Farewell to the Guards' Brigade.
From Pretoria I accompanied the Guards on what we all deemed our homeward way as far as Norval's Pont. Then the Brigade, as such, was broken up for blockhouse or other widely dispersing duties; and I was accordingly recalled to headquarters for garrison work. At this point, therefore, I must say farewell to the Guard's Brigade.
For over twelve months my association with them was almost absolutely uninterrupted. At meals and on the march, in the comparative quiet of camp life, and on the field of fatal conflict, I was with them night and day; ever receiving from them courtesies and practical kindnesses immeasurably beyond what so entire a stranger was entitled to expect. Officers and men alike made me royally welcome, and won in almost all respects my warmest admiration.
Their unfailing consideration for "The Cloth" by no means implied that they were all God-fearing men; nordid many among them claim to be such; but gentlemen were they one and all, whose worst fault was their traditional tendency towards needlessly strong language. To Mr Burgess, the chaplain of the 19th Hussars once said, "The officers of our battalion are a very gentlemanly lot of fellows, and you never hear any of them swear. The colonel is very severe on those who use bad language, and if he hears any he says, 'I tell you I will not allow it. If you want to use such language go out on to the veldt and swear at the stones, but I will not permit you to contaminate the men by such language in the lines. I won't have it!'"
Not all battalions in the British army are built that way, nor do all British officers row in the same boat with that aforesaid colonel. Nevertheless, I am prepared to echo the opinion expressed by Julian Ralph concerning the officers with whom he fraternized:—"They were emphatically the best of Englishmen," said he; "well informed, proud, polished, polite, considerate, and abounding with animal health and spirits." As a whole that assertion is largely true as applied to those with whom it was my privilege to associate. Most of them had been educated at one or other of our great public schools, many of them represented families of historic and world-wide renown. It was, therefore, somewhat of an astonishment to see such men continually roughing it in a fashion that navvies would scarcely consent to do at home; drinking water that, as our colonel said, one would not willingly give to a dog; and sometimes sleeping in ditches without even a rug to cover them.
Wild assertions have been made in some ill-informed papers about these officers being ill-informed, and even Conan Doyle complains that he saw only one young officer studying an Army Text-Book in the course of the whole campaign; but then, when kits are cut down to a maximum weight of thirty-seven pounds, what room is there for books even on tactics? The tactics of actual battle are better teachers than any text-books; and a cool head, with a courageous heart, is often of more value in a tight corner than any amount of merely technical knowledge. It is true that some of our officers have blundered, but then, in most cases, it was their first experience of real war, especially of war amid conditions entirely novel. It was more personal initiative, not more text-book; more caution, not more courage that was most commonly required. To inspire his men with tranquil confidence, one officer after another exposed himself to needless perils, and was, as we fear, wastefully done to death. But be that as it may the Guards' Brigade, men and officers alike, I rank among the bravest of the brave; and my association with them for so long a season, I reckon one of the highest honours of a happy life.[Back to Contents]
A WAR OF CEASELESS SURPRISES
What Conan Doyle rightly described as "The greatBoerWar" came eventually to be called yet more correctly "The greatBoreWar." It grew into a weariness that might well have worn out the patience and exhausted the resources of almost any nation. No one for a moment imagined when we reached Koomati Poort that we had come only to the half-way house of our toils and travels, and that there still lay ahead of us another twelve months' cruel task. From the very first to the very finish it has been a war of sharp surprises, and to most the sharpest surprise of all has been this its wasteful and wanton prolonging.
Exhaustlessness of Boer resources.
We wondered early, and we wondered late, at the seeming exhaustlessness of the Boer resources. In their frequent flights they destroyed, or left for us to capture, almost fabulously large supplies of food and ammunition; yet at the end of two years of such incessant waste Kaffirs were still busy pointing out to us remote caves filled with food stuffs, as in Seccicuni's country, or large pits loaded to the brim with cases of cartridges. A specially influential Boer prisoner told me he himself had been present at many such burials, when 250 cases of mauser ammunitionwere thus secreted in one place, and then a similar quantity in another, and I have it on the most absolute authority possible that when the war began the Boers possessed not less than 70,000,000 rounds of ball cartridge, and 200,000 rifles of various patterns, which would be tantamount to two for every adult Dutchman in all South Africa. Kruger, in declaring war, did not leap before he looked, or put the kettle on the fire without first procuring an ample supply of coal to keep it boiling. For many a month before hostilities commenced, if not for years, all South Africa lay in the hollow of Kruger's hand, excepting only the seaport towns commanded by our naval guns. At any moment he could have overrun our South African colonies and none could have said him nay. These colonies we held, though we knew it not, on Boer sufferance. At the end of two years of incessant fighting we barely made an end of the invasion of Cape Colony and Natal, and the altogether unsuspected difficulty of the task is the true index of the deadliness of the peril from which this dreadful war has delivered the whole empire.
The peculiarity of the Boer tactics.
