WITH THE BOERS IN THE FIELD.*

Fon the first time in our history since the great French War, we have been at war with an enemy who can write a book (the Russian accounts of the Crimean War being only acces- sible to the student). The wish expressed by the Biblical writer is realised, and we can find nothing but gratitude for the writers. We have no intention whatever of taking ad- vantage of General Viljoen and Pastor Kestell now that as authors we have them "in the hollow of our hand," for although as good enemies they make statements and take a point of view, especially as regards the origin of the war and the policy of devastation, with which we cannot agree, they are doing us a great service by letting us know what they think of us. By taking to heart all that is reasonable in their criticisms of the military and political conduct of the campaign, we may perhaps avoid in the future that attitude of insular superiority which has made us a byword in Europe.

• Moreover, such books as these are an important aid to us in the work of reconstruction and conciliation that we have taken in hand in South Africa; they help us to understand the people of the new Colonies whom we have admitted as fellow-subjects of our Empire.

It is not too much to say that almost all of our past troubles in South Africa arose from the regrettable misconception which prevailed amongst Dutch and English alike as to the character, the fighting qualities, and the virtues of the other race. The war, if it has done nothing else, has done a great service to both races by wiping such fantastic, ill-odoured prejudices completely off the slate. We no longer accept the view of the Boer as a treacherous, cowardly, and almost savage foe as expressed in such books as Mr. Rider Haggard's Yeas or in the traditions of the first Boer War ; nor do the leaders of Dutch opinion now believe that a British Govern- ment is always vacillating and cowardly, placing party and office before the interests of the State, and represented in the field only by overbearing generals and ignorant tailor-made and mercenary "redcoats." Both nations have now learnt, after two and half years of honest rivalry, that they will be best employed, to quote General Viljoen, " in attempting to find out the virtues rather than the vices in one another's characters." General Viljoen is an admirable specimen of the young Transvaaler. He is an educated modern European, with perhaps more in him that reminds us of our American cousins than of ourselves, full of youth and " go," with a dis- tinct touch of humour. If he rails at some of our military failures; his jibes are without malice, and he is the first to recognise that the greatest general is he who makes fewest mistakes. Nor does he spare the failures of his own side,—the superstitions and the delays of Joubert, the chaotic commando system, or the cautions and the casuistry of so many of the earlier commandants. He has a strong predilection for fighting and for the glorious open warfare on the veld, for the joys of a life stripped of the shams and the sordidness of civilised society, for the friendships formed upon the veld " through sunshine and rain, happiness and sorrow, prosperity and adversity," strong and lasting indeed. And though a good patriot, he is quite ready to accept the new condition of affairs, to admit that the enemy, no less than his own side, have done their duty, and that "whoever in the future governs South Africa, the two races must live together, and must now accordingly hold out their hands to each other like men."

General Viljoen's estimate of our soldiers is doubtless a fair one. The British officer is, according to him, either an English gentleman, or he is not,—the former is all that a gallant foe should be, brave to a fault, and sometimes driven to do desperate and stupid things. General Viljoen calls his motive "ambition." We prefer to believe that he is actuated by duty and by the necessity of leading his men; and he is par excellence a leader of men. The second type "possesses all the attributes of an idiot, and is not only detestable in the eyes of his antagonists, but is also despised by his own entourage." On the whole, General Viljoen appears to have met few of this species. As to the British "Tommy"—

"who draws a very poor daily pay, for which he has to perform a tremendous lot of work he is, if not a most capable fighter, at least a most willing one. But if 'Tommy,' by any

• G.) My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Beer War. By General Ben Viljoen. London: Hood, Douglas, and Howard. [6s.]—(2.) Through Shot and Flame. By J. D. %este!. London : Methuen and Co. [6s.] accident, is asked to deviate from the usual routine in which he has been trained, he is a thoroughly helpless creature. This help- liminess is, in my opinion, caused by exaggerated discipline, and by the system under which Tommy' is not allowed 'to think for himself or to take care of himself, and this individual help. leseness has undoubtedly been one of the shortcomings of the British soldier during the war. . . „ . On the whole, he is a very warm-hearted fellow."

