Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7
ОглавлениеReproduced from The Wanganui Chronicle, April 20, 1901
LOYALTY, LOOT, AND COMPENSATION.
Prince Albert road, Cape Colony, February 3, 1901
It was at the trial of an alleged rebel yesterday at Matjesfontein. He was a storekeeper charged with contravening Proclamation 1a of 1899, and he had elected to give evidence on his own behalf.
He was being subjected to a stiff cross-examination of one of the ablest of staff officers, Captain G.F. Marker, of the Coldstream Guards, and in answering a question pressed by the prosecutor, the prisoner put the case for the British Government in a nutshell.
The prisoner had a store in Sutherland, and when the peripatetic commando halted the while at the sun-bathed dorp, its commandant had found him a very useful substitute for a supply officer, and his store not a bad imitation of a supply base. The evidence showed that the prisoner was not an unwilling agent in the matter; that he offered no resistance, handing over stores, food, forage, and clothing at the commandant's pleasure
TO DISCOUNT BOER DRAFTS
He was being commandeered, he was being "looted"--and would the hateful enemy mind signing for all they took, so that the British Government should know all was fair and above board?
"Do you mean to say," asked the prosecuting officer, in amazement, "that you obtained a Boer commandant's signature in order to obtain payment from the British Government?"
"Yes," was the ingenuous answer of this representative of a simple pastoral people.
A proclamation has just been issued laying down rules and restrictions regarding payment of compensation for damages sustained by the Cape colonists; and if the above candid confession does not justify the most stringent reservations, nothing does.
From time to time the Government of this colony issue certain statements pertaining to the military situation, and it is seldom, if ever, that these documents do not finish up with the smug and comfortable assurance that "the invader is gaining little assistance from the colony."
There is nothing more deceiving than this statement, as I have already pointed out by cable.
It is worded so as to make the people of England believe that, so far from receiving support or assistance from the Cape Dutch, the invaders are being discouraged in every way from their nefarious purpose.
That fewer Dutchmen are taking up arms and joining the invader than was anticipated is, undoubtedly, a fact. Also, so long as there was a possibility that the arrival of a Boer commando would mean a considerable carrying over to the profit and loss account in the books of the Boer storekeeper, that there was some resentment shown on the part of these worthies is also a fact. But then there arose the glorious vision of compensation. They learned--Heavens knows how --that the officers in charge of the commando were willing and anxious to sign for all the stock they took; indeed, for a few sovereigns they would give a receipt for £500 more than value received. And then came peace.
LOYAL AND LOOTED
Let the Boers come; if they looted the farm or the homestead or the store they would give receipts. With the generosity of men contracting debts for others to pay, they would give the looted one credit for twice the amount of goods they had taken. There was no need to join the enemy, no need to take up arms and suffer the discomforts of a campaign.
Also they were happy to supply the Boers with information. Whether the nearest town was occupied by the British; how many troops there were; whether any English soldiers had passed by that morning; strength of patrols, locality of outposts--any little thing like that; any scrap of information they possessed or could acquire they were happy to give, and it was a thousand chances to one against their being detected. So the motto of the Dutch in this country has been--the new year resolution, in fact- -"It pays to be loyal and be looted, it hurts to be rebel and be shot."
The leniency with which we have dealt with our rebellious subjects in this war is a subject so frequently approached that one grows sick of the reiteration. I think it is now quite apparent to every man and woman that the adoption of severe methods of dealing with traitors in the beginning of the war would have saved much blood and sweat; but it is as well not to lose sight of the fact that there is still opportunity for enforcing a more vigorous regime in this matter.
The machinery now in use for dealing with the gentry who act as intelligence officers to the Boer forces is so complex that any ordinary liar--and the backveldt population are well above the average--may, in the time intervening between his arrest and his trial, hope to clear himself and even sue the Government for unlawful imprisonment.
DISLOYAL AND FORGIVEN
A civilian commits an offence which probably jeopardises the safety of a column. The offence is such that no military court would hesitate in sentencing him to death. Perhaps he has ridden twenty miles to give information to the invader to the effect that we are laying in wait for him at a convenient spruit.* The officer commanding the column learns from smart loyalist of the betrayal and arrests the traitor. Perhaps in being arrested the man shows fight and strikes a soldier. He is taken to the base, and instead of being tried by court-martial he undergoes a preliminary examination conducted by a magistrate, and probably a month after the committal of the offence he is committed for trial--on a charge of assaulting the captor!
Spruit (Afrikaans)--a watercourse. ]
The treatment allotted to the individual traitor should be swift and severe, and that to the passive enemy within our walls such as will render him harmless till he recovers his senses.
It would require, however, a nice discrimination to punish a rebellious people, were it not for the fact that they have differentiated themselves from the loyalists of the colony, and have associated with a common object, and that, the ousting of Britain, her interests, her language, and her influence from South Africa.
The days have passed since we regarded the Afrikander Bond as a purely political association existing for the amelioration of the South African farmer's lot. We now know it is a power; a great, strong, subtle power, intensifying racial hatred, and aiming for a United South Africa under a Republican flag.
However fine this ideal may have been--and traitorous ideals may be fine--it was nonetheless traitorous, whether it was to be realised by constitutional methods or by a recourse to arms, and the far-reaching efforts of the Bond's teaching has beyond doubt swollen the ranks of the Republican forces in the earlier stages of the war, and encouraged our enemy to a still more stubborn! resistance.
Because of this, and because every Bondsman in this country sympathises with and, when the opportunity offers, helps the enemy, without malice I say that no claim for compensation on the part of a Bondsman should be entertained.
The Afrikander Bond has been more than a political association.
Good people at home who think of it at the worst as a ferocious sort of Radical club would do better if they thought of it rather as a dangerous type of the Clanna-Gael, with a hundred thousand armed members.
