The rebel flag was hauled down with cheers, all found within
the entrenchment were captured, and some of the many fugitives were
intercepted by the cavalry.”
The insurrection was at an end. About thirty diggers had been killed
on the spot, several subsequently died of wounds, and 125 were taken
prisoners. Of the attacking force an officer and a soldier were killed,
and thirteen men were wounded, some mortally. The military were
promptly reinforced from Melbourne, and martial law was proclaimed,
but resistance had been quite stamped out with the fall of the
“Stockade.” A commission of inquiry was sent to the gold-fields without
delay, and its report recommended a general amnesty (to include the
prisoners awaiting trial) and the modified abolition of the license
fee. Nevertheless some of the Eureka “insurgents” were arraigned on
the charge of high treason, but in every case the Melbourne juries
brought in a verdict of acquittal, and therefore no steps were taken
to apprehend their comrades who had escaped and were in hiding. The
amnesty was complete, although never formally proclaimed. Peter Lalor,
for whose apprehension a reward of £200 had been offered, affably
emerged from the concealment into which he had been so fortunate as to
escape from the stockade. While lying perdu, one of his arms, which
had been smashed by a bullet in the brief action, had been skilfully
amputated, and Peter had made a satisfactory recovery. During his
retirement he wrote a defence of his conduct, and claimed that, as
hour after hour of the eventful night passed without an attack, the
greater number of the 1500 defenders who were in the stockade until
midnight had gone away to bed, so that when the attack was made there
actually remained in the enclosure only about 120 men. He expressed the
frankest regret that “we were unable to inflict on the real authors of
the outbreak the punishment they so richly deserved.” A year after he
emerged from hiding, the one-armed ex-rebel was returned to Parliament
by a mining constituency. Thus he ranged himself, and five-and-twenty
years later was sitting in a court dress in the chair of the
Legislative Assembly of the Colony.
MY CAMPAIGN IN PALL MALL
For better or for worse, the war correspondent, as regards a British
army in the field, has been stamped out. The journalist who now
accompanies an army is a war reporter. He dances in the fetters of the
censorship, whose power over him is absolute: it may not only detain
or withhold his work, but at discretion may alter it so that he may
be made to say the direct reverse of what he wrote. If the position
has its humiliations, it also has its compensations. The censorship
which makes a slave of the war reporter, _ipso facto_ relieves him
of all the responsibility for the words he writes. His waking hours
are unclouded by forebodings of aspersions on his veracity, emanating
from officials chafing under inconvenient interpellations. His
slumbers are disturbed by no dream-vision of a bad quarter of an hour
with the chief of staff, when the paper containing that outspoken
telegram of his arrives in camp. The authorities in Pall Mall, by the
institution of the rules and the censorship, have indeed scotched the
war journalist, but have not succeeded in killing him. Lord Wolseley
in the early editions of the _Soldier’s Pocket-book_ described the war
correspondent of the unreformed era as “the curse of modern armies”;
that somewhat strenuous expression he retains in the latest edition
as still applicable to the reporter who works under the yoke of the
regulations set forth in its pages. I may humbly venture to remark,
having given the matter considerable attention, that from the military
point of view I entirely concur in Lord Wolseley’s objections to the
presence of journalistic persons with an army in the field against a
civilised enemy. Were I a general, and had I an independent command
in war offered me, I should accept it only on condition that I should
have the charter to shoot every war correspondent found within fifty
miles of my headquarters. The most careful correspondent cannot write
a sentence--a sentence which the strictest censor, if he is to pass
anything at all, cannot refrain from sanctioning--that may not give a
hint to the astute intelligence-officials of the other side. This fact
I realised at the beginning of my career, and my conviction of its
truth grew till the end of it. What then? It is not a question for the
newspapers, which dread a war because of the huge expense it entails
without adequate compensation. It is a question solely for the public,
whose servants the general and the war journalists alike are. If the
public deliberately prefers news to victories--for that is the issue in
a nutshell as regards a European war--then on the head of the public be
it.