This is an admirable appreciation of a fighting man who, it must be remembered, has been ever recruited from the poorest portion of the population; and we hardly know whether to be pleased that he turns out so well, or to be ashamed that he is the best the nation will pay for. What strikes us most is the entire absence of fury about his style of fighting. We do not know whether this may be the result of a century of education and of physical deterioration, or merely caused by an absence of a hatred of the Boers such as certainly inspired our soldiers against the French in old days. Probably the same feeling of comradeship with the foe existed in the War of American Independence, and may partially account for our ill success in that struggle. But we are sure that without a certain rage against the enemy no troops are at their fighting best. The

following dialogue after General Viljoen's successful attack upon Helvetia well illustrates this point:— "Tommy. By Jove, but you fellows gave us jip. If you had come a little later you wouldn't have got us so easy, you know.— Burgher. Never mind, Tommy, we got you. I suppose next time you will get us. Fortune of war, you know. Have some more, old boy ? Oh, I say, here is the General coming.—Tommy. 'Who's he ? Der Wyte or Viljohn ? And then as I passed,' adds General Viljoen, the whole group would salute very civilly."

It reads like the end of a good-humoured football match, not of a fight ; but for all that it is full of encouragement for those who look forward to a peaceful and united South Africa.

Pastor Kestell, the Free-Stater, is not so sympathetic an enemy. He is a man of God on the model of Old Testament history—a role in which General Viljoen never felt at ease —and he is desperately in earnest. The great prophet in the book is Martinus Thennis Steyn, and the gospel preached is the gospel of a Dutch South Africa. The contrast between the feeling, and, indeed, the character of the fighting, in the two States is very marked as we compare the two books. It is the Free State, and not, as Lord Roberts undoubtedly expected, the Transvaal, which provides the toughest enemies, and to a large extent, also, the most conservative and Boer elements in the struggle. After February 27th, 1900 (it is a curious fact that the Boers, like ourselves, had a Black Week), which saw the surrender of Cronje and simultaneously the turn of the tide on the Tugela and on the Orange River, organised resistance on the part of the Transvaal was virtually at an end. General Viljoen's account shows us very clearly that it was not by preconceived design that the Boers offered practically no resistance to the great advance on Pretoria, and subsequently on Machadodorp, but because the Transvaalers could never be got to stand and give battle despite General Botha's strenuous efforts to make them do so. In the North-Eastern Free State, however, there was, even at the lowest ebb in June, 1900, always a formed body in the field with an offensive plan of campaign, and a wholesale submission at Pretoria was probably prevented by the example and the successes of the Free State.

No doubt after the inauguration of guerilla warfare the disorganised and fugitive bands of the Transvaal took fresh courage and struck considerable blows from east and west. But whether owing to the presence of a larger number of troops on interior lines, from the excellent strategic centre at Pretoria, or from whatever other cause, the fact remains that the Free State struck the harder, raised the formidable rebellion in Cape Colony, and at the " bitter end " were the less ready to give in. Negotiations for peace, moreover,

were twice opened by the Transvaal, never by the sister-State which had been dragged into the quarrel. Mr. Kestell attributes this to the greater personal influence of Steyn and De Wet, and, indeed, the ex-President appears to have played a far more active part throughout the war than we here led by contemporary rumour to suppose. And if ever there was any feeling between the two States, it was by no means to display itself, as we were led to hope might have been the case, in the secession of the Free-Staters, but rather in their insist- ence. upon the continuance of the struggle by their more

faint-hearted brethren of the Transvaal The impression left upon us by reading De Wet's and Pastor Kestelis account side by side with General Viljoen's is that the Transvaaler, having mixed more with the Englishman, and sharing his

tastes and his aspirations to a very great extent, was more ready than the Free-Stater to accept the inevitable and join bands with him under the Union Jack. Thus, although

General Viljoen complains of the bard lot of the women and children, he does not, like Mr. Kestell, treat the question with unreasoning bitterness, and he is quite prepared to admit that the devastation of the entire country was the only means of bringing the war to a close once the guerilla war had set in.