How it was the Boers did not succeed at the very outset in driving the British into the sea, when we had only skeleton forces to oppose them, was best explained to me by a son of the late State Secretary, who penned the ultimatum, and whom I found among our prisoners in Pretoria. The Boers are not farmers. Speaking broadly there is scarcely an acre of ploughed land in all the Transvaal. "The men are shepherds, their trade hathbeen to feed cattle." But before they could thus, like the Patriarchs, become herdsmen, they perforce still, like their much loved Hebrew prototypes, had to become hunters, and clear the land of savage beasts and savage men. The hunter's instincts, the hunter's tactics were theirs, and no hunter comes out into the open if he can help it. It is no branch of his business to make a display of his courage and to court death. His part is to kill, so silently, so secretly, as to avoid being killed. Traps and tricking, not to say treachery, and shooting from behind absolutely safe cover, are the essential points in a hunter's tactics. Caution to him is more than courage, and it is precisely along those lines the Boers make war. In almost every case when they ventured into the open it was the doing of their despised foreign auxiliaries. The kind of courage required for the actual conquest of the colonies the Boers had never cultivated or acquired. The men who in six months and six days could not rush little Mafeking hoped in vain to capture Cape Town, unless they caught it napping. But in defensive warfare, in cunningly setting snares like that at Sanna's Post, in skilful concealment as at Modder River, when all day long most of our men were quite unable to discover on which side of the stream the Boer entrenchments were, and in what they called clever trickery, but we called treachery, they are absolutely unsurpassable. So was it through the earlier stages of the campaign. So was it through the later stages.
Another cause of Boer failure as explained to me by the State Secretary's son was the inexperience and incompetencyof their generals, who had won what little renown was theirs in Zulu or Kaffir wars. Amajuba, at which only about half a battalion of our troops took part, was the biggest battle they had ever fought against the British, and it led the more illiterate among them to believe they could whip all England's armies as easily as they could sjambok a Kaffir. Their leaders of course knew better, but even they believed there was being played a game of bluff on both sides, with this vital difference, however—we bluffed, and, as they full well knew, did not prepare; they bluffed, and, to an extent we never knew, did prepare. Though therefore their generals were amateurs in the arts of modern warfare as so many of our own proved to be, they confidently reckoned that, if they could strike a staggering blow whilst we were as yet unready, they would inevitably win a second Amajuba. Magnanimity would again leave them masters of the situation, and if not, European intervention would presently compel us to arbitrate away our claims. But Joubert's softness, Schoeman's incompetency and Cronje's surrender spoiled the project just when success seemed in sight. One other cause of Boer failure which remained in force to the very last was their utter lack of discipline. My specially frank and intelligent informant said no Boer ever took part in a fight unless he felt so inclined. He claimed liberty to ignore the most urgent commands of his field cornet, and might even unreproved slap him in the face. Such decidedly independent fighting may serve for the defence of an almost inaccessible kopje, but an attack conducted on such lines is almost sure to fall topieces. It was therefore seldom attempted, but many a lawless deed was done, like firing on ambulances and funeral parties, for which no leader can well be held responsible.
The Surprisers Surprised.
This light formation lent itself, however, excellently well to the success of the guerilla type of warfare, which the Boers maintained for more than twelve months after all their principal towns were taken. Solitary snipers were thus able from safe distances to pick off unsuspecting man, or horse, or ox, and, if in danger of being traced, could hide the bandolier and pose as a peace-loving citizen seeking his own lost ox.
In some cases small detachments of our men on convoy or outpost duty were cut off by these ever-watchful, ever-wandering bands of Boers, and an occasional gun or pom-pom was temporarily captured, a result for which in one case at least extra rum rations were reputed to be responsible. But it must be remembered that our men and officers, regular and irregular alike, were as inexperienced as the Boers in many of the novel duties this war devolved upon them; that the Transvaal lends itself as scarcely any other country under the sun could do to just such surprises, and that the ablest generals served by the trustiest scouts have in the most heroic periods of our history sometimes found themselves face to face with the unforeseen. We are assured, for instance, that even on the eve of Waterloo both Blucher and Wellington were caught off their guard by their great antagonist. On June 15th, at the very moment when the Frenchcolumns were actually crossing the Belgian frontier, Wellington wrote to the Czar explaining his intention to take the offensive about a fortnight hence; and Blucher only a few days before had sent word to his wife that the Allies would soon enter France, for if they waited where they were for another year, Bonaparte would never attack them. Yet the very next day, June 16th, at Ligny, Bonaparte hurled himself like a thunderbolt on Blucher, and three days after, Wellington, having rushed from the Brussels ballroom to the battlefield at Waterloo, there saved himself and Europe, "so as by fire."
The occasional surprises our troops have sustained in the Transvaal need not stagger us, however much they ruffle our national complacency. They are not the first we have had to face, and may possibly prove by no means the last; but it is at least some sort of solace to know that however often we were surprised during the last long lingering stages of the war, our men yet more frequently surprised their surprisers. Whilst I was still there in July 1901, there were brought into Pretoria the surviving members of the Executive of the late Orange Free State, all notable men, all caught in their night-dresses—President Steyn alone escaping in shirt and pants; whilst his entire bodyguard, consisting of sixty burghers, were at the same time sent as prisoners to Bloemfontein. Laager after laager during those weary months was similarly surprised, and waggons and oxen and horses beyond all counting were captured, till apparently scarcely a horse or hoof or pair of heels was left on all the far-reaching veldt. The Boers resolutely chose ruin rather thansurrender, and so, alas, the ruin came; for many, ruin beyond all remedy!
Train Wrecking.