The war correspondent of the era that ended with the introduction
of the handcuffs had a chequered lot. His fetterless condition gave
him many advantages and some opportunities. He could stir the nation
by his revelations of mal-administration. Uncompelled to specified
and conventional methods of communication, he might win some fleeting
fame by sending to his countrymen the earliest tidings of a victory
achieved by their army, at the cost of some toil and danger incurred
by the courier-correspondent. On the other side of the account was
this unpleasantness, that if he were not a toady and a sycophant,
but an independent man, he could hardly escape being regarded as an
Ishmaelite, against whom in the very nature of things was the great
heavy hand of officialdom. He had constantly to confront that kind of
contemptuous contradiction which is equivalent to impugnment of the
veracity of the person contradicted. Of late years it is true, for
weighty reasons, there has been discernible in the tone of official
contradictions a droll infusion of funk in the insolence. The insolence
was, of course, in the very essence of the official nature; the funk
came from a nervous foreboding of refutation begotten of experience.
That experience did not deter, because the average official shudders,
as if it were sheer revolution, at a departure from the old arrogant
use and wont; but it had a tendency to engender disquietude in the
bureaucratic breast.
A man must either be well endowed with philosophy, or, to quote a
historic witness, must be “on very good terms with himself,” who is
not galled by a contumelious aspersion of untruthfulness thrown on
him from high places and circulated throughout the length and breadth
of the land. He may have his vindication to his hand, but it rarely
has the vogue of the calumny. In some memorable instances, however,
this has been the case. Before the Crimean war was over, England had
come to recognise that it was the pen of William Howard Russell which
had saved her army from extinction. Lord Beaconsfield, when he tried
the _de haut en bas_ method of whistling truth down the wind, and
sneered at MacGahan’s revelations of Turkish barbarities in Bulgaria
as “coffee-house babble,” found himself conclusively confuted by Mr.
Walter Baring’s intensification of the unofficial disclosures. But in
the game between him and the correspondent the official plays with
cogged dice. Let me give an instance. That portion of the public
who believed Lord Wolseley accepted his denial of the truth of the
assertions made by Dr. Russell regarding the excesses of our troops in
the Transvaal between the close of the Zulu war and the beginning of
the Boer war. Those most conversant with the circumstances were aware
that the statements made by Russell were substantially accurate, but
Lord Wolseley roundly pronounced them utterly destitute of foundation.
Now it happened that Russell--strange omission on the part of a
journalist of his experience--had neglected to fortify himself with
evidence which he should be able to adduce if challenged. A man of high
spirit and implicit veracity, the imputation cast on him roused him to
just indignation, and he was bent on making good his words. But the
effort was futile; Landrost after Landrost testified with complaisant
unanimity to the immaculateness of the British soldier. Russell had to
grin and bear the situation; but he spoke his mind on the subject in
the direct manner which is his characteristic.
I recall a little experience of my own, which ended for me, perhaps
because I am a Scot whereas he is an Irishman, more successfully than
did Russell’s Transvaal controversy. When the brigade of British troops
landed in Cyprus, with which he took possession of that island in
1878, Lord Wolseley sent it to encamp on the ridge of Chiflik Pasha,
a few miles inland from Larnaca. There sickness soon set in among the
soldiers with great severity. The disorder was that insidious complaint
known as “Cyprus fever,” which has long since disappeared from Cyprus
itself, but which still harbours in the constitution of most of those
who were of the expedition of original occupation. Accompanying
that expedition in a journalistic capacity, for a fortnight or so
previous to August 15 I had been telegraphing to the _Daily News_
increasingly serious details regarding the ill-health of the troops.
On that day I wired: “In all about 25 per cent of the whole force are
fever-stricken; about two-thirds of the medical staff are also down.”
On the following afternoon a question was put in the House of Commons
on the subject to the Secretary for War. Colonel Stanley replied by
quoting a telegram from Lord Wolseley stating that “only about six per
cent of the troops were in hospital”; which was literally true, since
the hospitals could hold no more, and, being literally true, was quite
smart, although utterly misleading. Of course the minister inculcated
belief in the official version; and equally, of course, he had his airy
little gibe at the non-official person. It was not until August 26,
being then at Malta on my way home, that I saw a newspaper containing
the question and answer in Parliament. Then I straightway telegraphed
to my journal repeating my previous statements in detail, giving as my
authorities for them the respective medical officers of the brigade,
and adding: “Assertion and counter-assertion are childish in a matter
wherein the documents furnish exact and detailed information. The
Secretary for War will find that the official returns sent in to the
Principal Medical Officer on the evening of the day in question amply
bear out my statements.” Yet officialism had the best of it after all.
