FICTION.
SERVICE YARNS AND MEMORIES.*
THERE have always been soldiers who could handle the pen,
when occasion arose, with energy and efficiency. Foreign service and campaigning supplied them with materials and, as far as expression went, the lack of a special literary training had its advantages as well as its drawbacks. What they lacked
in polish they made up for in simplicity, directness, and natural- ness. But the untutored efficiency of the military scribe is a thing of the past, and there probably never was a time at which such a large proportion of the literary output was contributed by soldiers. Formerly they were concerned mainly with subjects which appealed primarily to professional readers. Now they have invaded all provinces of the realm of letters—history, belles-lettres, fiction, and even poetry. " Linesman's " brilliant work as an essayist is too well known to readers of the Spectator to need more than a passing mention. The fasci- nating studies of the psychology of war which bear the
pseudonym of " Ole Luk Oie " naturally occur in this context; Major Beames has given us some penetrating studies of various types of native soldiers in his volume On the Verge of Empire; while the humours of military life have latterly found
admirable interpreters—to mention no others—in Major Drury, in Major MaoMunn, and in Colonel Callwell, whose Service Yarns and Memories, though its opening section deals with the actual experiences of the writer in India, South
.Africa, and at the War Office, may none the less be con- veniently discussed under the head of "Fiction," Some of the contents of the book have already appeared in various periodicals, including Blackwood's Magazine, which has always been fortunate in attracting the best military authors, but they emerge from the ordeal of reperusal with credit. Colonel Callwell belongs without question to that limited class of writers whose services in "cheering us up" recently earned the benediction of Mr. Balfour.
Six of Colonel Callwell's yarns are grouped under the heading of "A Column in the Old Colony," and may be described as sidelights on the inner history of the Boer War— a history which will never be written. They take the form of a series of portraits, of which those of " The Intelligence Merchant" and "The Signalling Officer" are perhaps the most diverting. "The Intelligence Merchant" is described as revelling in the possession of a singularly vivid imagination supplemented with the faculty of investing even the most improbable story with at least some appearance of truth. His bent for circumstantial romance is happily illustrated by the following example of his powers
We've settled the elder Van Niekirk at last, and a good job, too. He's the most regular, downright, irreconcilable, will of-the- wisp rebel in the whole blooming Colony and has done no end of mischief ; but he's got a bullet bang through him this time, although they bundled him away somehow in a Cape cart. I'll may this for them, they're topping good sportsmen as regards sticking to their wounded the bottom of the cart was full of blood before they'd gone half a mile—running down the wheels 1 Then there's young Naude—quite a good lad, they say—who's out on commando simply for the joke of the thing; ho has a brother in the Town Guard at Beaufort West and he himself plays three- quarters for some place in the Eastern Provinces; anyway, he's shot through the thigh, so he'll be off footer for a bit. He managed to stick to his horse, and we just missed getting him, although he had a narrow squeak. Steenkamp of Bokfontein (the farm is just a little off the road near that place where we got all the lucerne three or four days ago, you remember, Colonel) has got it
• &mica Tarns and Memories. B Colonel C. B. Callwell, C.B. London: William Blackwood and nom. [Cs,]
through the arm; but the worst of it is it may be only a flesh wound. There's two more of them hit, but I haven't had the names yet. We dusted them up right well—nearly made a real good haul.' Such was the report of the Intelligence Merchant, supported by frequent references to his note-book, and delivered with a deliberation and with an obvious determination to adhere scrupulously to actual facts that were calculated to carry conviction to the most sceptical mind. What had actually occurred was this. Some scouts, moving forward through rather broken ground far away to the left front and out of sight of the main 'body of the Column, had detected figures moving among some rocks on a low ridge in front of them. They had dismounted in a smart and soldiorlike manner, they had taken cover after the most approved method, and they had opened a steady, well- sustained fire upon the enemy, which had not, however, been returned. After a brief period of suspense the figures had been observed to be effecting a retrograde movement, and they had thereupon turned out to be a troop of baboons, somewhat ruffled in temper, naturally enough, at the uncalled-for demonstration of hostility of which they had been the victims, but which had suffered only intellectual and moral, and no actual, damage."
The genius of "The Signalling Officer" lay chiefly in his tact- ful handling of his Column-Commander, and though a partial Nemesis befell him for his zeal in beating the Karoo for ostrich eggs, it is pleasant to read the closing words of this chapter: "The soldier who never makes a mistake is not likely to make anything worth making either in peace or war, and there was no one in the column who would have made more of areal chance had one presented itself to him than the Signalling Officer." The comment is characteristic of Colonel Callwell's method. He spares nobody's weaknesses or foibles, but his satire is not of a damaging quality; it always goes hand in hand with appreciation of the sterling qualities of his subject, whether he be a trooper in "Somebody's Light Horse, a corps comprising a set of typical scallywags," or a subaltern of Lancers who came to his regiment ignorant of the very rudiments of soldiership. Of the remaining yarns the cleverest is " The Disbanding of the Guava Rifles," a wonderful fantasia on the red-tape methods of the War Office which could only have been composed by one with intimate inside knowledge of the workings of that department. But the impression which it conveys needs to be modified by what Colonel Callwell admits at the close of his autobiographical chapters :— " It is a funny old place, the War Office. Reorganizations, Reconstitution Committees, Royal Commissions sweep over it, yet it jogs along in many respects in the same old way. . . But plenty of good work is done in it; and if these few random reminiscences, jotted down at a venture, deal mainly with the lighter side of the operations of the institution, it must not be supposed that an old hand could not tell many stories to show the efficiency of a department of State which is often very unfairly critieised."
It is a pity that Colonel Callwell has not told one of these stories as a set-off to his amusing pictures of futile circum- locution. The fact is, it is far easier to spin an amusing yarn about the blunders of officials than about their administrative efficiency. The only occasion on which the present writer had any practical experience of War Office methods, they worked with a promptitude and good-will which left nothing to be desired.
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