BOOKS.
TOMMY CORNSTALK.* THE slangy title of Mr. Abbott's volume hardly prepares the reader for the peculiar excellence of what is by far the most attractive and informing book yet written on the war by
a Colonial pen. The keynote of the volume is struck in the preface when he says (the italics are ours) that " in these pages the author has striven to show other Australians, who had not the good fortune to serve in Africa, what some phases of campaigning were like, as viewed from the standpoint of the Australian ranks, and has occasionally ventured to say, as an Australian, how things have impressed him." The best commentary on this text is to be found in the brilliant chapter headed " The Outpost," in which Mr. Abbott describes the mingled emotions of a trooper unexpectedly ordered out on outpost duty after a hard day's work :— "What a deuce of a distance we are going out to-night ! It seems hours and hours since we saddled up disgustedly and left the lines—the luxurious lines, where there is food, and rest, and sleep. There will be an issue of bully-beef to-night, and we shall miss it. If the carte come up, it is rum night. We shall miss that also. D—n outpost ! D—n everything ! What is it all worth—this weary, worked out, unsatisfactory old war ? Why not have stayed at home, and lived the old life unbrokenly ? We would be sitting down to dinners and teas now—in clean shirts and more or less fine raiment. There would have been a good smoke, a game of billiards, a theatre, a dance, music, news- papers—and then, a warm bed with clean sheets on it. Think of it—clean sheets ! Clean sheets and a full stomach—surely that is heaven ! Why couldn't England have 'bucked up' and fought her old war herself? We're not getting anything out of it. We're losing time, and money, and place. We have made our- selves liable to be spoken to as though we were serfs and not free Australians by any bumptious boy calling himself Second Lieutenant.' Second Lieutenant ! Ye gods—by any bounder' of a sergeant-major, by any cocky corporal, by any new-chum wearer of the lance stripe. We have dug latrines, and buried mules, and made graves. We are crawling with vermin. We are tired, and stiff, and hungry, and we are going out on outpost.' Why did we ever come ? This isn't charging into battle. This isn't racing through a flying foe. This isn't getting the Victoria Cross. Where is all the pomp and circumstance of war' ? Where are the bands and the martial music to play us into action ? Where are the clouds of drifting smoke we've read about ? Where's that thin red line,' and all those gorgeous uniforms that used to make war picturesque, and romantic, and spectacular ? Where's anything but dirt, and discomfort, and starvation, and nigger-driving? Who wants to participate in a shabby war like this ?—Oh, you growling swine, Tommy Cornstalk ! If you had been rejected, been sent home from Randwick because of your varicose vein or your hollow tooth ; fallen off your horse in the riding test, or failed to hit the target when you were tried on the range—you know well what it would have meant. Can't you think of how you would have gone back to the station or the township, down- cast and shamefaced ? Don't you remember how lucky you thought you were when you marched down George Street to the trooper ' ? What about the hour or two when all the people • Tommy Cornstalk : being Some Account of the Less Notable Features of the South African War, from the Point of View of the Australian Ranks. By J. H. M. Abbott, late Corporal, First Australian Horse. Loudon Longmaus and Co. rss•]
were howling mad over you, when the girls you didn't know came and kissed you, when the effusive males who didn't go themselves handed you bottles of beer to quench the magnificent thirst you bad cultivated betwixt the barracks and the boat ? How did you feel then P Don't you really—deep down in your heart—consider that you are getting your reward? Isn't it something to be marching, and fighting, and starving with these Englishmen ? Supposing that they ers the scum of England—; if they are—isn't it something for a one-horse volunteer crowd like you to be a squadron of such a regiment as the one you are with—a regiment which was fighting before there was an Australia, a regiment which saw Waterloo and Balaclava? And another thing—isn't it something to have shown a regiment like that how to scout, how to take cover, how to ride, how to shoot; how, in short, to play this particular game as it should be played, and in the only way by which there is possibility of success ? Isn't that something, you discontented dog Go—go out to your comfortless outpost. Have no supper. Make no fire. Just take your two hours' watch, and your four hours' sleep in your lousy blanket, and thank God that you are privileged to be here—yes, privileged—instead of reading about it in newspapers and books, and not knowing."
By grouping his experiences under heads—e.g., " The Veld," " The March," " The Kopje," " The Outpost," "The Bivouac," " The Battle," &c.—and avoiding any- thing like a consecutive narrative, Mr. Abbott has avoided the tedium of repetition, and attained a con- centration of presentment which is extremely impressive.