Parliament had risen before the telegram I have quoted reached England,
and so no Parliamentary friend had the opportunity of enforcing the
minister’s admission of the accuracy of my statement by moving for the
production of the returns.
In one curious instance a set was made at a war correspondent, not by
officialism, but by the many-headed itself. He was with the force that
was confronting Arabi in the Kafre Dowr position outside Alexandria
during the interval between the bombardment of that city and the
arrival in Egypt of Lord Wolseley’s reinforcements. One afternoon his
paper brought out a “special edition” on the strength of a telegram
from him to the effect that one of the pickets of our force had run in
on its supports. Whether or not the telegram was “written up” in Fleet
Street, is a question which need not be dwelt on, in the face of the
fact that the correspondent did not deny that he had sent intelligence
of the misbehaviour of the picket. It was passing strange, the gust
of popular indignation against this penman--in this particular matter
at least a quite inoffensive although in a professional sense silly
person. The angry nation would not have it at any price that a picket
of British soldiers could act as described. The correspondent was
denounced far and wide as the vilest of calumniators. _Punch_ pandered
to the undignified and perverse clamour in some doggerel jingle; the
correspondent’s journal temporised in the face of the storm, and
cashiered its representative. Yet his act was in no way blameworthy;
it was simply officious and superfluous. Such a trifle as the casual
bolt of a picket was an incident which a correspondent who had ever
seen war--and this man had made a previous campaign--should have
ignored as not worth chronicling. In war such petty fallings away from
the ideal are happening all the time. They occur in every army I have
ever known, and I have watched the conduct in the field of the armies
of eight European nations. There is infinitely less steady valour in
the soldiery of any nationality than the civilian who idealises it
imagines. I never was in a battle, with the single exception of Ulundi,
in the course of which I did not witness a stampede. The Germans are
grand fighting men, and at Gravelotte they had the glow in them of
three victories in a fortnight; yet in the afternoon of that day there
was a sudden panic in Steinmetz’s army--one half of it at least was on
the run; and I saw old Wilhelm borne back in the _débâcle_, resisting
vehemently, belabouring the runaways with the flat of his sword, and
abusing them with fine racy German oaths shouted at the top of his
voice. Nevertheless the Germans won the battle of Gravelotte. Our own
fellows have never been in the habit of evincing inability to hold
their own against no matter what foe. But for all that they are not
uniformly heroes, and it is folly to believe that they are. I am not
the man, an old soldier myself, to run down the British soldier; but
the cheap froth of the cockalorum civilian disgusts me. I who write
say that I have known British pickets, like the pickets of other
nations, run in discreditably once and again. For instance, on the
evening before Ginghilovo, when a picket of one of our crack regiments
bolted back into the position headed by its sergeant, leaving its
officer the sole defender of the abandoned ground. For instance, on
the night but one before Ulundi, when a picket of Wood’s most seasoned
regiment, a regiment that had distinguished itself grandly at Kambula,
scuttled into the laager in uncontrollable scare. It was in each case a
momentary panic. No doubt the first-named picket behaved quite well in
the fight next day. As for Wood’s fellows, he gave them five-and-twenty
apiece; they got their tunics on their sore backs in time for Ulundi,
were as good as the best there, and, in virtue of the flogging and the
victory together, regained their good name. I knew personally of this
little accident in Wood’s force; but it never occurred to me to report
it. It was not that I shunned doing so, but simply because the thing
was not worth while. My comrade, with his experience, should have taken
the same view of the petty mischance he happened to witness in Egypt;
but it was sheer truculence to hound him down because he looked at
events microscopically.
I am anxious to quote a correspondence which seems to me to illustrate,
not a little vividly, the tergiversations and tortuosities of
officialdom in its relations with the war correspondent; but it is
impossible to make the letters intelligible without an amount of
egotism which is eminently distasteful to me. The desire, however,
to make public the correspondence outweighs the repugnance to being
egotistic, and accordingly I proceed.
