OUR "FRIEND" NO LONGER
_We retire from the paper, leaving it in able and patriotic
hands._
The unique and delightful episode had ended. On April 16th, just one
month after we established this new departure in war, we turned THE
FRIEND over to the proprietor of the _Johannesburg Star_, upon an
arrangement quickly and generously made by Lord Stanley. Within a week
I was ordered home by the surgeons who saw the state my battered body
was in. Mr. Landon preceded me by a few days, invalided also. Mr.
Buxton remained upon the paper under its new proprietors, who were old
workmates with him, and Mr. Gwynne remained, and yet remains as a war
correspondent (January, 1901), sturdily doing his always excellent
work in the field. In that work I think he has few superiors among
living English-speaking correspondents, and I know that many military
and journalistic experts agree with me. The pity is that the nature of
his work for Reuter's has kept his genius as a writer practically
hidden from the public.
Mr. Shelley took up the photographer's side of the entertaining duel
between the men of his calling and the actual and proper artists; Mr.
Melton Prior indignantly lamented an indignity or an attempted theft
of which he had been the victim. We reported a great football match
between the officers of the Gordons and those of the First Contingent
of the Royal Canadian Regiment; and, finally, we perpetrated the
fourth hoax, in what we called "Our Portrait Gallery." The "portrait"
was in each case from the same advertisement block which Mr. Gwynne
and I had found on the floor of the _Express_ composing-room, which he
had thought nearly enough like Mr. Burdett-Coutts to bear production
as a likeness, and which we presently resolved to publish every day as
a picture of a different man each time.
The notice of a concert in aid of the Widows' and Orphans' Fund refers
to a notable enterprise engineered by the universally distinguished
Mr. Bennet Burleigh of the _Daily Telegraph_, aided by Mr. Maxwell,
the very talented correspondent of the _Standard_, and others. They
carried it out with such skill that the entertainment proved the
greatest social event, if we may so term it, of the army's sojourn in
the capital. Every one of note who was able to be there attended it,
and the receipts at the doors and in the competition over the works of
Messrs. Prior and Wollen, were very considerable.
* * * * *
PRICE: PRICE:
ONE PENNY. THE FRIEND. ONE PENNY.
(_Edited by the War Correspondents with Lord Roberts' Force._)
BLOEMFONTEIN, EASTER MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1900.
"OUR FRIEND" NO LONGER
BY JULIAN RALPH
At some time all friends must part, and the time and parting have come
to THE FRIEND, its friends of the public and those war correspondents
who have been conducting this journal just one month to-day.
To-morrow this paper will be turned over from the charge of those who
were only writers to the hands of men who are practised and able in
the management of all departments of a daily journal.
In bidding farewell to our trust, we can boast of nothing unless it be
that we have entertained the troops and the town, and made no enemies
of whom we know. The rest of what we have done has only been
trying--though we have tried hard.
We have said before in this column that it has been an unique
experiment--to make one loyal newspaper out of two that were none too
English, to make it with talent unused to the work, to make it, often,
without news and to conduct it so as to produce something palatable to
both the conquerors and the conquered.
We take this occasion to thank the Field Marshal, Lord Roberts, for
the trust he reposed in us, and to express the hope that we did not
disappoint him.
We also wish to thank those who have assisted us, both among our
fellow correspondents and the talented men of the army. Poets we find
the latter to be, for the most part. We hope all these will continue
to give the helpful right hand to the enterprise under its new
managers.
And so we say "adieu" to THE FRIEND, and good luck to its new
conductors.
* * * * *
OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY
No. 4.
LIEUT.-GENERAL POLE-CAREW, C.B.
[Illustration: General Pole-Carew.]
We feel that we owe an apology to our readers for presenting the
portrait of one of our first fighting generals in civilian costume,
but our artist left his colours at home and refused to paint at all
unless with plain black. The artist in question is Captain Cecil
Lowther, of the Scots Guards, and this is his first effort in art. For
General Pole-Carew, the subject of this masterpiece, what is there to
say except that his promotion has gratified the entire army and evoked
the heartiest congratulations from THE FRIEND?
* * * * *
THE WAR ARTIST OF TO-DAY
BY H. C. SHELLEY.
_Editors_, THE FRIEND,--SIRS,--Can you inform me whether there has
been a sudden exodus from Bloemfontein of war correspondents armed
with cameras? There ought to have been, and yet I have inquired in
vain whether such an event has taken place. For, look you, the
judgment has gone forth from the pen of Mr. Wollen that the "war
artist"--meaning the man with a pencil as opposed to the men with a
camera--"will come out on top." Truly, this is most disheartening. No
one likes to be thrust to a bottom position, and if that is to be the
fate of the man with a camera, why should he any longer endure the
hardships of campaigning and the sorrows of separation from the
comforts and companionships of home?