During this same period of despairing resistance the Boers imparted to the practice of train wrecking the finish of a fine art. At first they confined their attentions to troop trains, which are presumably lawful game; and as I was returning from Koomati Poort the troop train that immediately followed that on which I travelled was thus thrown off the rails near Pan, and about twenty of the Coldstream Guards, by whose side I had tramped for so many months, were killed or severely injured. The provision trains on which not the soldiers only, but the Boers' own wives and children, depended for daily food, were wrecked, looted or set on fire. Finally, they took to dynamiting ordinary passenger trains, and robbed of their personal belongings helpless women, including nursing sisters.
In Pretoria, I had the privilege of conversing with a cultured and godly lady who told me that she had been twice wrecked on her one journey up from the coast, and that the wrecking was as usual of a fatal type though fortunately not for her. Like one of the ironies of fate seemed the fact, of which she further informed me, that she had brought with her from England some hundreds of pounds' worth of bodily comforts, and yet more abounding spiritual consolations for free distribution among the wives and children of the very men who thus in one single journey had twice placed her life in deadly peril.
Among the Bush Veldt Carabineers at Pietersburg I found an engine-driver who in the course of a few months had thus been shot at and shattered by Boer drivers till he grew so sick of it that he threw up a situation worth £30 a month and joined the Fighting Scouts by way of finding some less perilous vocation. On the Sunday I spent there I worshipped with the Gordons who had survived the siege of Ladysmith; the day following as I returned to Pretoria, the train I travelled by was thrice ineffectually sniped; but soon after the turn of these same Gordons came to escort a train on that same line when nearly every man among them was killed or wounded, including their officer, and a sergeant with whom during that visit I had bowed in private prayer; but the driver, stoker and guard were deliberately led aside and shot after capture in cold blood. So my friend in the Carabineers had not long to wait for the justifying of his strange choice. Not until Norman William had planted stout Norman castles at every commanding point could he complete the conquest of our Motherland; and not until sturdy little block-houses sprang up thick and fast beside 5000 miles of rail and road was travelling in the Transvaal robbed of its worst peril, and the subjugation of the country made complete.
The worst of all our railway smashes, however, occurred close to Pretoria, and was caused by what seemed a bit of criminal carelessness, which resulted in a terrific collision. A Presbyterian chaplain who was in the damaged train showed me his battered and broken travelling trunk; but close beside the wreckage I sawthe more terribly broken bodies of nine brave men awaiting burial. It was a tragedy too exquisitely distressing to be here described.
The Refugee Camps.
When the two Republics were formally annexed to the British Crown all the women and children scattered far and wide over the interminable veldt, were made British subjects by the very act; and from that hour for their support and safety the British Government became responsible. Yet all ordinary traffic by road or rail had long been stopped. All country stores were speedily cleared and closed. All farm stock or produce was gathered up and carried off, first by one set of hungry belligerents, then by the others; physic was still more scarce than food, and prowling bands of blacks or whites intensified the peril. The creation of huge concentration camps, all within easy reach of some railway, thus became an urgent necessity. No such prodigious enterprise could be carried through its initial stages without hardships having to be endured by such vast hosts of refugees, hardships only less severe than those the troops themselves sustained.
What I saw of these camps at Hiedelburg, Barberton, and elsewhere made me wonder that so much had been done, and so well done; but a gentle lady sent from England to look for faults and flaws, and who was lovingly doing her best to find them, complained to me that all the tents were not quite sound, which I can quite believe. Canvas that is in constant use won't last for ever, and it is quite conceivable that at the end of a twoyears' campaign some of the tents in use were visibly the worse for wear. Thousands of our soldiers, however, went for a while without tents of any sort, while the families of their foes were being thus carefully sheltered in such tents as could then be procured. It is, moreover, in some measure reassuring to remember that the winter weather here is almost perfect, not a solitary shower falling for weeks together, and that within these tents were army blankets both thick and plentiful.
Complaint was also made in my presence that mutton, and yet again mutton, and only mutton, was supplied to the refugee camps by way of fresh meat rations, and that, moreover, a whole carcase, being mostly skin and bone, sometimes weighed only about twelve pounds. It is quite true that the scraggy Transvaal sheep would be looked down on and despised by their fat and far-famed English cousins, especially at that season of the year when the veldt is as bare and barren as the Sahara; but it surely is no fault of the British Government that not a green blade can anywhere be seen during these long rainless months, and that consequently all the flocks look famished. South African mutton is, at the best of times, a by no means dainty dish to set before a king, much less before the wife of a belligerent Boer; but British officers and men had to feed upon it and be content.
That no fresh beef, however, was by any chance supplied sounded to me quite a new charge, and set me enquiring as to its accuracy. I therefore wrote to one of the meat contractors, whom I personally knew as a man of specially good repute, and in reply was informed thatfor seven months he had regularly supplied the refugee camp in his neighbourhood with fresh beef as well as mutton, neither being always prime, he said, but the best that in war time the veldt could be made to yield! Those who hunt for grievances at a time like this can always find them, though when weighed in the balances they may perchance prove even lighter than Transvaal sheep.