After the decisive victory of Ulundi gained over the Zulus on July 4,
1879, I quitted the same evening the laager in which Lord Chelmsford’s
army was encamped, and, after a continuous ride of about seventeen
hours, reached the telegraph-wire at Landmann’s Drift with the earliest
news. Thence I telegraphed to Sir Bartle Frere at Cape Town, and to
Sir Garnet Wolseley, then on his way to Port Durnford on the Zululand
coast, a brief summary of the action and the result. Both those
officials telegraphed me thanks in reply. Sir Garnet’s expression of
his “sincere thanks for the most welcome news” was naturally most
grateful to me, as he was the Commander-in-Chief of all the forces then
in the field. No further intelligence than that which I had wired him
reached Sir Bartle Frere before the departure of the mail, and it was
my message to him which was read in both Houses of Parliament as the
only intelligence which up to date had reached the home authorities.
The question of a member, whether some recognition was not due to the
bringer, under somewhat arduous circumstances, of tidings so welcome
was negatived by Sir Stafford Northcote with the remark that the bearer
was a newspaper correspondent who had toiled and adventured in the
interest of his journal. As it happened, this was a mistake. When on
the evening of the fight, in accordance with previous arrangement, I
took to Lord Chelmsford’s headquarter the packet containing my short
description of the day’s work, I had not the remotest idea that half
an hour later I should be galloping through the lonely bush on my
way to the telegraph-office on the far-distant Natal frontier. There
was no hurry to catch the mail, and there was then no telegraphic
communication between South Africa and England. My colleagues who
remained in camp and sent away their matter at their leisure next day,
were in easy time for the outgoing mail from Cape Town. I rode out of
the Umvaloosi laager that night because I have a quick temper and a
disgust for military ineptitude. When Lord Chelmsford told me that he
did not intend to despatch his courier until next morning, the assigned
reason being the absence of some petty details, it was in the angry
impulse of the moment that I passionately exclaimed, “Then, sir, I will
start myself at once!” I knew with what anxiety Wolseley was waiting
for news, and what immediate influence on his plans the tidings of the
day’s work would have; and I realised, too, the spirit that actuated
the delay in their despatch. I was sorry for myself the moment I had
spoken, for I needed no one to tell me the risks in front of me. I got
through safely; the same night, not five hundred yards off the faint
track along which I groped, Lieutenant Scott Douglas and Corporal
Cotter were slaughtered with unmentionable barbarity. It should be
said that when Sir Stafford Northcote was shown that it was not “in
the interest of my paper” that I had ridden from Ulundi to Landmann’s
Drift, he acknowledged the error with the manly frankness which was but
one of the fine features of a noble character.
I had sworn to my hurt, but unless I ate dirt there could be no
withdrawal. When, before starting, I went to Sir Evelyn Wood to ask
for his home messages, he would have detained me, but that in a word I
told him how I must go; he understood, bade me Godspeed, and let me go.
There was no sentiment about his limb of an aide-de-camp--“the boy,”
as we called him. As I turned from Wood’s tent “the boy” shouted an
offer to bet me five pounds I would not get through. “Done!” I cried.
“Ah!” quoth “the boy,” with a regard for his pound of flesh beyond his
years, “you must put the money down, for I don’t in the least expect to
see you back again.” So I posted my fiver and rode away into the dense
all but trackless bush, just as the great red sun touched the westward
ridge overhanging the Umvaloosi gorge.
I had “got through” and been back in England some time, when it
occurred to me to claim the Zulu medal. A war medal is not a decoration
in the sense that the Albert medal, or the “C.I.E.” or the “D.S.O.,”
or that proud symbol the “C.M.G.,” is a decoration. The medal for a
campaign once granted, a military person of whatever rank is entitled
to it as a right who has been inside hostile territory in the course of
the campaign; he need not have been under fire, or indeed within miles
of a battle. In the Zulu business many got the medal who had never
crossed the Natal frontier, and the whole wing of a regiment received
the Ashantee medal that never disembarked at all. I found copious
precedents in favour of civilians being the recipients of war medals.
