CORRESPONDENCE.
THE LAST_ SCENE_ AT...PRETORIA.
(To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR:1 Sut—There can be no question of Lord Kitchener's capacity as a stage-manager. It is an element in his character of which WI) little notice has been taken. He showed his powers that 'way mote than once in his Soudan campaigns, as witness Ferket and the Atbara. ' One is safe in saying that no one in England had the smallest conception that • any important operations were preparing until they received the news of the accomplished facts. The denouement in each case was unex- pected and dramatically complete. Those who went to Omdur- man in September, 1898, will tell you that the Gordon Memorial Service at Khartoum was appropriately effective ; it marked in the most fitting way the ending of a long story, the retribution for a grievous fault, —a scene well managed and dramatic. .And to-day's ceremony, the Thanksgiving Service for the restoration of peace, fell behind none of Lord Kitchener's scenic triumphs. The curious mental figment which at the instigation of journalists "the man in the street" has set up and labelled "Kitchener "—the "man of iron," such as he is supposed to be—would ex deft nitione be above such displays and pomps. He would hold them as trivialities unworthy of his notice. If he permitted a celebration of his triumphs, he would remain away himself and depute some smaller man to do and receive the honours.
Putting aside the question of what amount of truth lies in the estimate. of Lord Kitchener as ruthless and unbending, it is clear that he is far cleverer than his critics and public imagine, and has a far shrewder grip on the foibles and sentiments of the ordinary man. It has been a long-drawn- out war. Many people had waited for the end until they thought it would never come. Good judges of war in general, and the Boer War in particular, had announced with every appearance of confidence that the end would come in such- and-such a month, or even on such-and-such a day. The 2apture of De Wet—which had seemed a certainty more than once—the Middelburg Conference, the end of the cold weather 3f 1901, all these events had been put forth at one time or another as destined to end the war. Now at last it bad come, and men asked for a visible, tangible sign of the fact, some- thing that would impress their memories better than a bold announcement in a newspaper, something that would serve in the future as a terminus a quo. It is a very natural and human instinct, this demand that important events shall be marked by a pageant, and Lord Kitchener intended to gratify the instinct to the full.
Nor was the stage unworthy of the occasion. The winter sunshine of South Africa—which shines every day and all day for four months, from May to August—shone brightly all through the day. The night bad been cold, of course, and there was a faint morning mist, which vanished as the sun got stronger. No wind, a clear sky,—the weather contributed its fair share to the success of the pageant. Church Square, which has looked upon not a few famous men and memorable doings during its short existence, is not ill-suited for a big display. It is spacious and possesses two fine buildings. True, its symmetry and usefulness are largely spoiled by the Dutch church in its centre,—an erection in "Carpenter's Gothic." As the church is rather to the west of the actual centre of the square, and consequently thrust somewhat between the Government Buildings and the Palace of Justice, its presence cramps and narrows the very portion of the square where open space is most needed. This was very apparent to-day, for troops were packed twenty to thirty deep in the more open part of the square to the east, because of the restricted space immediately in front of the Government Buildings. Still, the locale was good enough, better than one has any right to hope for in the land of make-shift, South Africa.
But the setting and scenery are of no import without the actors. In they poured. Down each street came solid columns of men sweeping in from all sides at a swinging quick-step. No haste and no confusion. They threaded the streets, turned the corners, and were in their places at once, as if they had spent the past weeks and months in rehearsing thia very performance. The massing of these men spoke volumes for the Staff officer in charge, whoever he was. You were told that every regiment, corps, and unit in South Africa was represented to-day. This was not so—indeed, it was im- possible it should be so—there were many regiments and corps men from whom one looked for in vain. But considering the time available for collecting these men, the British Army in South Africa was wonderfully well represented. All regi- ments and corps within reach of Pretoria had, as far as one could see, sent a detachment.