It is undeniable that the child mortality in these refugee camps has been high compared with the average that prevails in a healthy English town. But the South African average, especially during the fever season, usually reaches quite another figure. A Hollander predikant, whom I found among our prisoners, told me that he, his wife, and his three children were all down with fever, but were without physic, and almost without food, when the English found them in the low country beyond Pietersburg, and brought them into camp. Nearly all their neighbours were in the same sad plight, and several died before they could be moved. In that and similar cases the camp mortality was bound to be high, but it takes a free-tongued Britisher to assert that it was the fault of the ever brutal British. In some camps there was an epidemic of measles, which occasionally occurs even in the happy homeland; but in the least sanitary refugee camp the mortality was never so high as in some of our own military fever camps, where the epidemic raged like a plague, and for many a weary week refused to be stayed. It should be remembered also that all the healthy manhood of the country was either still out oncommando or in the oversea camps provided for our prisoners of war. The men brought in as refugees were only those who had no fight left in them—the halt, the maimed, the blind, the sick of every sort, the bent by extreme old age, the dying. I was startled by the specimens I saw. Here were gathered all the frailnesses and infirmities of two Republics; and to test an improvised camp of such a class by the standards which we rightly apply to an average English town is as misleading as it is mischievous.
The Grit of the Guards.
When voyaging onThe Nubiawith the Scots Guards they often laughingly assured me it was the merest "walk over" that awaited us, and so in due time we discovered it to be. But it was a walk over well nigh the whole of South Africa, especially for these Scots. While during the second year of the war the Grenadiers were doing excellent work, chiefly in the northern part of Cape Colony, and the Coldstreams were similarly employed mainly along the lines of communication in the Orange River Colony, the Scots Guards trekked north, south, east and west. As a mere matter of mileage but much more as a matter of endurance they broke all previous records.
I have more than once written so warmly in praise of the daring and endurance of these men as to make me fear my words might for that very reason be heavily discounted. I was therefore delighted to find in Julian Ralph's "At Pretoria" a kindred eulogy: "When I passed through the camps of the Grenadiers, Scots, and Coldstream Guards the other day, I thought I never sawmen more wretchedly and pitifully circumstanced. The officers are the drawing-room pets of London society, which in large measure they rule.... Well, there they were on the veldt looking like a lot of half drowned rats, as indeed they had been ever since the cold season and the rains had set in. You would not like to see a vagabond dog fare as they were doing. They had no tents. They could get no dry wood to make fires with. They were soaked to the bone night and day, and they stood about in mud toe-deep. Titled and untitled alike all were in the same scrape, and all were stoutly insisting that it didn't matter; it was all in the game."
The Irregulars.
During this second period of the war the staying powers of the Irregulars was no less severely tested. Here and there there was a momentary failure, but as a whole the men did superbly. Multitudes of the Colonials, who on completing their first term of service, returned to Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, actually re-enlisted for a second term, and in several cases paid their own passage to the Cape in order to rejoin. The Colonials are incomparably keener Imperialists than we ourselves claim to be. Some of the officers of these Irregular troops were themselves of a most irregular type, and in the case of town, or mine, or cattle, Guards were occasionally chosen, not with reference to any martial fitness they might possess, but because of their knowledge of and influence over the men they now commanded, and previously in civilian life had probably employed. One of these called his men to "fall in—two thick!" and another, when he wanted to halt his Guards, is reportedto have thrown up his arms and said, "Whoa! Stop!" None need wonder if troops so handled sometimes found themselves in a tight corner. Yet of these newly recruited Irregulars, as of the most staid Reservists, there was good reason to be proud; and as concerning his own Irregulars in the Peninsular War Wellington said that with them he could go anywhere or do anything, so were these also as a whole entitled to similar confidence and to a similar tribute.
The Testimony of the Cemetery.
How fully these citizen soldiers hazarded their lives for the empire every cemetery in South Africa bears sad and silent witness, including the one I know so well in Pretoria. Indeed that particular burial-place is to me the most pathetic spot on earth, and enshrines in striking fashion the whole history of the Transvaal, whereof only one or two illustrations can here be given. In a tiny walled enclosure—a cemetery within a cemetery—filled with the soldier victims of our earlier wars, I found a slab whereon was this inscription:—
"To thememory of Corporal Henry Watson,Who died at Pretoria 17th May 1877; aged 25 years.He wasthe first British Soldier to give up hislife inthe service of his Country,on the annexationof theTransvaal Republic!"
Near by on another slab I read:—
"In loving memory of John Mitchell ElliottAged 37. Captain and Paymaster of the 94th Regiment,Who was killed for Queen and Countrywhile crossing the Vaal River on the night ofDec. 29th, 1880."
There, too, I found one other slab which recorded in thisstrange style the closing of a most ignoble chapter in our imperial history:—
"This Cemetery was planted, and the graves left in good repair by the men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers,prior to the evacuationof Pretoria, 1881."
Two brief decades rush away, and once again that same cemetery opens wide its gates to welcome new battalions of British soldiers, each of whom like his forerunner of 1877 "gave up his life in the service of his country"; but these late-comers represent every province and almost every hamlet of a far-reaching empire, as well as every branch of the service; while over all and applicable to all alike is the epitaph on the tomb of the Hampshire Volunteers, "We answered duty's call!"
Death and Life in Pretoria.
The Dutch section of that cemetery also witnessed some sensational scenes during the period now referred to.
On July 20th Mrs Kruger, the ex-President's wife, died, and as one of a prodigious crowd I attended her homely funeral. She was herself well-nigh the homeliest woman in Pretoria, and one of the most illiterate; but precisely because she was content to be her simple God-fearing self, put on no airs, and intermeddled not in matters beyond her ken, she was universally respected and regretted.