William Howard Russell has the Crimean and Indian medals. A British
Museum _employé_ who accompanied the expedition to pick up specimens
for that institution received the Abyssinian medal. The Victoria Cross
was given to four civilians for gallant acts in the Indian Mutiny,
and the Mutiny medal to all civilians who were under fire. It was
worn by a lady lately dead, who was born in the Lucknow Residency
during the siege, and earned it by that achievement. I did not presume
to claim the Zulu medal in virtue of having made the campaign as a
correspondent, but because of a specific service for which I had
received the thanks of the local commander-in-chief. True, a claim I
had put in for the Afghan medal had been rejected on the specified
ground that “the Secretary of State is of opinion that the service on
the performance of which that claim is based was not of a character
which would entitle you to the medal.” But then that “service” was
merely the having been mentioned in his despatch by the commanding
General for saving life in action--a ground surely not to be mentioned
in the same day with the acknowledgment of a superior General’s
gratitude. So my claim went in to the War Office based on the ride
from Ulundi to the telegraph-office, and the results thereof set forth
above. The not unexpected reply came back, that, “As it would appear
that no application was made for your services on the occasion referred
to in your letter, Mr. Childers regrets his inability to comply with
your request.”
I felt for Mr. Childers: it is always unpleasant to the humane man
that for any reason he should cause regret to a fellow-mortal; and I
believed by a further representation I could dispel his regret and
enable him to rejoice in the ability of compliance. That representation
was as follows. The letter (April 2, 1881) was sent from America:--
I respectfully beg to repeat the claim, on the ground of another
service to which your previous objection does not apply. On
reaching Landmann’s Drift, and having handed to General Marshall
(in command there) the despatches which had been entrusted to
me by Lord Chelmsford, he, expressing his belief that no direct
communication between Lord Chelmsford and Sir Garnet Wolseley at
Port Durnford could be opened up for some time, and his conviction
that details as to the disposition of the troops in Zululand and
of the recent action could not fail to be of consequence to the
latter, requested me, as a matter of public service, to continue
with all speed my journey to Port Durnford and place my knowledge
of affairs within the enemy’s country at Sir Garnet’s disposal. In
furtherance of this project General Marshall handed me a special
authorisation to claim means of speedy transit along the route I
should have to take. In fulfilment of this request I rode about
150 miles to Pieter Maritzburg without rest, and suffering from
a contusion sustained in the Ulundi action; and thence journeyed
on with all speed to Port Durnford, reaching that place in advance
of any other messenger from the column in the interior. Sir Garnet
Wolseley availed himself of the information I brought, and did me
the honour to thank me for the service done as being materially in
the public interest.
Sir Garnet Wolseley and General Marshall confirmed the above statements
in so far as they concerned each.
* * * * *
The reply to the above representation bore date June 2, 1881, and was
as follows:--
I am to inform you that Lord Chelmsford reports that he did not
make any use of your services on the occasion specified by you,
and on reference to General Marshall, it appears that he did
not receive any despatches by you from Lord Chelmsford. Under
these circumstances, and as the fact of your having ridden from
Landmann’s Drift to Port Durnford would not justify the grant of
the decoration under existing regulations, Mr. Childers is unable
to alter the decision already conveyed to you.
When Mr. Edmund Yates was resuming his seat, after having listened
to the censure with which Lord Coleridge accompanied the sentence
awarded him in a well-remembered action, I heard him murmur, I believe
unconsciously, “That’s a snorter!” A similar view of this communication
suggested itself to me. It was a lesson never to write an important
letter at a distance from one’s diaries. While feeling sure of the
ability to justify in effect the averment that I had carried despatches
from Lord Chelmsford, there was a clear mistake in the statement that
I had handed these to General Marshall. I had met him on my way to
the telegraph-office, and had shown him the packet I carried; it was
addressed to the telegraph-master, and to him I delivered it. My reply
to the “snorter” was as follows:--
I would have accepted without troubling you further your
disinclination to alter your previous adverse decision, but for
one circumstance. Your letter conveys a grave charge against my
personal veracity, a matter of infinitely greater importance to me
than the receipt or non-receipt of a medal. Writing as I did from
America without access to memoranda, I erred in naming General
Marshall as the recipient of the official enclosure carried by me
from Ulundi. I have the honour to enclose a detailed statement of
the actual events which occurred in Lord Chelmsford’s headquarter,
with the request that you submit the same to Lord Chelmsford
and Colonel North Crealock, his lordship’s military secretary;
satisfied as I am that the result of such submission will be to
alter the terms of Lord Chelmsford’s report as conveyed in your
letter.
