In the days of my almost forgotten boyhood I remember reading in the Book
of all books that the Wise Man, in a fit of blank despair, declared that
there were several things under heaven which he could neither gauge nor
understand, viz., "The way of a serpent upon a rock, and the way of a man
with a maid," and I beg leave to doubt if Solomon, in all his wisdom, could
understand the little ways of a camp liar in his frisky glory. Whence he
cometh, whither he goeth, and why he was born, are conundrums which might
tax the ingenuity of all the prophets, from Daniel downwards, to solve. I
have sought him with peace offerings in each hand, hoping to beguile him
from his sinful ways, and have located him not. I have risen in the chilly
dawn, and laid wait for him with a gun, but have not feasted mine eyes upon
him. I have lain awake through the still watches of the night planning
divers surprises for him, but success has not come nigh unto me. I have
cursed the camp liar with a fervour born of long suffering, and I have
hired a Zulu mule-driver to curse him for me; but my efforts have come to
nought, and now I am sore in my very bones when I think of him. All men
whose fate it is to dwell under canvas know of his work, but no man hath
yet laid hand or eye upon him. A man goeth to his blankets at night time
feeling good towards all mankind, satisfied in his own soul that he has
garnered in all the legitimate news that he is in any way entitled to
handle for the public benefit; and lo! when he ariseth in the dawning he
finds that the camp liar has neither slept nor slumbered, for the very air
is full of stories concerning battles which have not been fought and
victories which have not been won. From mouth to mouth, all along the
lines, the stories run as fire runs along fuse, and no man born of woman
can tell whence they came or where they will stop. Each soldier questioned
swears the tale is true, because "'twas told to him by one who never lied."
Yet, at evening, when the weary wretch who works for newspapers returns to
his tent, with his boots worn through with fruitless search for the author
of the "news," he learns that once again he has been the dupe of the "camp
liar"; and he may well be forgiven if he then heaps a whole continent of
curses on the invisible shape which, forming itself into a lie, is small
enough to enter a man's mouth, and yet big enough to permeate a whole camp.
What is a camp liar? It is not a man, neither is it a maid, neither is it
dog nor devil. It is a nameless shadow, which flits through the minds of
men, fashioned by the Father of Evil to be a curse and a scourge to war
correspondents. A mining liar is an awful liar, but he takes tangible form,
and one can grapple with him when he appears upon a prospectus. A political
liar is a pitiful liar, and vengeance finds him out upon the hustings, and
eggs and the produce of the kitchen garden are his reward. A legal liar is
a loquacious liar, but he is bounded by his brief and the extent of his
fees. But the camp liar has no bounds, and is equally at home in all
languages, at one moment dealing with an army in full marching order, and
the next battening festively upon one man in a mudhole. There is no height
to which the camp liar dare not ascend, there is nothing too trivial for it
to touch. It has neither sex nor shape; but, like a fallen angel ousted
from Heaven, and not wanted in Hades, it flits through camp a mental
microbe, spawning falsehoods in the souls of soldiers.
The camp liar concocts a story of a fearful fight, and fills the air with
the groans of the dying, and makes a weird picture out of the grisly,
grinning silence of the ghastly dead. Kopjes are stained a rich ripe red
with the blood of heroes, and arms, and legs, and skulls, and shattered jaw
bones hurtle through the air midst the sound of bursting shells, like
straws in a stable-yard when the wind blows high. The very poetry of lying
is touched with a master hand when charging squadrons sweep across the
veldt and the sunlight kisses the soldier's steel. Then comes the pathos
dear to the liar's soul--the farewells of the dying, sobbed just seven
seconds before sunset into comrades' ears; the faltering voice, the
tear-dimmed eyes, the death rattle in the throat, the last hand clasps, the
last deep-drawn breath, in which--mother--Mary--and Heaven are always
mingled; and then the moonlight and the moaning of the midnight
wind!----The war correspondent leaps from the tent, springs into his saddle
with his note-book in his mouth and an indelible lead pencil in each hand,
and rides over kopje and veldt ten dreary miles to gaze upon the scene of
that awful battle, and finds--one dead mule, and a nigger driver, dead
drunk. Then, if he has had a religious education, he climbs out of the
saddle, sinks on his knees, and prays for the peace of the camp liar's
immortal soul. But if, as is often the case, he has had a secular
upbringing, he spits on the dead mule, kicks the nigger, slinks back to
camp by a roundabout route, and swears to everyone that he has been forty
miles in another direction in a railway truck.
Four or five days later, just at that hour in the morning when a man clings
most fondly to his blankets, another rumour breaks the early morning's
limpid silence, a rumour of a battle of great import raging eighteen miles
away, just within easy riding distance for a smart correspondent. But the
man of ink and hardships chuckles this time. He has been fooled so often by
the imp of camp rumours; so murmurs just loud enough to be heard in heaven,
"That infernal camp liar again," and rustles his blankets round his ears
and drops cosily back into dreamland; but when, later on, he learns that an
important battle has been fought, and he has missed it all because he did
not want to be fooled by the camp liar, then what he mutters is muttered
loud enough to be heard in a different place, and the folk there don't need
ear trumpets to catch what he says either.