During this second period of the war the troops in Pretoria continued to justify Lord Roberts' description of them as "the best-behaved army in the world." The Sunday evening services in Wesley Church were alwayscrowded with them, and the nightly meetings held in the S.A.G.M. marquees were not only wonderfully well attended but were also marked by much spiritual power. Pretoria, after we took possession of it, witnessed many a tear, and occasional tragedies; but it was in Pretoria I heard a young Canadian soldier sing the following song, which aptly illustrates the type of life to which many a trooper has more or less fully attained during this South African campaign:—
I'm walking close to Jesus' side,So close that I can hearThe softest whispers of His loveIn fellowship so dear,And feel His great Almighty handProtects me in this hostile land.Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,I've Jesus with me all the time!I'm leaning on His loving breastAlong life's weary way;My path illumined by His smilesGrows brighter day by day;No foes, no woes, my heart can fearWith my Almighty Friend so near.Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,I've Jesus with me all the time![Back to Contents]
I'm walking close to Jesus' side,So close that I can hearThe softest whispers of His loveIn fellowship so dear,And feel His great Almighty handProtects me in this hostile land.Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,I've Jesus with me all the time!
I'm leaning on His loving breastAlong life's weary way;My path illumined by His smilesGrows brighter day by day;No foes, no woes, my heart can fearWith my Almighty Friend so near.Oh wondrous bliss, oh joy sublime,I've Jesus with me all the time![Back to Contents]
PRETORIA AND THE ROYAL FAMILY
During the next few months many events occurred in Pretoria of vital interest to the whole empire, and especially to the various members of the Royal Family. To these this seems the fittest place to refer, though most of them took place during my various return visits to Pretoria, and are therefore not precisely ranged in due chronologic order.
Suzerainty turned to Sovereignty
It was an ever memorable scene I witnessed in the Kirk Square when the Union Jack was once more formally hoisted in the midst of armed men, a miscellaneous crowd of cheering civilians, and an important group of Basuto chiefs who had been specially invited to witness the ceremonious annexation of the conquered territory and to hear proclaimed the Royal pleasure that the erstwhile "South African Republic" should henceforth be known by the new, yet older, title of "The Transvaal."
So came to an end the Queen's Suzerainty;—an ill-omened term, which had proved fruitful in all conceivable kinds of misinterpretation, and made possible the misunderstandings and controversies that culminated in this cruel and wasteful war. So was resumed the Queen's Sovereignty, which as subsequent events proved, oughtnever to have been renounced; and so too was made plain the way for that ultimate federation of all South Africa, under one glorious flag, for which Lord Carnarvon and Sir Bartle Frere long years before had laboured apparently in vain. This fresh unfurling of that flag was a pledge of equal liberties alike for Boer and Briton, as well as of fair play to the natives. It was a guarantee that the Pax Britannica would henceforth be maintained from the Zambesi to the Cape, and that in this vast area, well nigh as large as all Europe, there would be nursed into matureness and majestic strength, a new Anglo-Saxon nation, essentially Christian, essentially liberty-loving, and rivalling in wealth, in enterprise and prowess, the ripest promise of united Canada, and newly federated Australia.
In this Imperial conflict the heroic fashion in which both those Commonwealths rallied for the defence of our Imperial flag is one of the most hopeful facts in modern history. "Waterloo," said Wellington, "did more than any other battle I know of toward the true object of all battles—the peace of the world." A similar comment both by victors and vanquished may possibly hereafter be made concerning this deplorable Boer war. But that can come to pass only provided we as a united people strive to cherish more fully the spirit embodied in Kipling's Diamond Jubilee Recessional:
God of our fathers, known of old,—Lord of our far-flung battle-line,—Beneath Whose awful Hand we holdDominion over palm and pine,—Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,Lest we forget—lest we forget!...........For heathen heart that puts her trustIn reeking tube and iron shard—All valiant dust that builds on dust,And guarding calls not Thee to guard,—For frantic boast and foolish word,Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!—Amen.
God of our fathers, known of old,—Lord of our far-flung battle-line,—Beneath Whose awful Hand we holdDominion over palm and pine,—Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,Lest we forget—lest we forget!
...........
For heathen heart that puts her trustIn reeking tube and iron shard—All valiant dust that builds on dust,And guarding calls not Thee to guard,—For frantic boast and foolish word,Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!—Amen.
Prince Christian Victor.
To Dr Macgregor the Queen is reported to have said at Balmoral in November 1900, "My heart bleeds for these terrible losses. The war lies heavy on my heart." And Lord Wantage assures us that her Majesty's very last words, spoken only a few weeks later, were "Oh that peace may come!" Both assertions may well find credence; so characteristic are they of her whom all men revered and loved. As the head and representative of the whole empire, every bereavement caused by the war had in it for her a kind of personal element. But her sympathies and sufferings were destined to become more than merely vicarious. As in connection with one of our petty West African wars she was compelled to mourn the death of Prince Henry of Battenberg, so in the course of this South African war death again invaded her own immediate circle. The griefs that hastened her end were strongly personal as well as representative, and so made her all the more the true representative of those she ruled.