But the war correspondent with a camera has not gone home. He has no
intention of doing so. He is unrepentant enough to believe that he,
and not the man with a pencil, is going to "come out on top."
Let us have the point at issue clearly defined. War correspondents are
with the army to report the war--some by word pictures, others by
camera or pencil pictures. Sight-seeing is a passion with humanity.
Every inhabitant of the British Isles would like to have a personal
vision of the conflict in South Africa, but--save for two or three
irresponsible persons whose presence at the front no one can
understand--those inhabitants are compelled to rely upon the eyes of
others. Now, leaving aside the correspondents who devote themselves to
word pictures solely, the question to be decided is--does the man with
the camera surpass the man with the pencil in depicting the actuality
of warfare?
An astounding claim is made on behalf of the man with the pencil. He
can, we are told by Mr. Wollen, show the public "an accurate
bird's-eye view of what a battle is like." And he does it by "a few
lines to indicate the background and characteristics of it." The same
authority assures us that "the brain of the camera cannot take in all
that is going on. The man with the pencil does so." Such is the case
for the man with the pencil. Now for the test of cross-examination.
Modder River and Maghersfontein may be cited as two representative
battles of the war, and so may be honestly used as touchstones to try
the claim Mr. Wollen makes on behalf of the man with a pencil. In each
case there was a battle-line of some five or six miles, in each case
the enemy was invisible, in each case it was physically impossible for
any one man to see more than a small portion of the battle. A
spectator on the right flank at Modder River could have no personal
knowledge of incidents which were happening in the centre of the
bridge, or down the river on the left flank. Even of his own
particular section on the right flank that spectator could not attain
to a perfect knowledge. But the man with a pencil is untrammelled by
such minor matters as time and space; he "takes in all that is going
on." Or, if he does not take it all in, he puts it in his sketch. The
result is no more "an accurate bird's-eye view of what a battle is
like" than a photograph of Oom Paul is like a photograph of Mr.
Chamberlain. In short, the facility with which the pencil-man can jot
down what he did not see is his ruin.
It will be obvious that the man with the pencil, not being ubiquitous,
_cannot_ "take in" all that happens on a battlefield; he sees just as
much as, and no more than, the man with the camera; for the
rest--which forms so large a proportion of his sketch--he has to rely
upon the testimony of others. Now, when the public have in their hands
a result attained by this method, what is its value as an "accurate
bird's-eye view of what a battle is like?" Absolutely _nil_. People at
home want to see a battle as they would have seen it if they had been
present, and no sane man will contest the assertion that the best
medium for giving them that vision is the camera rather than the
pencil. Try as he may after the actual, the man with the pencil
thrusts his personality between the event he sees and the people at
home for whom he wishes to reproduce it, and consequently his sketch
becomes a miserable failure when considered as an "accurate bird's-eye
view of what a battle is like."
On the other hand, what does the man with the camera do? He and his
lens see at least so much of a given battle as any man with a pencil,
and what they see they see with unfailing accuracy. Take that battery
in action which Mr. Wollen choses to cite as a subject wherein the
powerlessness of the camera is supposed to be illustrated. The camera
man does not fear the test. He can show the guns coming into action,
record their unlimbering, depict the preparation for firing, and time
a photograph at the actual moment of firing. It is true that his
picture will not show quite such a volume of smoke as the sketch of
the man with the pencil. But why? _Because the smoke is not there._
The man with the pencil puts it in because other men with pencils have
been putting it in for generations. Perhaps, too, the public would not
mistake the sketch for a battle-scene if the smoke were absent.
Anyhow, what becomes of the boast of _accuracy_? Moreover, the man
with a camera will not present his public with a twelve-pounder firing
from the carriage of a howitzer.
There is something more to be said for the man with a camera.
Now-a-days he is in the habit of screwing a telephoto lens to the
front of the camera, and with that lens he can immensely outdistance
the vision of even that all-seeing man with the pencil. Objects a
couple of miles off are brought near, and groups of men can be
photographed at such distances as prevent them assuming any posing
attitudes. In this way actuality takes on the added charm of natural
grouping, and I shall be greatly surprised if some of the telephoto
pictures of this war do not take rank as the most artistic as well as
realistic records of its incidents.
After all, the man with a camera may safely leave his case in the
hands of others. Take a negative and a positive witness on the
question in the abstract. Mr. Julian Ralph writes that "the pictures
of our battles which are coming back to us in the London weeklies are
not at all like the real things," and then he adds: "I saw the other
day a picture in one of the leading papers by one of the best
illustrators. It showed the British storming a Boer position. In the
middle ground was a Boer battery, and the only gunner left alive was
standing up with a bandage round his head, while smoke and flame and
flying fragments of shells filled the air in his vicinity. In the rush
of the instant he must have been bandaged by the same shot that struck
him, and as for smoke and _debris_ in the air, there was more of this
in a corner of that picture than I have seen in all the four battles
we have fought."