That such was indeed the case is very evident from the interesting precis of the Conference at Vereeniging at the end of Mr. Kestell's book, or the full minutes of its proceedings

as supplied by the same hand in General De Wet's account. Yet Pastor Kestell allows himself to descend to such passages as the following:— "To such acts as these the British officers had fallen. They were made the persecutors of defenceless women and children. They carried the work of incendiaries throughout the whole State. They became butchers of thousands of horses and ten thousands of sheep. How despicable it must have been in their own eyes to perpetrate such acts ! When I think of all this, and look to the far future, then I ask myself : What will be said of this war when the history of it shall be written and read by the coming generations "

In allprobability the farm-burning, as practised in the (African) winter of 1900, pour encourager les autres, and as a means of inducing the Free-Stater to come in, was a terrible mistake, and merely turned the wobblers into irreconcilables. But the whole-

sale devastation of the country inaugurated by Lord Kitchener when the day of reconciliation was past was a totally different affair, and was the only possible way of putting down a guerilla war. As to the concentration camps, we believe them to have been a mistake, if at all, not, as Mr. Kestell urges, because they were inhuman, but because they were prompted by too great a regard for humanity, and by relieving the commandos of the care of their non-combatant folk, indefinitely increased their

powers of resistance. It was only when we ceased to shelter and to feed the women and children of the enemy that that exhaustion set in which alone could tame the elusive though much enduring Boer.

Mr. Kestell's account of the circumstances leading to the surrender of General Prinsloo in July, 1900, is extremely interesting reading. The importance of this capture will be realised by the writer's account of his own despair at that time, and of the considerable effect which it bad upon the rest of the Free State, no less than by the indignant charge of treachery brought against General Prinsloo in De Wet's book.

Only the indomitable attitude of that leader, and the prompt if somewhat dubious escape of Commandant Haazebrook through Golden Gate on the day of the surrender, saved the

Free State from collapse, though the exhausted condition of General Rundle's troops, and the consequent slackness in following up the victory, may have aided the work of restora- tion and recovery. But it appears from Mr. Kestell's story, the main outlines of which we have no reason to doubt, that the surrender was not produced solely by the strategy of Generals Hunter and Rundle, for the northern passes of Golden Gate and Witzieshoek were never really blocked. The real causes were the chaotic condition of the Boer forces consequent upon the disputed election of the Commandant-General, and the fatal absence of a leader at the critical moment, the need being merely prompt and unanimous action on the part of the whole ill-organised and unharmonions force. Mr. Kestell's description of the mag- nificent scenery in which this surrender took place—" the sudden contrast of light and shadow on the proud mountains, the beauty and grandeur of cliff ravine and torrent, the feel- ing they inspired of the insignificance of man in the awful

presence of Nature"—provides a dramatic setting to the whole, and will be thoroughly appreciated by those who have pene- trated the circle of majestic mountains which gird the Brandwater Basin, and provide such a contrast to the dull monotony of the rolling veld. Indeed, the scenic descriptions throughout are well drawn, and form a grateful relief to the

story of a forlorn hope, as the actualities did to the com- batants on both sides in an interminable line of marches and countermarches. The allusion to the "soft pink of the almond blossoms" in spring, or to the constantly changing skies at night. " the Southern Cross setting and rising again, and the gleaming rays of Sirius," will be appreciated by Boer and Briton alike.

Mr. Kestell's book is well written, and shows more literary style than General Viljoen's. If he is somewhat bitter in his allusions to ourselves, we mast remember that he was the secretary and constant companion of one who saw the shatter- ing of a great ambition. And after all, Pastor Kestell is not more bitter than a Scotch Covenanter or an English Indepen- dent, and the descendants of those men are among our best to-day. But as a boon companion, or even as our fellow in the work of reconstruction, we should be prejudiced in favour of General Viljoen.