Maxim mutiny
Sir: Mr Simpson's sympathetic article 'Not just the Maxim gun' (9 March), is marred in one respect. I doubt if he can have read 'The Modern Traveller' in whole or in part. He has, after all, had other things to do. If he had, however, we would have seen that the whole thing is heavily satiric. It is unworthy therefore to write as though the author approved of 'our' having the Maxim gun, for he most certainly did not, The lines should be read in concordance with, Blood understood the native mind.
He said, 'we must be firm but kind'.
A mutiny resulted.
'It's a nine-cherub gale out there.'
We shot and hanged a few, and then, The rest became devoted men.
Mr Belloc was seldom nervous. For the record, he was implacably and, of course, vociferously, against the Boer war — a most unpopular stance at that time, even if one which landed him in the surprising company of David Lloyd George, Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells.
Barbara Eustace
23 Victoria Square, London SW1
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