FALSE HEARTS AROUND US
_Where only the Women were frank--The art of the War
Artist._
Miss Bloemfontein was not alone in disliking to recognise the presence
of the British army. Her mother was not the only person who could not
bear to see Englishmen marring the scenery of the pest-ridden little
town. Even while the tricky among the people joined in singing
"Soldiers of the Queen," one man in the crowd turned to a war
correspondent and said, "You English are strutting about very proudly
and confidently, and think you own the country, but when you go away
from here you will be sniped at from every bush and spruit wherever
you show yourself."
I took a little walk up past the English Cathedral one day and saw a
woman seated upon her front _stoep_, sewing. "Good morning," said I,
"do you speak English?" She rose and glared at me with scorn in her
eyes. "No," said she, "but I hate the English."
A little girl ran out of a doorway a few houses farther along and
called to me, "Mister, mister! Please wear the red, white and blue,"
and she pinned a knot of the British and American colours on my coat
lapel.
"What sort of a lady is it who lives in that house?" I asked; "she
says she hates the English."
"Oh, she is Dutch," the little girl replied; "almost everybody here
hates you."
I turned a corner and went down a side-street. Two young women in a
doorway beamed upon me. I was out to study the town and the people, so
I halted and engaged them in conversation. One was married, and her
husband, who was of English stock, had cleverly managed to be away
when the war broke out, after which he found it impossible to return
and join a Boer commando as he would have had to do, being only a poor
working man.
"We are on the police books as English sympathisers," said one of the
women. "We have had to be very careful, as we were warned that if we
gave further offence we would be punished. What happened was this: You
see the town is full of Germans, who have been most bitter against the
English. We went to the railway station when some English prisoners
were being sent to Pretoria. As the train moved off we waved our hands
to them and wished them better luck. A German saw us do it, and
reported us to the authorities, so we were taken up and examined, and
had our names put in the 'black-book.'"
A score of the honest people of the town who had been avowedly true to
their English blood, which was by no means the case with all the
British Uitlanders, told me that they suffered petty persecution all
the time until the town was captured. Note what "Miss Uitlander" said
in her reply to "Miss Bloemfontein" in THE FRIEND of March 26th:--
The "loving hand" you boast of having extended to us has
long since been covered by an iron glove, the weight of
which we have daily been made to feel, and to _that_ you
must associate the joyful flaunting of our colours in your
face. His coming meant freedom--the sweetest thing in the
world--to us.
You called our brothers and sisters cowards as they fled
your oppression and bitter and openly expressed hatred. You
threw white feathers into our carriages as they passed you
by. You loudly bemoaned your fate as a woman and longed to
don masculine garments to aid your beaux in exterminating
the hated English. Could we remember a "loving hand" then?
You were quick to tell us that there would be no room for us
to live beside you so soon as Mr. Englishman was driven back
to the sea. The hated English had never been wanted, and
would not be allowed to stay. And since you continue to make
no secret of your hatred, the same remedy is now in your
hands. But it will be difficult to find a spot where Mr.
Englishman is not _en evidence_.
Such was Bloemfontein to those who saw into its heart and knew its
temper. Some of us conquerors saw a little way behind the garlanded
curtain the false-hearted pretenders of friendship drew down before
our faces, but for what now seems a long time the Army fed itself upon
the honeyed lying of those people who had not the courage or honesty
to play the part of open enemies to the last. As for Tommy Atkins, he
seemed oblivious of everything but that which he enjoyed--which was
simply to walk about the town spending his money, and taking insults
and bouquets equally as a matter of course, just as they happened to
come.
Let the reader note two things of the first interest, and of great
human and historic value. The persons who did not come out and pretend
to be our friends were the women. The part of the population that did
not join in singing "Soldiers of the Queen" was the feminine part. The
only person who openly and plainly espoused the cause of the Boers was
Miss Bloemfontein--a woman. The only person who answered her and
proudly asserted her loyalty to Great Britain was Miss Uitlander--a
woman.
Everywhere in every war it is Lovely Woman who fans the flames, who
urges on the fighting, who charges the men to win or die, but never to
give up; who nurses the hatreds of the strife to her breast and keeps
them hot. Everywhere it is the civilised and the savage woman who does
this, and only the half-civilised have made a contrary record, for I
am told that in one strife there was an exception. That was "the
Mutiny" in India, where the ayahs and other Indian female servants
stuck to their posts in the British households, and played no part in
the awful affair.