Now for the positive witness. He is no less a person than the art
critic of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, who can no more be charged with a
predilection for photography than Messrs. Steyn and Kruger can be
saddled with a predilection for truthfulness. This critic dwells, as
Mr. Scott did in the letter which opened this discussion, upon the old
and new methods of war illustration, and then candidly adds: "I would
like to say that the artists score off the photographer, _but they do
not_. The public wants the facts as near as may be, and are too deeply
stirred to be put off with melodrama."
One other witness may be called to give Mr. Wollen an idea of how the
work of the man with the pencil is faring at home. Here is a recent
private letter from England, which makes merry in the following
fashion over those sketches which are so inclusive and accurate:
"There is a picture of two gunners standing to attention after having
exhausted their ammunition. The man nearest the gun is looking
straight in front of him, with a bandage round his head, a
bullet-wound in his face (close to the left ear), two in the right
side of his chest, and one in his right leg, some distance above the
knee. Within a yard of him is a bursting shell. But that man ignores
such trivial things. Still he stands. I suppose the weight of so much
lead in him keeps him up. One wonders whether he is hollow inside, so
that the bullets all drop down into his feet."
No wonder, worthy editorial sirs, you have not witnessed an exodus of
men with cameras from Bloemfontein; they are staying to "come out on
top." Sincerely yours,
H. C. SHELLEY.
* * * * *
CORRESPONDENCE.
"WHO STOLE THE CART?"
_To the Editors of_ THE FRIEND,--SIRS,--Practical jokes are out of
date, and the perpetrators have universally come to be regarded as a
mixture of fools and knaves. It is intolerable to attempt a practical
joke upon a friend, but to play one upon a stranger is downright
rascality. To accept an excuse for such a thing is to admit the pleas
of the man who took a piece of old rope that he did not mean to take
the horse that was at the other end; or that of other fellows who
sneak property, pick pockets, or forge cheques, that these acts were
all done in fun.
I have been much interested in reading in THE FRIEND about horses,
saddles, bridles, and even riems being stolen in this campaign, but I
think I can add to the list with a more startling experience of my
own. I bought a waggon from a well-known man in this town and had it
sent to a coach repairer to be overhauled. It was a conspicuous
vehicle, as much so as a Soudan pantechnicon van, with white wall
sides, upon which were painted, in letters that could be read half a
mile away, the owner's name, business, and address. This waggon was
impudently taken in the night-time, dragged to stables some distance
away, and there left. From the police I have learned that paint had
actually been purchased, and it was evidently the intention of the
thieves to transform my waggon, by painting out the name and address,
and so daub it with khaki or some other colour that it should become
unrecognisable. By a fortuitous accident the waggon was discovered in
the nick of time.
The law here is such that an aggrieved party must become a prosecutor,
which is an undertaking a transient visitor naturally shirks.
I think it my duty to call attention to the circumstances and the
inadequacy of the existing means for the prevention of wrong-doing and
the punishment of the wrong-doers.--I am, sirs, yours truly,
MELTON PRIOR,
War Artist, _Illustrated London News_.
* * * * *
WEDNESDAY EVENING CONCERT.
Thanks to the kindness of the Military Governor, Major-General
Pretyman, the concert in aid of the "Widows' and Orphans' Funds,"
London and Bloemfontein, will be held next Wednesday evening, instead
of during the afternoon. Major-General Pretyman has conceded that upon
the date in question, Wednesday, 18th inst., the pass regulation will
not come into force until midnight. That means that citizens may move
about after 8 p.m., or until twelve o'clock, without requiring any
special pass or being called upon to produce a permit.
The committee of war correspondents declare that the entertainment
will require no booming. It is to be a red-letter day in the calendar
of concerts given for charitable purposes in Bloemfontein, both in
respect to talent upon the platform and to the celebrities who will
crowd the Town Hall that evening.
Amongst those who will appear will be Miss Fraser, the Free State
nightingale, who will sing original verses written by Mr. Rudyard
Kipling for the occasion; Miss Leviseur, Miss Jessie Fraser,
Lieut.-Colonel Townshend, C.B., Surgeon-Major Beevor, Scots Guards,
Lieut. James Forrest, Captain Nugent, the celebrated vocalist; Captain
Wright, R.N. (The Skipper); the Lightning Cartoonists, _alias_ The
Gemini; Mr. Preshaw, Major Jones, R.E., besides, in the language of
the _entrepreneurs_, "a coruscation and galaxy of stars of the first
magnitude too numerous to mention in the brief space afforded." It is
hoped that the military band will be present, but, at any rate, that
the concert will be high-class without being dull is guaranteed from
the fact that Messrs. Ivan Haarburgher and King are in charge of the
musical arrangements.
Tickets may be had and seats booked at Messrs. Borckenhagen and Co.
Prices: 5s., reserved seats; gallery, 2s. 6d.; soldiers in uniform to
gallery, 1s.