It was in the early days of that dull November, tidings reached her and us of the dangerous illness of Prince Christian Victor. Not alone in name was he Christian; and not alone in name was he Victor. On the voyage out,in theBraemar Castle, through the absence of a chaplain, the prince conducted divine worship with the troops. One of our best appointed hospital trains was "The Princess Christian Victor," so called presumably because provided by the bounty of his and her princely hands and hearts. He was what Sir Ascelin declared "The last of the English" to be—"A very perfect knight, beloved and honoured of all men."
It therefore alarmed both town and camp to learn that enteric, the deadliest of all a soldier's foes, had claimed him, like so many a lowlier man, for its prey, and that his life was in mortal peril. At that time he was a patient in the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital which consisted of Mr T. W. Beckett's beautiful mansion, and a formidable array of tents that almost covered the whole of the extensive grounds. Here prince and private alike reaped the fruit of the lavish beneficence which provided and maintained this magnificent hospital. All that wealth could procure was there of skill and tenderness, and such appliances as the healing art requires. All was there, except the power to command success. With what seemed startling suddenness the prince's vital powers collapsed, and the half masting of flags, far and wide, told to friend and foe the tidings of the Queen's irreparable loss.
From a photograph by Mr JonesPart of I.Y. Hospital in the Grounds Surrounding Mr T. W. Beckett's Mansion at Pretoria.
From a photograph by Mr Jones
Part of I.Y. Hospital in the Grounds Surrounding Mr T. W. Beckett's Mansion at Pretoria.
A Royal Funeral.
It was at first proposed that the body of the prince should be taken to England for interment, and certain companies of the Grenadiers, to which battalion I was still attached, were detailed for escort duty, but finally it was decided allfittingly that he should be laid to rest in the city where he fell, and among the comrades who like him had laid down life in defence of Queen and duty. So Pretoria witnessed a stately funeral, the like of which South Africa had never seen before, as the Queen's own kinsman was borne, by the martial representatives of the whole empire, to the quiet cemetery which this war had so enlarged and so enriched.
Disease and fatal woundings combined cost us in this strangely protracted conflict, scarcely more lives than the one great fight at Waterloo, where on the English side alone 15,000 fell,—for the most part to rise no more. In this South African war, up to January 31st, 1901, about 7700 of our men had died of disease; 700 by accidents; and 4300 of wounds. But this Pretoria cemetery like that at Bloemfontein, where 1500 interments took place in less than fifteen months, affords striking testimony to the common loyalty of all classes throughout the empire. Volunteers belonging to the Imperial Light Horse, raised exclusively in South Africa here lie, side by side, with volunteers belonging to the Imperial Yeomanry, raised exclusively in England. Sons of the empire, from Canadian Vancouver and Australian Victoria, here find a common sepulchre. The soldier prince whose dwelling was in king's palaces here becomes, as in the conflict of the battlefield so in the quiet of a hero's grave, a comrade of the private soldier whose dwelling was a cottage; and be it noted, the death of the lowliest may involve quite as much of heartbreak as the lordliest.
A touching story.
At the close of a simple military funeral in this samecemetery, the orderly in charge came to me and said, "I never felt so much over any case. This grave means four orphans left to the care of an invalid mother. I knew the man well, and he was always scheming what to do for his family when he got back: butthisis the end of it!" That dead soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own particular comrades was present, but only the necessary fatigue party. No flag was flung over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post." No tear was shed. It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among thousands. But it was a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in humble life seldom find a trumpeter; but they are none the less terrible on that account; and if half the truth were known and realised concerning the horrors and heartbreak caused by war, all Christendom would clamour for its speedy superseding by honest Courts of Arbitration.
From a photograph by Mr JonesWesleyan Church and Manse, Pretoria.
From a photograph by Mr Jones
Wesleyan Church and Manse, Pretoria.
The death of the Queen.
I was still in Pretoria when tidings arrived concerning the illness and death of the Queen; and was present in that same Kirk Square when King Edward VII. was proclaimed "Overlord of the Transvaal." In connection with the former event a memorial service, at which the military were largely represented, was held in Wesley Church on Sunday, January 27th. The Rev. Geo. Weavind, as well as Rev. H. W. Goodwin, took part in the proceedings, and I was privileged to deliver the following address which may serve to illustrate, once for all, the type of teaching given to the troops throughout this campaign:—
"I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother."—Ps. xxxv. 14 (R.V.).
"I bowed down mourning as one that bewaileth his mother."
—Ps. xxxv. 14 (R.V.).
As there is no relationship on earth so imperishably true and tender as that between a mother and her children, so also there is no mourning on earth so real and reverent as that beside a mother's grave. This saying therefore of the Psalmist describes with exquisite exactness our common attitude to-day; and voices, as scarcely any other single sentence could, our profoundest thought and feeling. We behold at this hour a many peopled empire bowed down mourning; and almost all other nations sharing in our sorrows; but it is not over the death of a mere monarch, however mighty, the whole earth thus feels moved to unfeigned lamentation.
