Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 14
ОглавлениеReproduced from The Star (New Zealand), May 28, 1901
THE INVASION ACCOUNT
NAAUWPOORT, March 17, 1901
De Wet has gone, Brand has gone, Hertzog has gone, and only Kruitzinger, with his mischievous lieutenants, is left to trouble the minds of us who at the first regarded the advent of the invading commandoes with apprehension—and Kruitzinger is going.
It is now over three months since De Wet instructed Kruitzinger and Brand to co-operate with him in entering the colony, and it would be well if we who chafe over the escape of the Boer leader would stop a while and consider carefully the advantages our friend the enemy has acquired by his exertions in our midst.
Also to count our own losses and balance—good commercial people that we are—the profit and loss of the invasion.
DISMAL FAILURE
To do this thoroughly, do not lose sight of the primal object of the Boer movement. A correspondent at Pretoria tells us that it was to obtain munitions of war which were, so to speak, "left till called for" at St Helen's Bay; but if this were so, it does not speak too highly for our system of naval patrolling that a ship should remain in a pretty well frequented harbourage for the three months intervening between the first and second attempts of the Boer leader, and until the statement is officially confirmed I, for one, shall doubt its authenticity.
To my mind, there can be no doubt as to the object of the raid, which was, as I have already said—and that three months ago—to tap the rebel districts of the Cape Colony and raise sufficient fighting men to fill up the gaps in the Boer ranks, and to enable De Wet to continue the struggle—which in these days is mainly a struggle to keep comfortably ahead of pursuing columns. Knowing this to be the main object of the raid, and all others being of secondary importance, the intelligent Briton will see at a glance how dismal a failure in every sense the Cape invasion has been. Neither men nor munitions have resulted, and such of the invaders as are now on the way to Ceylon have returned, or are returning, to the Orange River Colony in a far worse plight than when they arrived.
To better realise tie failure, analyse the work of the various commandoes—looking at their work from an English point of view, and imagining that De Wet, Hertzog, and Kruitzinger were English generals set to do certain work, and being severely critical accordingly.
CHEERS—AND NOTHING MORE
First in importance comes Hertzog, for he accomplished more and penetrated further west than any other of the Boer leaders, and he it was who came within a hundred miles of the capital, so that Capetown rose in indignation and put a little short of 10,000 men in the field, and girt itself about with emplacements and forts and barbed wire entanglements.
Marching west, Hertzog and Brand, occupied in turn all the towns of note in the North-Western Province. Philipstown, Britstown, Carnarvon, Williston, Sutherland and Calvinia "fell" to the investors. The procedure in every case was the same. A patrol clattering through the tree-shaded street; a crowd of doppers in their best clothes gathered near the public offices, curious and admiring; the singing of the Volkslied; a looted store; cheers for the invader—but no recruits.
After comes the dusty advance guard of the British column, and the holiday-makers disperse to their several homes, sullen and silent, and the guns of the pursuing column rattle through a silent and deserted street.
Hertzog may, perhaps, count the splendid remounts he picked up on his way to Calvinia as equivalent in some degree to success; but the horses he got on his way in he wore to death on his way out. It was not for horses alone that Hertzog moved through the worst rebel districts of Cape Colony, and the thirty recruits he obtained could not have fulfilled his most gloomy anticipations. Nor can the paucity of recruits be regarded in any way as indicative of the loyalty of the Dutch in these districts, so much as a result of the proclamation and vigorous application of martial law, and Lord Kitchener's excellent precautionary warnings.
"MY EYE IS ON YOU!"
The material most suitable for your active rebel (activity in this case having reference to the joining with the King's enemies in the open field rather than to trans-Channel Saturday-to-Monday trips for the purpose of consulting with Krugerite emissaries, and the taking up of a rifle rather than the faking-up of a letter) is not the wealthy landowner who has some sort of an education—and has much to lose. It is the bywoner, the ignorant, unlettered, dog-foolish bywoner,* who makes the best or worst rebel, and so long as he knows or thinks that he is not being watched, and so long as be is not warned of the consequence of his rebellious acts, he is ready and willing to take the invader's rifle and use his stolen hores for the destruction of the rooinek.†
[* Bywoner (Afrikaans)—A poor tenant farmer who labours for the owner and does some farming of his own. †Rooinek (Afrikaans, derogatory; literally "red-neck")—An Englishman. ]
Consequently, the proclamation of martial law and the warning he received were to him a personal message from Lord Kitchener to this effect: "I have got my eye on you. Piet Marais, or Jan Faure, or Petrus van Heerden!" and he remained loyal accordingly.
Hertzog is back in the Orange River Colony, having achieved nothing. He has lost in killed and wounded half as many again as we, and man for man he is a considerable loser. Kruitzinger is making for the Orange River Colony with as unfortunate a record. And what of De Wet? His record is worse than unfortunate; it is disastrous.
DE WET'S DISASTERS
De Wet was the hope of the family: he was to have retrieved the shattered fortunes of Boerdom, and Paarl looked towards De Wet and to his coming for a new era. De Wet was to come, join forces with the other wandering commandoes, and marching through Cape Colony was to sit at the gates of Cape Town and dictate terms of the British. This is no flight of imagination: this was the belief of the Western Province Dutch, as I have personally ascertained.
Somehow these good souls fancied De Wet would manage the whole business off his own bat. In a vague sort of way they knew that he would require some outside help, but each man looked to his neighbour for such active patriotism. De Wet would come: he had been baulked once by the rains—which was an indubitable sign from the heavens that the time was not then ripe for the venture, but he would come, and lo! the news flashed along the wire to Paarl, to Stellenbosch, Malmsbury, Worcester, Robertson, Swellendam, Ceres and Capetown, De Wet had crossed the Orange and had entered the colony—so they waited with patience.
But De Wet's reception was not a pleasant one. Paarl would have been kinder. Worcester would have been less severe, but the deputation which, headed by Plumer, met him on his arrival, was hardly less severe than the committee which Henniker sent to give him a send-off. De Wet came to the colony with a convoy, which he left behind. He brought three guns, which he did not take back, and three hundred of his men have exchanged the laager for the prison camp. He lost two score killed, while we did not lose a single man. Altogether, the invasion has been a frost, a fizzle, a—let me use a Tommy phrase—a wash-out!
