FROM BAD TO WORSE
MAFEKING, _February 7th, 1900_.
At a moment when the entire garrison, perhaps, excluding the military
chiefs, was eagerly anticipating some announcement which would
determine the date of an immediate relief, intelligence has come to
hand, in a communication from Field-Marshal Lord Roberts himself,
informing the inhabitants of Mafeking that he expects them to hold out
until the middle of May. Since the beginning of the year the town has
lulled itself into a sense of security by endeavouring to believe that
at some early date the garrison would be relieved. But now, if it were
possible to find "a last straw" to break the spirits of the townsmen,
it is contained in the unfortunate telegram which Colonel Baden-Powell
received from Lord Roberts. To hold out until the middle of May, it
can well be longer, is to ask us to endure further privations, and to
maintain an existence in a condition which is already little removed
from starvation, and at a moment when the great majority of the
civilian combatants, if not of all classes, are "full up" of the
siege. For the past month we have been living upon horseflesh,
although at first these unfortunate animals were slaughtered only in
the interests of the foodless natives, and whatever gastronomic
satisfaction may be culled by us now in eating what in more ordinary
circumstances has done duty as a horse, it is none the less a hardship
and a damned and disagreeable dish.
The effect of the announcement has been to increase the gloom and
depression which for some weeks has been noticeable among those
civilians whose businesses have been ruined; who are separated from
and unable to communicate with their families, and who themselves have
been impressed into the defence of the town. During this state of war
they are unable to earn anything, and it is quite beyond their power
to pay even the most perfunctory attention to their businesses; but
now with this statement buzzing in the brain like an angry bee, can
they not be excused if they cry out, "Enough, enough," and feel
depressed and sick of the whole siege? Within a few weeks we shall be
entering the sixth month of the siege, and already the severity of our
daily life is beginning to tell, and indeed has already told upon
many. But now that we have come so far through the wood, when we have
fought by day and by night, when we have been sick with fever and
pressed by hunger, when we have been harassed by bad news, and the
conviction, through the absence of any cheering information, that all
was not well with us down below, it would be a monstrous misfortune if
we cannot survive the pangs of hunger and the torments of starvation
until the long-promised relief arrives in the middle of May. If we do
succeed, those who come through alive will have a tale to tell, in
which there will be much which will remain buried, since there are
experiences which, when they have been lived through, it is impossible
to talk about.
If we were only just ourselves, merely the defenders of a town against
an enemy, we could endure our privations, our short rations, and our
condemned water with even greater fortitude. The men live hard lives
in Africa, and their constitutions are strong, their nerves firm. But
they hate, as all men hate, in all parts of the world, that their
womenfolk should suffer, and here is the misery of our situation, more
especially that these gentle creatures should suffer before their own
eyes, when they themselves can do nothing for them. Aye, indeed,
there's the rub. A hard life is always hardest upon women, and, unlike
the Australasian colonies, and Canada, or the Western States of
America, and all places where women who lead colonial life have no
black labour to rely upon, the women in Africa are curiously
incapable, delegating a multitudinous variety of domestic duties to
the natives they employ. Their sphere of daily activity, so far as it
is in relation to their household, is reduced to a minimum, while
consciously or through the absence of some active pursuit by which
they could occupy their mind and exercise their bodies, their view of
life is petty and impressed with prejudices and absurd jealousies.
Moreover, they are abnormally lazy; indeed, to one who has lived in
Australasia, America, Africa, India, and elsewhere, and has experience
of life in those colonies, the lassitude and indolence of the South
African woman is one of the most striking aspects of the daily life in
Africa. In Natal this weariness is called the "Natal sickness," and in
Mafeking at the present juncture it is responsible for a great deal of
the discontent, the unwillingness to make the best of an exceedingly
trying situation.
Without the feminine element in Mafeking, the civil and military
authorities would be in better accord, but with a pack of women and
children in an insanitary laager, caring nothing for the exigencies of
the situation, firmly believing that they are oppressed by design and
deliberately maltreated, and, rising up in their wrath, smiting the
Colonel, the Chief Staff Officer, indeed, the entire Headquarters'
Staff, or any military and official unit that comes unfortunately into
contact with them, the worry and annoyance caused to the garrison at
large by their presence here at this juncture is eminently worse than
the most fearsome thing it is possible to conceive. Of course, one
sympathises in all sincerity with these unfortunate non-combatants,
for they live amid conditions which produce and promote typhoid,
malaria, and diphtheria--diseases that have been peculiarly virulent,
and from which many women and children have died.
