OFFICERS' IMPEDIMENTA.
pro Tirs EDITOR OP TM2 " $PECTATO11."1 Fx,—We have been hearing much a late—and no wonder— about the pianos and kitchen ranges which it appears have been allowed to form part of the impedimenta of our columns on the South African veld; and some of us are even hoping that more may yet be heard of them, and to some purpose, by the parties for whose solace they were transported thither While these facts are fresh in mind, it may not be amiss to recall the memory of a certain massive and handsome mess- table (mahogany, I think) for which the officers of a certain regiment, some two years since, when the war was beginning, were said to have demanded transport with themselves from Cape Town to the front, along the single line of rail then choked, as is well known, with traffic. The incident, as then stated in a daily paper, is pretty certainly true, for it is too absurd to be deliberately invented. A satisfactory precedent was at any rate established when, to the discomfiture of the officers, the demand was promptly disallowed by superior authority; but as a further instance of a tendency which in the interest of our Army surely needs stern repression, the story may be worth recalling. There is nothing new, we know, under the sun,—not even the incongruous combination of luxury and campaigning. The Roman Emperor Otho took his cosmetics and his silver mirrors with him to the field where he lost Empire and life—absit omen !--at Bebriacum- British officers, it is true, are no Othos, but luxury has many shapes, and the more thoroughly each and all of them are discarded in campaigning, the greater will be the respect accorded to the officer by his countrymen.—I am, Sir, ttc., SENEX.
[We do not blame the regimental officers half so much as their superiors at headquarters. Officers obey orders, and if they know that kitchen ranges and pianos are not merely discouraged in the field but are forbidden, and that dis- obedience will have its full military consequences, these strange accompaniments to mobility will not be heard of. Curiously enough, the habit of taking useless impedimenta into the field was satirised long ago by Dickens. The im- mortal Montague Tigg describes his corps on the burning shores of Africa "charging in a hollow square with the regimental plate-chest and women and children in the centre." —En. Spectator.]
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