I.It is the death of the representativeMotherof our race and age that bids us wrap our mourning robes around us.For any record of such another we ransack in vain the treasure stores of all history. She is the only mother that ever reigned in her own right over any potent realm; and certainly over our own. Queen Mary of unhappy memory, died childless, and her more fortunate sister, "Good Queen Bess," went down to her grave a maiden queen; but in the case of Victoria, four sons and five daughters found their earliest cradle in her queenly arms. She is said to have been in almost all respects as capable as the ablest of her predecessors, and was even to extreme old age unsparingly devoted to the discharge of her royal duties. Yet not by reason of her laboriousness, her linguistic gifts, or gifts of statesmanship will she be longest and most lovinglyremembered. Put it on record, as her chief glory, that in her own person she honoured family life and kept it pure, when for generations such pureness had seldom been suffered to show its face. Her most popular portraits represent her as the centre of a group of her own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren—a chain of living royalties reaching to the fourth generation. It was never so seen in Israel before; and thus have been linked to the throne of England by potent blood bonds almost all the Protestant royalties of Europe. The Queen retained to the last a heart that was young, because to the last she lived in tenderest relationship to the young. I cannot therefore even imagine a more beautifully appropriate or suggestive message than that by which the new King conveyed to the Lord Mayor of London, tidings of the great Queen's death:—
"My beloved Mother passed peacefully away, at 6.30,surrounded by her children and grandchildren."
In the midst of her children she lived; and all fittingly in the midst of her children she died!
As her most signal virtues were of the domestic type, so also her acutest sorrows were domestic. A father's strongly tender love, or wisely-watchful care, she never knew. In one sad year there was taken from her her long-widowed mother, and her almost idolized husband, Albert the Good.
"Who reverenced his conscience as his king;Whose glory was redeeming human wrong;Who spake no slander, no, nor listened to it;... thro' all the tract of years,Wearing the white flower of a blameless life."
Concerning that great sorrow, the Queen was wont in homely phrase to say that it made so large a hole in her heart, all other sorrows dropped lightly through. Nevertheless of other sorrows too she was called to bear no common share. As you are all well aware, two of the daughters of our widowed Queen have themselves long been widows. Two of her sons perished in their ripening prime. Her favourite daughter, the Princess Alice, and her favourite grandson, the heir-presumptive to her throne, drooped beside her like flowers untimely touched by frost; and within the last few weeks we ourselves have seen yet another of her grandsons laid beneath the sod in this very city of Pretoria. Nor is it with absolutely unqualified regret we call to mind that notably sad event. Like many another of lowlier name he died in the service of his queen—and ours; and perchance the Queen herself rebelled, not as against an utterly unfitting thing, when thus called in her own person to share the griefs of those among her own people, whom recent events have made so desolate.
Reverentially we may venture to say that in all afflictions she was afflicted, and thus endeared herself to those she ruled as no other monarch ever did. Because she was Queen of Sorrows she became also Queen of Hearts.
That of which we have just spoken was indeed her last sore bereavement; and now that to her who shed such countless tears there has come the end of all grief, we have therewith witnessed the full and final prevailings of her Laureate's familiar prayer:—
May all loveHis love unseen, but felt, o'ershadow thee;The love of all thy sons encompass thee,The love of all thy daughters cherish thee,The love of all thy people comfort thee:Till God's love set thee at his side again."
The day she ceased to breathe was to her as a new, a nobler bridal day. The wife has found her long-lost consort; the mother is at home!
II. Queen Victoria was not merely a model mother in the narrow circle of her own household.She was emphatically the mother of her people—a people multitudinous as the stars of the midnight sky. One fourth of the inhabitants of the entire globe gladly submitted to her gentle sway. The vastest sovereignties of the ancient world were mere satrapies compared with the length and breadth of her domain, and to-day east, west, north and south bow down beneath a common sorrow beside her bier. In synagogue and mosque and temple, in kirk and church of every class and creed, men render thanks for one "who wrought her people lasting good," and humbly own before their God that
"A thousand claims to reverence closedIn her, as mother, wife, and queen."
Almost as a matter of course this monarch and mother of many nations became more and more liberal-minded and large-hearted. For her to have become a bigot would have been a very miracle of perverseness. She rejoiced in all true progress in all places, and made the sorrows of the whole world her own. Famine in the East Indies, or a desolating hurricane in the West, calledforth from her an instant telegram of queenly sympathy or, it may be, a queenly gift. Every effort for the betterment of her people awoke her liveliest interest. The east end of London, only less well than the west, was known to her. From Windsor to Woolwich she recently went in midwinter, that with her own hand she might distribute flowers among her wounded soldiers, and with her own lips speak to them words of solace. At that same inclement season she crossed the Irish Channel to show her vulnerable face once more among her Irish people, and I should not marvel if for such a queen some would even dare to die!
It was ever with the simplicity of a sister of the people rather than with the symbolic splendours of a sovereign, she went in and out among us. In the full pomp and pageantry of her high position she seemed to find no special pleasure. Even on Jubilee Day, when her presence crowned the superbest procession England ever saw, she looked immeasurably more like a mighty mother of her martial sons than like a majestic monarch in the midst of her exulting subjects. Filial love and filial loyalty that day reached their climax. Till then the best informed knew not how truly she was the mother of us all!
III.Her prodigious hold upon the hearts of her people was largely due to the unexampled length of her reign.
That she ever reigned is one of the many marvels of divine mercy found in the history of our native land. Note that her father was not the first, but the fourth son of old King George III.; that the three elder sons alldied childless, and that her own father died within a few months of her birth. Victoria seems to have been as truly a special gift of God to England as Samuel was to Israel. This longest of all reigns was unmarred by any break of any kind from first to last. Had our princess come to the throne only a few months earlier a regency must have been proclaimed, and had she lingered a few months longer increasing infirmities might have forced that same calamity upon us. But through God's mercy hers was a full orbed reign. There was no abdication of her power for a single day. The first serious illness of her life was also her last, and to her it was granted to cease at once to work and live.