Apart from the fatalities from shell and rifle fire, there is the list
of those who have died from the hardships which they have had to
experience. Strong men have dropped off from typhoid, women and
children contracting the same disease, or one which by its nature is
similarly fatal, have been unable to bear up. The smiling and happy
children that one knew in the early days are no longer such; they are
thin, emaciated, bloodless, and live amid conditions which have
already wrought sad havoc among their companions. The mortality among
the women and children must form part of the general conditions of the
siege, but it is peculiarly disheartening to the townsmen as they
stand to their posts and their trenches to be compelled to ponder and
to reflect sadly that the fell diseases which have killed the wives
and children of so many might, at any moment, attack those members of
their own family who are confined in the pestilential trenches of the
laager. The unfortunate condition of these poor people here, as well
as in Kimberley, has brought the suggestion to my mind that it should
not be too late for either the Commander-in-Chief, or some one
identified with his authority, to make overtures to the Boers, so that
we, and even the garrison in Kimberley, might be permitted to send, in
the one case our women and children to Bulawayo, and in the other
case, to Capetown. It could surely be arranged, and if it were
possible it would ensure a little greater happiness, a little greater
comfort, falling to the lot of these poor people, who are unable to
take, through lack of adequate remedies, the simplest precautions
against the dangers which assail their own health and the lives of
their children. But if our friends the Boers think that because of
these straits we are disheartened they make a very grievous mistake.
We propose to endure and we intend to carry the siege on until the
end. Nothing so exemplifies the true tone of the garrison and the
spirit of the men as this determination in which we one and all share
and for which we mutually agree to co-operate.
Despite the heavy burden of domestic trouble which presses down upon
the townspeople, there has been a remarkable absence of any open
friction between the civilian element and military at present gathered
in Mafeking. The military authorities should be the first to recognise
this and to appreciate the ready acquiescence and assistance which
they have received from the inhabitants of the town. That at least
they do acknowledge the importance of duties fulfilled, and the spirit
with which they have been carried out, should be a conclusion against
which it would be absurd to tilt. Nothing can underestimate the
consideration which the townspeople, under conditions adverse to their
interests, and for which the military authorities are entirely
responsible, have shown for the vigours of martial law and the present
military domination. Compensation would be so materially insufficient
that it cannot be said that any one individual has stayed here for the
purpose of receiving such emoluments as would be to him some kind of a
profit. The economy of Governmental compensation is never known to be
satisfactory--Government in its impersonal attributes being
universally recognised as a most niggardly paymaster. They therefore,
those who have stayed, apart from the delusions under which they
suffered, can be said to have remained because they wished, as
colonists, to prove their loyalty; and yet, when one looks back upon
the siege and considers carefully the manner in which they have been
imposed upon by their own Government, it is very questionable if ever
so great a test was applied to the spirit of mind and body which
constitutes allegiance to a sovereign. Fortunately the town cannot say
that it has performed more than its share of the defence work. Indeed,
for the most part the services of the townsmen have been restricted,
so far as was possible, to a connection with forts which have been
constructed upon the boundaries of the town, and have not been thrust
forward in preference to the men of the Protectorate Regiment, who,
following the profession of arms, can properly be expected to bear the
brunt of the fighting. It was thought at one time that the strange
assortment of human nature which had collected in or was drawn to
Mafeking might be difficult of management; but mixed as is the
population here at present, the doubtful element, which is one that
sympathising with the enemy might create dissatisfaction among others,
has been singularly subdued. There are many instances here in Mafeking
of men who have taken up arms in defence of the town in which their
business and their domestic ties are centred, and who, to do this,
have had to fight against their own blood relatives. We have had
therefore, in a sense, many men who, while apparently loyal and
engaged in manning the trenches, were yet under constant supervision,
lest they should give way to their feelings and too openly proclaim
their sympathies with the Boer cause; but there have been few
desertions, and affairs in general between Englishman and Dutchman,
between the civilian and military, have passed off with greater
harmony than was altogether anticipated. Mistrust between Englishmen
of pronounced Imperial sympathies and colonials suspected of Dutch
leanings has been the cause of a certain amount of jealousy, which
tended to make the defence of Mafeking a work of, by no means, a
pleasant nature. However much this feeling of difference, creating and
causing in itself an acute tension between the pro-Imperial and the
colonial, has given rise to, or has been the sole cause of, any
ill-feeling which may have marked the relations between the civil and
military, it has at no time assumed proportions grave enough to foster
the opinion that its prevalence might endanger in time the commonweal
of the inhabitants and threaten with strife the daily intercourse of
the various units in the garrison.