But in the great Civil War in America it was the women who kept the
strife in progress fully a year and a half, if not two years, after
their husbands and brothers realised it was useless, and that the
North must win. "Go, and do not come back while there is a Yankee
alive!" they said to sweethearts, sons, and brothers. So has it ever
been in times of war. The women, roused from their quiet lives and
excited by the animosities which develop war and the horrors which go
with it, remain undisturbed by the considerations which cause men,
with their wider interests and experiences, to waver in their faith.
And among the savage peoples of the earth it is, as a rule, the women
who garnish war with its most fearful accessories. The bucks and
braves do the fighting, the women follow after them to torture the
wounded and mutilate the dead.
Think you that this is a terrible indictment of a sex? Do you see in
this nothing but the anger and the cruelty that lie on the surface?
Then you are to be pitied, for the moral of these reflections is that
in womanhood are treasured the faith which inspires mankind, the
convictions that nerve our arms in a world which progresses only
through strife, the enthusiasm which not even the hell of war can
destroy.
The leader of April 14th was my own, entitled "Mr. Lecky on the War."
Again we had a complete newspaper full of the too-often delayed or
strangled Reuter despatches, which told us of other wars, in Ashantee
and the Philippines, of the Queen's visit to Ireland, of the Prince's
narrow escape from an assassin, and of all that was going forward in
our own little contention with the Boers.
This number was singular in containing no original verse. It did,
however, contain something more full of sentiment, and, if possible,
more unexpected and foreign to war; to wit: a notice of a wedding:--
* * * * *
MARRIED.
By special license, on the 11th inst., by the Rev. Franklin,
at her father's house, Alexandra Cornelia, youngest daughter
of W. H. v. B. Van Andel, Orphan Master, to Arthur M. Stone,
eldest son of the late T. C. Stone, Esq., from Folkestone,
England. No cards.
Orange-blossoms might, possibly, be looked for in the Orange State,
but blended with the bandages and laurels of war they seem peculiar.
One cynic asked us, when he read the wedding notice, "Is this
prophetic of concord, or is it merely strife breaking out in a new
place?" He was a soulless man. I am sorry I have quoted or noticed one
so deficient in feeling, poetry, humanity, and sentiment.
In furtherance of the knowledge that the Army was tired of being
fooled, and growing weary of the upstart behaviour of the too often
treacherous negro natives, we published a notice by Assistant
Provost-Marshal Burnett-Hitchcock: "No pass is sufficient for a native
to pass through the outpost lines unless countersigned by a Staff
Officer, and it should state where and whence the native is going."
Other rigid restrictions upon the freedom of the negroes are enforced
by this order.
The same energetic officer also forbade the selling of any article
within the town by hawkers and camp sutlers, under a penalty of fine
on conviction. This was in order to protect the local tradesmen from
army competition--including those who barricaded their shops when the
Boer combatants fled from the town, lest we should loot their stores
of goods, who then calmly told us they put up the barricades because
"the Boers were such thieving scoundrels," and who, now that they knew
our temper only too well, regaled us with accounts of how, while they
were in commando, they had fought us at Belmont, Graspan, Modder, and
a dozen other places.
We published on this day an article by Mr. H. Owen Scott on "The War
Artist of To-day," in which he, a photographer, seriously extolled the
work of the camera as compared with that of the genius and training of
the true artist. We hoped the real artists thus relegated to a
subordinate and vanishing place would enliven our columns by their
replies.
* * * * *
THE FRIEND.
(_Edited by the War Correspondents with Lord Roberts' Force._)
No. 22] BLOEMFONTEIN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1900. [Price One Penny.
NOTICE.
The Bands of the 12th Brigade will play in the Market Square this
evening between the hours of 4 and 6.
* * * * *
THE CIRCULATION OF "THE FRIEND."
The present circulation of THE FRIEND is 4,750 copies daily.
* * * * *
WE APOLOGIZE.