So long ago as September 1852, when her devoted friend and adviser, the famous Duke of Wellington, died, she pathetically said "I shall soon stand sadly alone"; then naming one after another of her recent intimates she added "They are all gone!" That of necessity became increasingly true in the course of the remaining half century of her life. Not one among the many friends of her youth remained at her side amid the deepening shadows of her eventide. Surrounded by new acquaintances and new kinships a loneliness was hers, which few of us are ever likely in any similar measure to experience.
Every throne in Europe except her own has witnessed repeated changes in the course of her strangely eventful career, sometimes as the result of appalling revolutions ans sometimes as the fruit of a dastardly assassin's dagger; but amid all He who was Abraham's shield and exceeding great reward deigned to compass ourQueen with songs of deliverance. Never was any monarch so much prayed for; and that she may long reign over us is a petition that in special measure has prevailed. Not three score years and ten, but four score years and two, have been the days of the years of her life, and now that the inevitable end has come, no voice of complaining is heard in our streets. Such a death we commemorate with thankful song!
IV.The Queen's whole reign was frankly based on the fear of God; and to find such in English history I fear we shall have to travel back a full thousand years to the days of Alfred the Great, who was also Alfred the Good, and whose favourite saying was
"Come what may come,God's will be welcome!"
When Victoria was still a girl of fifteen she was solemnly confirmed in the Chapel Royal, and in her case that impressive service manifestly meant—what alas, it does not always imply—a life henceforth wholly given to God.
At two o'clock in the morning of June 21st, 1837, she was roused from her slumbers in old Kensington Palace, and hastily flinging a shawl over her nightdress, she presently stood in the presence of the Lord Chamberlain and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to learn from their lips that her royal uncle had given up the ghost, and that she, a trembling maid of just eighteen, was Queen. Thereupon, so we are told, her eyes filled with tears, her lips quivered, and turning to the Archbishop she said, "Pray for me!" So that instant all three lowly bowed imploring heaven'shelp. The Queen began her reign upon her knees. Her first act of conscious royalty was thus to render heartfelt homage to "The Prince of the kings of the earth." Hence came it to pass
"Her court was pure, her life sincere."
Her favourite recreations were consequently not those provided by the ballroom, the card-table, the racecourse, or even the theatre. Music, the simple charms of country life, and, manifold ministries of mercy, were the pastimes that became her best; and she never appeared in the eyes of her people more truly royal than when seen sitting by the bedside of a Highland cottager, reading to the sick out of God's own Gospel the wonderful words of life.
We are here at liberty to use a scriptural phrase and to add that she "married in the Lord." Royal etiquette required that the Queen should herself select the lover destined to share the pleasures and responsibilities of her high position, and her choice fell not on one renowned for gaiety, for wealth or wit, but on one in whom she recognised the double gift of abounding good sense and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. For a choice so supremely wise, and for a marriage so supremely happy, all thoughtful Englishmen still render thanks to God.
Her piety was as broad as it was deep and practical. The head of the Anglican Church, when in England she worshipped with Anglicans only; but when in Scotland she no less regularly repaired to the Presbyterian Kirk, and only a few months ago gave expression to her warm appreciation of the work done for God and man by "The people called Methodists." She would tolerate no intolerancein things pertaining to godliness, and on her Jubilee Day insisted that all creeds should be invited to join in one common act of worship. For that reason among others the Queen required that historic service should be held in the open air, on the steps, it is true, of our stateliest cathedral; but none the less under God's own arching sky, which makes the whole earth a temple. We owe not a little of our religious liberty to the personal influence and example of our much lamented Queen; and we, therefore, show ourselves worthy to have been her subjects, only when we shun utterly all indifference concerning things divine, yet give no place to bigotry; when we seek out not the worst, but the best, in every man, and honestly strive to make the best of that best.
V.With the new century we suddenly find ourselves subjects of a new Sovereign, and with equal sincerity, if not with equal fervour, we say, "God save the King." May his reign also like that of his predecessor bring blessing to many lands! We crave not for him, and seek not in him, unexampled greatness. We desire chiefly that he may "love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with his God." His rich legacy of newly-created loyalty he will thus assuredly retain and augment.
It is commonly said that this new century, like the last, has begun with a notable lack of notable men, but, nevertheless, never yet have we been left without trusty leaders in the hour of national necessity; and as it has been so will it be!
"We thank Thee, Lord, when Thou hast need,The man aye ripens for the deed!"
Yet the new century clamours importunately, not so much for great men, as for good men. All greatness perishes that is not broad based on godliness. The best gift for this new era that God Himself can bestow upon our people, is the grace of deep-toned repentance, an impassioned love of righteousness, a never flinching resolve to walk in newness of life; for then will the brightness of even the Victorian era be splendidly outshone, and heaven itself will hasten to make all things new. We who believe in Christ have learned to say:—
"Oh Thou bleeding LambThe true morality is love of Thee!"
Along that same path of love divine lies also the truest patriotism and the speediest perfecting of our national life. I pray you, therefore, let the God of your late Queen be yet more completely your God; her Saviour your Saviour; and make this Memorial Service doubly memorable by bowing this moment at His feet,
"In full and glad surrender."