_Statement enclosed._
In the course of the day of the fight at Ulundi, it had been
intimated to the newspaper correspondents that if they desired to
forward communications to Landmann’s Drift, their packets should
be sent into headquarters to catch the outgoing courier the same
evening. About 6 P.M. I carried my parcel to Lord Chelmsford’s
headquarter in the laager. I found his lordship with Colonel
North Crealock, his military secretary, seated at a table under
an awning. I tendered my packet, when his lordship stated that
he had altered his intention as to the despatch of Mr. Dawnay
that evening, because of the absence of some details from Colonel
Buller’s command. On hearing this I said, “Then, my lord, I shall
start at once myself!” A few remarks having passed, I asked,
addressing Lord Chelmsford, “Can I take anything down for you,
sir?” Colonel Crealock, who had been writing hard during the brief
interview, then struck in--“If you will wait five minutes, Forbes,
till I have finished, I will give you this packet for Landmann’s
Drift.” While I waited, Colonel Crealock, having finished writing,
enclosed sundry papers in a large yellow “O.H.M.S.” envelope,
addressed it to the “Telegraph-clerk in charge, Landmann’s Drift,”
adding the endorsement “J. North Crealock, Military Secretary,”
and handed the packet to me. This packet, entrusted to me by Lord
Chelmsford’s military secretary in his lordship’s actual presence
and sight, I duly conveyed to Landmann’s Drift, and handed it to
the official in the telegraph-office there.
The reply from the War Office to this communication was as follows:--
Colonel Crealock corroborates that portion of your statement to
the effect that you conveyed an envelope for him on the occasion
alluded to from Ulundi to the telegraph office at Landmann’s Drift,
but at the same time he emphatically denies that the envelope
contained any document of a public nature, and moreover states
that he explained to you that the Hon. Guy Dawnay had already
been directed to take charge of the despatches when concluded.
He also reports that the few words contained in the telegram to
Mrs. Crealock which was enclosed in the envelope, were of such a
nature as to preclude the possibility of the Director of Telegraphs
supposing the message was despatched in the public service, and
that he was subsequently charged with the cost of it.
Assuming that the contents of Colonel Crealock’s letter were of a
private character, I was none the less for that journey an official
courier. What was inside the envelope was immaterial; the outside was
rigorously official. The F.O. bag carried by a Queen’s messenger is
every whit as official when its contents are old lace and ball slippers
as when they consist of despatches on whose terms hang peace or war.
Again, I knew that Colonel Crealock’s alleged statement must be untrue
that his enclosure consisted of a “few words” and no “document of a
public character.” I had carried down nothing save his packet and my
own written description of the battle. The telegraph official permitted
me, as soon as I arrived, to despatch the few lines which reached Sir
Garnet Wolseley and Sir Bartle Frere. He then was occupied for several
hours in telegraphing the contents of Colonel Crealock’s envelope,
which, as he explained, had precedence as being official matter; and
it was not until after the “many hundred words” (those were his words)
to which his matter extended had been sent off, that my descriptive
message was put on the wires.
It is not easy to imagine that a man can honestly confuse between a
short domestic telegram and a public message many hundred words long.
Be this as it may, there was no difficulty in finding unchallengeable
evidence of the untruthfulness of the statements attributed to Colonel
Crealock in the above letter. At Aldershot I found the R.E. officer who
had been in charge of the field telegraph office at Landmann’s Drift
when I arrived there on July 5, and the operator who had despatched
the contents of the official envelope of which I was the bearer from
Ulundi. The records had been mutilated, so that documentary evidence
was lacking; but the parole evidence of the officer and of the
operator given in the former’s hearing and mine, was conclusive. I
begged Lieutenant Jones to put into writing his recollection of the
circumstances, and the following is his letter:--
I perfectly well remember seeing you arrive at Landmann’s Drift on
the afternoon of July 5, 1879. You brought with you, to my certain
recollection, a mass of written matter, of what description I
cannot quite remember, but I am sure that, whatever it was, it took
precedence of your own telegram to your paper, which proves that it
was what we call “service messages”--that is, on military service.