Add to this that he has a truly Ansteplike gift for repro- ducing the nom militum, camp-fire yarns, the muttered talk of the outposts,—all the varied dialects of the lingua cas- trensis of the Imperial Army, and enough will have been said to indicate the picturesque and entertaining quality of these delightful pages. But what we like best of all in Mr. Abbott is his scrupulous fairness. Though a Colonial himself, im- patient of red-tape, pedantry, and formalism, he realises the value in its place of the true drill and discipline. Incidentally we may note that he supports extreme severity in the punish- ment of sentries and outposts who have fallen asleep on duty. His criticism of the British officer is limited to the most legitimate animadversion. On the other hand, his apprecia- tions of Lord Roberts and Sir John French and of other English commanders are as generous and genial as one could wish. It warms one's heart to hear what he says of the British gunners—" to silence a British gun you must kill its gunners "—and of " that splendid and gallant body of Rand volunteers,—the Imperial Light Horse." "No corps in all the war," says Mr. Abbott, "has seen quite so much, or done such distinguished service, as this one At the end they will have a record second to that of no regiment which has participated either in the Natal or the Western Cam- paign—and they should never be disbanded. Give the present 3nembers of the regiment their discharges, if they wish, but, for the honour of its deeds, keep the I.L.H. upon the shoulder-straps of a body of men in the garrison of South Africa." For the rest, Mr. Abbott notes that, for some reason or other, the Afrikander regiments were not popular with the troops from oversee, neither " Tommies," Australians, nor Canadians ; that brilliantly as the Australians did, the "Maorilanders " did, in his opinion, just a little better; while for picturesqueness and personal interest the Canadians distanced all other comers. " Their dashing actions, cool ferocity, quiet 'slimness' and guileless verneukery ' of the Boers themselves—and their pure hard cheek—rendered them famous and fascinating wherever they went." The story of Corporal Clarkson, of Hutton's Brigade, who captured Vredefort single-handed, is as richly humorous an illustration of the prowess of the efficient miles gloriosus as we have ever read. The same excellent impartiality is shown by Mr. Abbott in his estimate of the Boers. He tells with great humour the gradual exploding, as the result of actual experience and contact, of the legend which represented the Boer to be a savage monster—a sort of wild man from Borneo—and here is his final verdict:— .
"And so we went on, and finally, at the end of months, we came to Pretoria—much more educated people than when we had shipped ourselves at Woolloomooloo. We had fought him, chased him, taken him prisoner, narrowly escaped from the tricky snares be set for us, seen him in his home, drawn his fire from his own beloved kopjes, played him at his own game, looked upon his dead--and our opinion of him was quite a different matter alto- gether from the ideas with which we had equipped ourselves before leaving Sydney. We had seen how he lived ; we had learned what manner of slothfulness had kept him from using -aright the good land which God had given him, and recognised bow little he deserved to keep it therefore—since no man has a. right to any good thing unless he use it well. We had talked and argued with him, had got to know his peculiar ways of thinking, had faintly understood his mental state, had dis- covered for ourselves some of his many thoughts, had seen how the white flag trick was played—and—one confesses it almost apologetically in view of the possible charge of Pro-Boerism referred to above—had come to respect him, in the mass, as a very gallant man, and to envy in him the possession of hardy , virtues such as we had never expected to find, and which we would not mind feeling quite sure that we possessed ourselves."
Mr. Abbott is under no romantic illusions as to the past. He holds the Rand—" a long system of a particular kind of dirt, occurring in a peculiar geological fashion, and con- taining a yellow metal "—to have been the ultimate cause of our coming from all the quarters of the globe; he evidently doubts whether this land of gold and greed will ever liquidate its liabilities and pay for the waste of treasure and life and love. He is not enamoured of the Outlander.
But he is none the less convinced that British rule must be established, and he has " small sympathy with English- men who, once the country has become involved in war, wilfully admire and encourage the enemy." In other words,
he fixes his eyes on the broad issues of the question and- does not allow his judgment to be confused by sentimental
considerations or minor grievances. " We have taken the country again. We are about to rule it again, and ae we rule it so will it prosper. One does not use the word prosper ' to signify that there will be a larger output of gold from the Rand, or that the De Beers Com- pany will get bigger dividends out of Kimberley, but that the country may become a country of good citizenship, of healthy public spirit, of fellowship of the two almost kindred races which will have to live together in it." We quote this passage in evidence of the thoughtful intelligence that underlies the animation of Mr. Abbott's narrative. Even more impressive is the passage in which he emphasises the fact that "to us of Australia this has been the first experience of war," and summarises the chief lesson to be drawn from it for Australia in the one word Ammunition.
The resemblances and differences between Australia and South Africa constantly inspire Mr. Abbott with suggestive comment and illustration. The differentia of the veld, as compared with the bush, is its mysterious silence by night, while from the campaigner's point of view its great drawback is its lack of timber. Viewed as a means of livelihood, he does not hesitate to combat the pessimism of theAfrikander and pronounce that " in places to Australian eyes it [South Africa] is the best country one had ever seen." But to the average reader the chief attraction of the book will be found in the remarkable vividness with which the actualities of campaigning are brought home— the taste of the food, how you settle yourself to sleep on the veld, the merits of the cavalry cloak, the infantry mess-tin, what it feels like to be on outpost duty, the effect of hunger on conscience—these and half-a-hundred other aspects, incidents, and accessories of warfare are recorded with extraordinary fidelity and picturesqueness by this shrewd yet genial " Cornstalk," of whom it may be fairly said that he has achieved the remarkable distinction of writing a book on the war in which neither Boer nor Briton, using the latter word in its Imperial sense, can find ground for cavil. Such a book, apart from its personal and historical interest, is a real contribution towards the ultimate settlement of South Africa ; and by writing it Mr. Abbott has rendered a service not only to his gallant comrades in arms, but to the Empire at large.
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