EXIT GENERAL GATACRE
Bethany: April 13.
If you go to sleep when the train leaves East London, you should wake,
all being well, to find yourself at Queenstown.
Queenstown lies just beyond the high water-mark of war. The tide had
flowed strong after Stormburg, and it looked as if Queenstown would be
engulfed, at any rate for a time. But Fortune and General Gatacre
protected it. Sterkstroom entrenched itself, and prepared for daily
attacks. Molteno was actually shelled. Queenstown suffered none of the
horrors of war except martial law, which it bore patiently rather than
cheerfully.
Nothing in the town impresses the traveller, but at the dining-room of
the railway station there is a very little boy, about twelve years old,
who, unaided, manages to serve, with extraordinary dispatch and a grand
air, a whole score of passengers during the brief interval allowed for
refreshments.
Five months earlier I had passed along this line, hoping to get into
Ladysmith before the door was shut, and had been struck by this busy
child, who seemed a product of America rather than of Africa. Much had
happened in the meantime, not so far from where he lived. But here he
was still--the war had not interfered with him, Queenstown was beyond
the limit.
At Sterkstroom a line of empty trenches, the Red Cross flag over a
hospital, and an extension to the cemetery enclosure filled with brown
mounds which the grass had not yet had time to cover, showed that we had
crossed the line between peace and war. Passing through Molteno, the
last resting-place of the heroic de Montmorency, the train reached
Stormburg. Scarcely any traces of the Boer occupation were to be seen;
the marks of their encampments behind the ridge where they had
laagered--a litter of meat tins, straw, paper, and the like, the grave
of Commandant Swanepoole and several nameless heaps, a large stone (in
the station-master's possession) with the words engraved on it: 'In
memory of the Transvaal commando, Stormburg, December 1899,' and that
was all. The floods had abated and receded. This was the only jetsam
that remained.
At Stormburg I changed my mind, or, rather--for it comes to the same
thing and sounds better--I made it up.
I heard that no immediate advance from Bloemfontein was likely or even
possible for a fortnight. Therefore, I said, I will go to Capetown, and
shelter for a week at 'The Helot's Rest.' After all, what is the use of
a roving commission if one cannot rove at random or caprice?
So to Capetown I went accordingly--seven hundred miles in forty-eight
hours of bad trains over sections of the line only newly reopened. But
to Capetown I will not take the reader. Indeed, I strongly recommend
him to stick to the war and keep his attention at the front, for
Capetown at this present time is not an edifying place. Yet, since he
may be curious to know some reason for such advice, let me explain.
Capetown, which stands, as some writers have observed, beneath the
shadow of Table Mountain, has been--and may be again in times of
peace--a pleasant place in which to pursue business or health; but now
it is simply a centre of intrigue, scandal, falsehood, and rumour.
The visitor stays at the Mount Nelson Hotel, if he can be so fortunate
as to secure a room. At this establishment he finds all the luxuries of
a first-class European hotel without the resulting comfort. There is a
good dinner, but it is cold before it reaches him; there is a spacious
dining-room, but it is overcrowded; there are clean European waiters,
but they are few and far between.
At the hotel, in its garden, or elsewhere in the town, all the world and
his wife are residing--particularly the wife.
We used to think, in the Army of Natal, that Lord Roberts's operations
in the Free State had been a model of military skill and knowledge, and,
in a simple way, we regarded French as one of the first cavalry soldiers
of the age.
All this was corrected at Capetown, and I learned with painful
disenchantment that 'it' (the said operations) had all been a shameful
muddle from beginning to end; that the field-marshal had done this and
that and the other 'which no man in his senses,' &c., that French was
utterly ... and as for Lord Kitchener, Capetown--let us be just,
imported social Capetown--was particularly severe on Lord Kitchener.
It was very perplexing; and besides it seemed that these people ought to
know, for they succeeded in making more news in the twenty-four hours
than all the correspondents at the front put together. The whole town
was overrun with amateur strategists and gossiping women. There were
more colonels to the acre than in any place outside the United States,
and if the social aspect was unattractive, the political was scarcely
more pleasing.
Party feeling ran high. Some of the British section, those tremendous
patriots who demonstrate but do not fight--not to be on any account
compared with the noble fellows who fill the Volunteer corps--pot-house
heroes, and others of that kidney, had just distinguished themselves by
mobbing Mr. Schreiner in the streets.
The Dutch section, some of them the men who, risking nothing themselves,
had urged the Republics to their ruin, all of whom had smiled and rubbed
their hands at the British reverses, sat silent in public, but kept a
strict watch on incoming steamers for members of Parliament and others
of more influence and guile, and whispered honeyed assurances of their
devotion to the Empire, coupled with all sorts of suggestions about the
settlement--on the broad general principle of 'Heads I win, tails you
lose.'
British newspapers advocated short shrift to rebels--'Hit 'em hard now
they're down'; 'Give them a lesson this time, the dirty Dutchmen!'
Dutch papers recorded the events of the war in the tone, 'At the end of
the battle the British, as usual, fled precipitately, leaving 2,000
killed, _our_ loss'--no, not quite that, but very nearly; everything, in
fact, but the word 'our'--'one killed, two slightly wounded.'
Let no one stay long in Capetown now who would carry away a true
impression of the South Africans. There is too much shoddy worn there
at present.
Only at Government House did I find the Man of No Illusions, the anxious
but unwearied Proconsul, understanding the faults and the virtues of
both sides, measuring the balance of rights and wrongs, and
determined--more determined than ever; for is it not the only hope for
the future of South Africa?--to use his knowledge and his power to
strengthen the Imperial ties.