This the telegrapher at Landmann’s Drift also remembers well,
as also the telegrapher at the transmitting station at Quagga’s
Kraal. The entire bulk of the messages you brought amounted to
nearly 4000 words, of which not more than 1200 were your own press
message, which did not go till late in the night. I regret to say
the abstract books are lost or destroyed, so that I cannot quote
from that evidence. My memory, however, is so clear that I am quite
certain to the extent I have mentioned.
(Signed) FRANCIS G. BOND,
Lieut. R.E.
A copy of Mr. Bond’s communication I promptly forwarded to the War
Office, making the following observations in the covering letter:--
1. I handed Mr. Bond no other matter than the official envelope I
received from Colonel Crealock in Lord Chelmsford’s presence, and
my own press message.
2. I knew nothing of the contents of the said official envelope,
save that they were bulky. The envelope was endorsed “J. North
Crealock, Military Secretary,” which, with the “O.H.M.S.,” gave
it, I submit, an official character, and constituted the missive
a despatch, and not a private communication, as Colonel Crealock
alleges it to have been.
3. Colonel Crealock’s assertion that the envelope entrusted to me
contained merely a telegram to his wife is utterly incompatible
with the facts detailed in Mr. Bond’s letter, and confirmed by the
personal testimony of the operators. Mr. Bond and they agree that
the “service messages” handed in by me amounted to 2800 words, and
that they had the official precedence which would not have been
granted to a private telegram addressed by an officer to his wife.
4. I have never claimed to have carried the despatch describing the
engagement. My standpoint is simply, as already set forth, that I
carried a service despatch entrusted to me by Lord Chelmsford’s
military secretary, in the presence, with the cognisance, and so
with the tacit sanction of Lord Chelmsford himself. Apart from the
word “Immediate,” which was written on the envelope, the inference
is that this despatch, whatever it was, was of urgent importance,
seeing that it was given to me setting out immediately, and not
reserved for Mr. Dawnay’s later departure.
To this letter, which, along with its enclosure, may perhaps be
regarded as of an inconvenient tenor, I have never received any reply
whatsoever.
While waiting for what never came, it occurred to me to strengthen the
case by asking the sapper of the R.E. telegraph train who had been the
operator at Landmann’s Drift, to put into writing the verbal testimony
he had given to his officer and myself. In reply to the letter in which
this request was made, there came to me this interesting and pregnant
communication:--
MR. FORBES,--Your letter received. Don’t you think you’d better
write to me again and state something more definite as to what you
are prepared to “part” for the negotiation?
I’m willing to give you my recollections to as great an extent as
you desire (between you and I), but you must cross the palm.--Yours,
HARRY HOWARD.
The man was utterly brazen. I wrote to him that if he chose to send
me the statement I had asked for, I should accept his doing so as an
evidence that he was ashamed of the letter just quoted, and would
regard it as never written. “Should I not hear from you,” I continued,
“I shall be forced to assume that you experience no shame for having
written so base a letter, and it will be my duty to forward that letter
to your commanding officer.” Howard’s reply came by return:--
MR. FORBES,--You can button up your coat and take my letter round
to the nearest _General’s_ quarters.
The letter you desire you can have if you like.--Yours,
HARRY HOWARD.
He must have either been quite reckless, or what is known as a
“barrack-room lawyer.” I let him be, as I was not sure that there is
any military law under which he could have been punished. A comfortable
man, Mr. Harry Howard, to be entrusted with the despatch of an
all-important message at the critical moment of a campaign, while a spy
who had “crossed the palm” was waiting round the corner!
It was presently disclosed that this correspondence on the official
side was from the first simply what the Germans expressively call
“a blow on the water.” It began with a foregone conclusion. An
influential friend conversant with the circumstances wrote to the
authorities representing with a certain vigour that he considered the
treatment I had met with to have been ungracious and unfair. He was
told in reply that, “As the Secretary of State for War considers that
civilians who attach themselves to an army ought not be deemed eligible
for war medals, the adverse decision with regard to Mr. Forbes must
remain untouched.”
This is explicit, and therefore it would not have been in accordance
with official tradition to have simply intimated the _à priori_
resolution to me when I sent in my claim.
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found within each story in this book;
otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Pages 279 and 286 both used “Chapter IV”; in this eBook, the second one
has been changed to “Chapter V”.
End of Project Gutenberg's Barracks, Bivouacs and Battles, by Archibald Forbes