Standing on the platform in front of Government Build- ings, you can seethe-vast crowd of men, five thousand to six
thousand strong, facing you in a deep horseshoe. A goodly gathering to solemnise the end. Irresistibly you thought of an earlier ceremony in the same place,—that of Tuesday,
June 5th,- 1900. Time had passed, and many things had
happened during the two years. Nothing had changed -in the outward scene,—no building bad been added, and the whom officers and men alike had worshipped with a frantic devotion only just "this side idolatory," has long passed away from South Africa. General Pole-Carew, most handsome and courteous of soldiers, who lives in the recollection of those present that day, as he spurred his horse to the front and called for three cheers for Lord Roberts, has likewise departed. Gone, too, is General Tucker, without whose per- sonality the campaign would have been far duller than has been the case. Nor are the brigade leaders here to-day: Inica3 Jones and Stephenson, Maxwell and Bruce Hamilton, and by far the most capable of them all, Smith-Dorrien,—next to the Chief, the best soldier present at that days parade. Even the Staff has changed from end to end; hardly one of the old members remains to-day. Lord Kitchener's very A.D.C.'s are altered; he has dropped the two smart, well-groomed satel- lites —one of them a sailor, by the way—who waited on his orders in the days of two years back. Even the regiments who took part in that earlier parade seem absent; you look for their badges in vain. Gordons and Camerons are here, but it would be idle to ask for Canadian Infantry or C.I.V.; and peer out as you will, you can nowhere see the pink helmet. bands of the Essex or the slaty-blue helmet-bands of the Derbys. Detachments are present—but hardly prominent, you would say—from the Yorkshires and the Welsh, the regiments who with the Essex and the Buffs achieved at Diiefontein perhaps the most beautiful infantry attack of the whole war. But there are compensations. On that Tuesday there were no mounted men present,—they were fully occupied in hold- ing the outposts round the town and in pursuing big guns long since removed by raiL But to-day they were present in hundreds,—cavalry detachments from a dozen regiments, men of Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry and Kitchener's Fighting Scouts and Damant's Horse—the "Tigers "—and of a score of irregular corps besides. Here, too, were men of the Artillery Mounted Rifles,—strange conjunction of words. How the "Right of the Line" have hated their con- version into another arm of the Service, and how heartily they will rejoice at being restored to their beloved guns ! Yes, there were great contrasts between that parade, which so many had thought to be the end, and this of to-day, when the end has at last come. Turn we to watch the man who has brought about the end, and to whom—as well as to Peace—we are assembled to do honour to-day. Very solemnly he strides on to the platform and salutes the thousands of men presenting arms to him. The hospital sisters who are to receive the Royal red cross step forward, and Lord Kitchener turns round to invest them with it, so that now we can see his face. He has put on weight since first he came to South Africa—I do not mean that he has grown fat, but he is certainly a stone heavier—the mottling of the face has grown more pronounced, and the face itself has broadened its outlines. Contrast it with the best- known photograph of the man, taken when he was still Sirdar, probably in the year 1896, when he bad just been made a Major- General, and you will see the difference plainly. The flesh of the cheeks and round the line of the jaw has become more pronounced,—the face might almost be called puffy. He is in high good humour to-day ; gone is the man one has seen at wayside stations questioning Commandants as to their defences and available strength; gone, too, the 4upassive pillar whom 'motionless always, as the fight developed itself in the plain below or on the distant kopjes. Each sister as she steps up has to have the cross pinned to her dress, and the pleasure Lord Kitchener took in this was curious to watch. His fingers were clearly not expert at pinning badges on a woman's -dress, and he fumbled a little over the first one or two; but the smile with which he went through his task "haunts me -still." It was the smile of a schoolboy, pleased to be able to pay .a welcome attention to.the other sex, but rather shy and gauche all the same at the unaccustomed duty. But with the beginning of the Thanksgiving Service you smiled no longer. It was impressive to the full.. The hymns of which the service was mainly composed were well chosen, and throughout there was an entire absence of any triumphing over men who were beaten, of any desire to make it hard for the conquered. Everything, the words of the service, the demeanour of the men, the address of the Archbishop of Cape Town, spoke a sober rejoicing, not at victory over the enemy, but at the achieving of peace,—the desired end after so many labours. Every item in the service bad been chosen person- ally by Lord Kitchener, and showed the chivalrous spirit in which he had conceived the whole occasion. As he had rejected the idea of a march past, which might suggest exulta- tion over the beaten enemy, so he had refused to select any hymns which suggested triumph or conquest. It was a testi- mony to the man's self-restraint, to the statesmanlike way in which he regarded his achievement,—a testimony, too, to the sobriety and breeding of the race. One thing only might have been improved: the singing of the men. There was not the volume of sound one expected, and clearly some among the men were not singing at all. This was the more to be regretted, because Lord Kitchener had the day before attended and superintended a species of choir practice with most of the detachments present; for him, one would think, a novel duty. *Still, this blemish did not, somehow or other, detract from the solemnity and impressiveness of the scene. It ended to the strains of Kipling's "Recessional," most fitting of all endings, with its warnings against over-confidence in national strength. And then the men flowed away, West and South and East. Then you felt for the first time what it meant—the breaking up of those who had come to be to you as old friends, the sundering of a brotherhood in which you had a part, however small it may have been—and the fact struck you with a feeling of the keenest, bitterest regret. It is good that a costly war should be over, good that our best lives be no longer spilt and squandered over the insatiable South African veld ; but it was a regret none the less. These men whom you had seen and known in a thousand different scenes had come to be part of yourself, and now you were to see them no more. For—incredible and even horrible as it may seem to those at home—this war has grown to be a personal possession, something that one can scarce imagine as not existing, something that one is sorry, genuinely sorry, to lose. The waste, the cost, the loss of life—you do not see or realise these things while you are in the middle of the struggle, while you are gambling with your own little stake yourself. Unconsciously you had slid into a habit of thought and life in which war seemed the natural and normal existence. Some- thing had made the past two and a half years pass pleasantly enough, and when the end came you woke to the fact that what bad made them pass pleasantly was—war. When you looked back over the immediate past, you saw what had given the zest to the last thirty months,—march and fight and cold and hunger and good-fellowship ; the glory of the open road and the unspeakable chances of it all, of this gambling of the gods." All experiences look tame and of no moment in comparison with this, perhaps the only life really worth living. It is all done with, shut off from you in a moment by a few scratches of the pen, and before you stretches out a drab vista of bourgeois comfort and perfect safety, good quarters and soft lying. All this flashed across you as you left this last scene and went a little way with the column whose road lay to the east, the pipes playing a last farewell. The good life was ended for ever, and as the men passed it passed too, not to return, unless perchance—and the men, you note, are march- ing eastward—the mysterious Frontier, full always of bound- less and unexpected possibilities, may hold within it another chance of sharing in the strife and endurance, of again living you remember in the old days staading behind Lord Roberts, the "crowded hour of glorious life without which the world would be a poor and "sensual" thing indeed.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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