Читать книгу Reports from the Boer War - Edgar Wallace - Страница 9
ОглавлениеReproduced from The Evening Post (New Zealand), March 2, 1901
After you have left the ship and have strolled round the town you will return again and ask the purser to let you remain as a boarder for the few days the mail boat is in dock.
You will do this in preference to camping out on the beach or contenting yourself with the shakiest of shakedowns in the dirtiest of third-rate Capetown hotels.
There will be a room empty in a day or so perhaps, but at present they are full up. The guinea-a-day hostelry and the five- pounds-a-month lodging house have one story to tell—"full up." Every week the boats from England bring fresh boarders, and every week aimless young men in Baden-Powell hats trudge the red- hot pavements of the capital in search of accommodation.
Capetown in these days is necessarily a khaki town.
It is rather depressing, this dirty yellow uniform, particularly when you have worn it yourself, marched in it, fought in it, and slept in it for the greater part of a year. The novelty of the tint wore off months before these gay youths who sport it to-day in cab, café, and bar thought of doffing their broadcloth for the mustard-hued tunic.
WHISKERED, AND NOT ASHAMED
Also it is difficult for one who has a nodding acquaintance with dress regulations to reconcile himself to the artistic get- up of the Capetown warrior, for the Capetown warrior is a being beautiful. He is an imitative exquisite, and, like the genius he 'is, he has improved greatly upon the hard and fast rules that War Office fogies have laid down regarding the manner in which officers of Her Majesty's Army shall array themselves when in Her Majesty's highways.
In the field the British officer troubles very little concerning his personal appearance, carrying his fastidiousness only to the point of desiring clean shirts at frequent intervals; but in Adderley-street the British officer is a thing of beauty and a joy for the whole morning. The khaki tunic which several distinct regulations direct shall be fastened is carefully turned down at the throat to show the snowiest of hunting-cravats, or even an immaculate collar and tie! His boots of white buckskin are newly pipeclayed; and the helmet which filled the bills at Meerut and Atbara is now discarded for the soft felt "smasher," which has the advantage of supplying, better than any other article of attire, the local colour necessary for the South African campaigner.
One sees many regiments represented in Capetown. Bushmen jostle men of the Guards, New Zealanders fraternise with Imperial Yeomen. In the smoking-room of the City Club, painfully youthful subalterns of Militia expound ponderous theories on war and its conduct to good-natured captains of irregular horse, men who wear weird whiskers and are unashamed.
POLICE! POLICE!
These khaki men have all been somewhere north. They have all marched or ridden, and shot hopelessly at bushes which had, it was alleged, hidden Boers. They have all instinctively ducked as the wailing little messengers of death sang over their heads. Now the war is over—to them. They still wear their uniforms, and in a vague sort of way identify themselves with the front, which has now become a place for which the 9 o'clock train leaves nightly.
After all, the war is over. It is now a brigandage, our enemy is a moonlighter, his colonial sympathiser a boycotter. We are sending our generals home and are increasing our police force—which exactly explains the situation.
The Boer army has to all intents and purposes ceased to exist. It has dissolved into murdering particles. Flying columns have dwindled down to marauding bands. Night attacks have sunk to the level of cowardly assassinations, and the cry of South Africa is no longer a wail for flank attacks, but rather that with which the denizens of Suburbia have made us long familiar: "Give us more police."
At the corner of Adderley-street, by the Standard Bank, a man sits at a table—a table littered with dusty pamphlets and covered with nice clean newspapers. A placard pinned to the edge of the table calls upon the passer-by to sign a petition to the Queen. It is the new reform movement. It is the new grievance of the new Uitlander.* Kruger has passed, and with him his corrupt regime. The franchise bogie has vanished into thin air. Now it is the capitalist, the demon capitalist, who is going to crush the Uitlander—the hateful capitalist whom Lord Roberts, has placed in positions of trust in the gold reef city.
[* Uitlander (Afrikaans)—foreigner (lit. "outlander"); the name given to expatriate migrant workers during the initial exploitation of the Witwatersrand gold fields in the Transvaal. ]
THE FOCUS OF DISLOYALTY
I rather think it is not a real danger, but the refugee is getting short of money, and anything that appears in the slightest degree to be suggestive of further privations produces a kind of panic—the panic of desperate men hard up.
Soon the refugee will begin returning to the Rand, and the questions which are now of life and death will resolve themselves into those mild phases of social and economic legislation, the discussion of which enlivens the proceedings of town councils.
At present the reformers' troubles are very high politics.
There is in Capetown a class of refugee which probably will never trouble the relief committee, and takes only the most languid interest in the possibilities of a speedy opening of the Rand: a class which is only moved to gleeful excitement by intelligence of a setback—however temporary—to British arms.
Good souls, these deported Hollander families and their Capetown friends. The ladies are so charming, so frankly disloyal, and yet so ready to bow to the inevitable, that the officers of the garrison who turn up in time for afternoon tea vote them "no end of good sorts, don't you know!"
If I were asked what is the most dangerous centre of sedition in South Africa, I should without hesitation award the questionable honour to Capetown. There are the same old rebellious circles—stronger numerically than they were of yore— babbling the same traitorous sentiments with increased bitterness. There is the some coterie of traitorous women binding themselves into a thousand and one highfalutin' leagues—little rocks of discontent that serve to indicate the hidden reefs of hate and treason.
FOOLISH AND LOYAL
Yet in spite of their unmistakable detestation of everything that is British, and their alleged love for their country—which in all cases means Pretorian social circles—there is nothing of the Joan of Arc about these bellicose dames. Perhaps a Charlotte Corday might be found who, strengthened in her purpose by the knowledge of kid-glove military retribution, would be willing to risk a month's imprisonment in the Mount Nelson Hotel, or some equally dreadful punishment devised by staff college graduates, by slaying a general or two, or even a correspondent.
Meanwhile the loyal refugees—the foolish ones—increase in number daily. Almost day by day as the ships arrive, but mostly on the big mail days, they come flocking in from England, till one feels inclined to stop the stream of men that straggle from the docks to the town and ask them if they can read— if they do not understand that the Rand is still closed, and the Refugees Relief Funds are running low; to ask them if they do not realise that unless they have funds to last them for at least six months they might as well return to England again by the next steamer.
And so week by week the town is hidden by the new-come swarm. It is full, it is more than full, but a titanic hand seems to shake it into compactness, and then there is room for the last newcomers. Room, though they overflow and some slip over the edge into the vague "up country." Overcrowded, but still room for all. Tightly packed and trickling into Suburbia, but still room—and then—well then a little blue and red flag crawls lazily up to the flagstaff on Signal Hill, another liner has been sighted, and the shaking up begins all over again.