In our modest way as Editors of quite the most extraordinary newspaper
on earth, we endeavoured to publish yesterday, with due credit to the
_Times_, for which it was written, Mr. Rudyard Kipling's masterly
article "The Sin of Witchcraft." We may as well acknowledge here and
now that though THE FRIEND is declared to be edited by a committee of
war correspondents, it is, in fact, the daily product of a struggle
between the correspondents and their printers, the latter being the
more numerous, and, we sometimes fear, the more in earnest in their
determination to keep the paper unique. This results in a paper which
is often as great a novelty to the Editors as to the public, being
like Shakespeare's soldier in "The Seven Stages of Man," "full of
strange oaths," and words of which we never heard, as well as ideas to
which we never gave birth.
With this by way of preface, will the _Times_ accept our apology for
not crediting it with Mr. Kipling's article, will it believe us that
we really did write in the "credit" after the article, and will it
commission its correspondent with this Army to go to our printing
works and reason with our printers from "the devil" upwards?
* * * * *
THE WAR ARTIST OF TO-DAY.
BY H. OWEN SCOTT.
The present campaign has undoubtedly commenced a new era in
the history of illustrated journalism, which change has been
brought about by a new school of war artists, whose method
is camera work, and whose aim is to faithfully produce the
actualities demanded by a picture-loving, yet critical
public.
The artistic value of this means of illustrating is becoming
more and more realised every day, and will prove an
effectual factor in crowding out the old-fashioned war
artist who draws on his imagination.
The only excuse for artists of any description being at the
front is their capacity for reproducing true and vivid
impressions of what they have seen.
This is where the importance of the new school is at once
apparent, and as long as the men practising this art are
honest and do not attempt to foist "faked" work on the
public, their efforts are bound to be acceptable and of
artistic value.
In speaking of camera work as an art and the individuals
adopting it as artists, I do not include the persons who
simply press a button and expose yards of film, regardless
of subject, but the few who make pictures intelligently and
pay as much attention to composition and lighting as a
painter would when commencing a fresh canvas. The camera is
not going to destroy the painter--and I say painter
advisedly--as no black and white artist is any good unless
he is a painter, and has a keen appreciation of colour
value. Nature is teeming with colour, and unless this is
felt how can it be suggested in line?
Why does Rembrandt stand out as the greatest master of
etchings? Simply because his etched works suggest colour,
and it is this power of suggesting colour that placed
Charles Keene head and shoulders above all other black and
white men. The power of selection of subject is not
developed in all artists to an equal extent, but there is
always room for such men as Melton Prior, W. B. Wollen,
Lester Ralph, and a few others, whose work will always be
looked for as representing actuality.
If the two schools of artists mentioned work with the full
knowledge of the limitations of their mediums, there will
always be a place for both.
The mechanical draughtsman is dead. He has been killed by
the camera.
How would it be possible in Fleet Street or De Aar, quietly
sitting in a little room with a north light, to give a true
impression of Cronje's surrender, or of that wonderful
sight, the approach of the captured army, like a cloud of
locusts, over the expanse of veldt at Klip Drift?
If ever the surrender at Paardeberg is painted, it must be
done by a man who saw it.
I shall never forget the defeated General's arrival, or the
solemnity of it: this giant, broken sulky, his career
finished. Everything was shown in the man, and shown in a
way no imagination could possibly conceive.
I was privileged to view a sketch of Cronje leaving our
camp, the work of Mortimer Menpes. It was a vivid slight
impression. True, yet the economy of means--a few lines
wonderfully placed--was wonderful, showing the artist a
great master of technique. Now, talented as he undoubtedly
is, he could not have imparted such a feeling of actuality
to his work if he had not been present and studied his
subject with the greatest attention. The long-haired,
velvet-coated gentleman of Bond Street is not the man to
depict the incidents of war, or to put up with the hardships
of a great march, and I am perfectly sure that the success
of a war artist depends on physique. He is required to
tackle his subject quickly and vigorously. Trickery does not
help actuality, straightforward manly work being absolutely
necessary to the war artist of to-day.
(We are sure that if the men in this Army who are engaged as
artists or who feel strongly and lovingly the relation of
true art to war, to photography and to the refinement of
mankind--if these will take the trouble to answer this
letter, we shall have a rich correspondence.--EDITORS,
FRIEND.)