All this time the reader has been left on a siding at Naauwpoort; but
does he complain of not being taken to Capetown? We will hasten back
together to the healthier atmosphere of war.
Indeed, the spell of the great movements impending in the Free State
began to catch hold of me before I had travelled far on the line towards
Bloemfontein. Train loads of troops filled every station or siding. A
ceaseless stream of men, horses, and guns had been passing northwards
for a fortnight, and on the very day that I made the journey Lord
Kitchener had ordered that in future all troops must march beyond
Springfontein, because the line must be cleared for the passage of
supplies, so that, besides the trains in the sidings, there were columns
by the side of the railway steadily making their way to the front.
The one passenger train in the day stopped at Bethany. I got out. To
go on was to reach Bloemfontein at midnight. Better, then, to sleep here
and proceed at dawn.
'Are there many troops here?' I asked. They replied 'The whole of the
Third Division.' 'Who commands?' 'Gatacre.' That decided me.
I knew the general slightly, having made his acquaintance up the Nile in
pleasant circumstances, for no one was allowed to pass his mess hungry
or thirsty. I was very anxious to see him and hear all about Stormberg
and the rest of the heavy struggle along the eastern line of rail. I
found him in a tin house close to the station. He received me kindly,
and we had a long talk. The General explained to me many things which I
had not understood before, and after we had done with past events he
turned with a hopeful eye to the future. At last, and for the first
time, he was going to have the division of which he had originally been
given the command.
'You know I only had two and a half battalions at Sterkstroom and a few
colonial horse; but now I have got both my brigades complete.'
I thought him greatly altered from the dashing, energetic man I had
known up the river, or had heard about on the frontier or in
plague-stricken Bombay. Four months of anxiety and abuse had left their
mark on him. The weary task of keeping things going with utterly
insufficient resources, and in the face of an adroit and powerful enemy
in a country of innumerable kopjes, where every advantage lay with the
Boer, had bowed that iron frame and tired the strange energy which had
made him so remarkable among soldiers. But when he thought of the
future his face brightened. The dark days were over. The broken rocky
wilderness lay behind, and around rolled the grassy plains of the Free
State. He had his whole division at last. Moreover, there was prospect
of immediate action. So I left him, for it was growing late, and went
my way. Early next morning he was dismissed from his command and
ordered to England, broken, ruined, and disgraced.
I will not for one moment dispute the wisdom or the justice of his
removal. In stormy weather one must trust to the man at the helm, and
when he is such a man as Lord Roberts it is not a very hard thing to do.
But because General Gatacre has been cruelly persecuted in England by
people quite ignorant of the difficulties of war or of the conditions
under which it is carried on in this country, it is perhaps not out of
place to write a few words of different tenor.
Gatacre was a man who made his way in the army, not through any
influence or favour which he enjoyed, but by sheer hard work and good
service. Wherever he had served he had left a high record behind him.
On the Indian frontier he gained the confidence of so fine a soldier as
Sir Bindon Blood, and it was largely to his reputation won in the
Chitral Expedition that his subsequent advancement was due. At Bombay
in 1897 he was entrusted with the duty of fighting the plague, then
first gripping its deadly fingers into the city. No one who is at all
acquainted with the course of this pest will need to be told how
excellent was his work. After the late Soudan campaign I travelled from
Bombay to Poona with a Parsee gentleman, a wealthy merchant of the
plague-stricken town, and I well remember how he dilated on the good
which Gatacre had done.
'He was our only chance,' said the black man. 'Now he is gone, and the
sickness will stay for ever.'
Gatacre's part in the Soudan campaign has been described at length
elsewhere. His courage has never been questioned, because the savage
critics did not wish to damage their cause by obvious absurdities. If I
were to discuss his tactics in the Boer war here I should soon get on to
ground which I have forbidden myself. It is sufficient to observe that
Gatacre retained the confidence and affection of his soldiers in the
most adverse circumstances. When the weary privates struggled back to
camp after the disastrous day at Stormburg they were quite clear on one
point: 'No one could have got us out but him.' Two days before he was
dismissed the Cameron Highlanders passed through Bethany, and the men
recognised the impetuous leader of the Atbara charge; and, knowing he
had fallen among evil days, cheered him in the chivalry of the common
man. The poor general was much moved at this spontaneous greeting,
which is a very rare occurrence in our phlegmatic, well-ordered British
Army. Let us hope the sound will long ring in his ears, and, as it
were, light a bright lamp of memory in the chill and dreary evening of
life.
Exit General Gatacre. 'Now,' as my Parsee merchant remarked, 'he is
gone'; and I suppose there are, here and there, notes of triumph. But
among them I will strike a note of warning. If the War Office breaks
generals not so much for incapacity as for want of success with any
frequency, it will not find men to fight for it in brigade and
divisional commands. Every man who knows the chances of war feels
himself insecure. The initiative which an unsympathetic discipline has
already killed, or nearly killed, in younger officers, will wither and
die in their superiors. You will have generals as before, but they will
not willingly risk the fruits of long years of service in damnable
countries and of perils of all kinds. They will look at the enemy's
position. They will endeavour to divide responsibility. They will ask
for orders or instructions. But they will not fight--if they can
possibly help it, and then only on the limited liability principle,
which means the shedding of much blood without any result. Besides, as
an irreverent subaltern remarked to me: 'If you begin with Gatacre,
where are you going to end? What about poor old ----?'
But I dare not pursue the subject further.