Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 13
ОглавлениеReproduced from The Star (New Zealand), May 24, 1901
STRAINING THE QUALITY OF MERCY
MIDDELBURG (Cape Colony), March 13, 1901
In the years that are to be, you, my friends, may pat one another on the back and remark:
"Whatever may be said of the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902, it must be confessed that never was war waged where so much humanity was displayed on both sides as in that war; we never needlessly look life; we were very careful about hurting the feelings of our enemy; if we killed him we erected a monument over his grave; if we took him a prisoner we were careful to feed him on the very best—even though our own troops were on quarter rations; and when we temporarily exiled him we sent him off to the loveliest spot in the world in a ship warranted not to roll!"
Perhaps, too, in those days the doctrines of humanity will have become such a factor in our daily lives that we shall regard him as a perfect judge whose sentences are the lightest, and we shall reserve our Chief justiceship for the judge who weeps and forgives tie repentant burglar and converts the Hooligan through the medium of afternoon teas and jam tarts. If you are anxious to be in a position to say the words that I have put into your mouth, you may very easily. You have only to prosecute, the war to an amiable finish, and at the back end of 1902 or 1903, or, perhaps, 1904, you will be in that happy state of mind. If Botha surrenders—and I doubt whether he will, except in the manner Cronje surrendered—the war will be ended. Not virtually ended, not as good as ended, nor nearly ended, but just ended.
NICENESS AND NICENESS
Botha is the recognised Commander-in-Chief, and with him is Schalk Burger, the recognised president of the late Republic, and the surrender of these two men will signify that as Governments the Transvaal and Orange Free-State have laid down their arms and are prepared to sue for peace.
Consequently, the war, which was declared by the sometime South African Republic, and to which the Orange Free State was a party so long as the Transvaal Government was engaged in hostilities with Great Britain, will be ended, and the De Wets and De la Reys and Hertzogs and Brands and Kruitzingers will be in very truth banditti—train-wreckers, looters, marauders, whom any honest man may very rightly shoot on sight. If Botha does surrender and this thing comes about, humanity of the faint- at-blood type may demand that the wealth of England shall be squandered for yet another year, or even two, sooner than we should depart from our policy of fatuous Niceness, a policy which has swelled our casualty lists considerably.
There is niceness and niceness, and the act of mercy need not be confounded with the act of folly. Two weeks ago—the day before De Wet crossed the Orange River on his return home—Captain Dallimore, of the Victorian Imperial Regiment, while scouting with a patrol of fifteen men, got on the track of a party of Beers twice as strong numerically as his own small party. With that skill which only the Australians seem to possess he followed the enemy without letting his own party expose themselves, and night found him with his little band posted along a ridge overlooking the Boer camp, which was in the angle of the Sea Cow and Orange Rivers.
CONTRASTED VARIETIES
All night long in the drizzling rain the Victorians waited, and at last dawn broke and showed, the sleeping forms of the enemy slumbering quite oblivious of the presence of our men. Had he been so willed, Captain Dallimore might have shot every sleeper as he lay, but he did a thing for which every man with the instincts of an Englishman will praise him—he ordered a volley to be fired over their heads, so that they might wake and have a fight for their lives. That was mercy—and, good sportsmen, it was The Game.
Take another case. At one of the big fights in the earlier days of the war an officer commanding a battery of artillery was ordered to shell the spur of a range of hills which constituted the enemy's right. From the base of the hill stretched out, for a dozen miles, a plain as level as Green Park. Suddenly a white flag was hoisted on the enemy's left, and firing ceased all along the Boer lines. Then, when the flag had been hoisted for a few minutes, the Boer main body, taking advantage of the cessation of the firing, was seen streaming away across the plain to their right, making good their retreat. The artillery officer's duty was very obvious: it was to open fire upon the fugitives, who were splendidly within range. This, however, he would not do, remarking to his amazed juniors that he could not shell a retreating foe.
This was not mercy, it was folly—nay, it was criminal, for every burgher who escaped death or capture through his neglect was an instrument, willing and eager to bring about the destruction of that officer's comrades.
THE KIND GENERAL
Some time ago, operating in the north-west of the Transvaal, was a nice general. He was a good tactician, a clever leader of men, and a charming old gentleman.
He was very nice indeed, and his sympathies were wide, and he believed most of the things that neutral Boer farmers told him, from the depredations of the soldiery to the innocence of the farm in the matter of secreted rifles and ammunition. As he moved through the country he granted to the farmers, left and right, passed to remain on their farms, being assured by their vows that the proximity of roving commandoes would have no weakening effect on their allegiance—stalwarts that they were.
A day's march behind the nice general, and moving in the fame direction, was another British column, commanded by a great, gruff, hairy-chested colonial, who swore at his officers and nursed his horses. He was not a nice man: he had been a police officer in Bechuanaland before the war, and in dealing with the enemy he started off with one unshakeable principle, which was— "All Dutchmen are liars."
Had he been an Imperial officer he might have been overawed by the general's signature, which appeared on every pass, but his sense of reverence for British administration having died young—he was with Evelyn Wood in 1881— he collected all the passes, arrested, all the farmers, and, overtaking the nice general after a few days, handed them over without any other explanation than that they were a source of danger to the country.
HIS MEN PAID
The general was furious, for, like many other folk, he was only polite to people outside of his family, and immediately ordered back the prisoners to their farms, apologising for the inconvenience they had suffered in the days of their captivity.
So they returned to their, farms, with the airs of martyrs, and the next time the nice general passed through that district he finished his report to headquarters in this wise:—"I regret to report the following casualties—":and the farmers who had dug up their rifles had gone, for the convenient commando has passed through.
It Botha's surrender is at hand, then the end of the war is also at hand, and whosoever fights after the war is ended does so at the risk of being treated as the Germans treated the franc- tireurs. The surrender of Botha would bring, about quite a different condition of things to what now exists. To recognise every moving band of fifty marauders as a Boer army, and to treat them accordingly, would be folly of the maddest kind. To take every third man of the party and stick him up against a wall would not—well, it would not be "nice"! Neither is it "nice" to hang murderers, flog garroters, imprison thieves, or birch the youthful Hooligan.
Somehow I think niceness is just as much out of place in warfare.
