THE BOER IN BATTLE.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 29 August 1901, Page 4

THE BOER IN BATTLE.

An American Criticism. The Boer may love his case (says Mr. Julian Ralph, the woll-known writer, in an article in ' Harper's Magazine '), but ho ha 3 moai heroically restrained himself from taking it. In European military parlance, ho is a mounted infantryman, and tho lightest-riding, most mobile man that wo know among civilised or somi-civili-od peoples. In this war wo know that some of tho leaders and commandos have frequently crossed and re-crossed the Free State, now fighting Buller in Natal, now engaging French at Eensburg, and even combating Methuen at Modder and Migorsfontein. This rapid work must hava D3en done only with bil ong in the saddlebags, and with no transport. But that is not tho Boer's favorite or characteristic mode of eoldiering. He usually lias a transport near by, ia which is carried not only plenty of good and varied fare, but often his women as well. It is not wiso to bilievc anything that any Boer says under any circumstances, for the Spartans never cm have reduced theft to such a science as these people have developed in tho practice of lying, and yet I have heard this statement as to their comforts in such ways and with sue i details that I am inclined to think tbaro i-t some basis for it.

The Boev3 soem not to know or to like .to tell the trarb, for they lie to one another, are lied to by their lenders, and are all but fattened with liis by their newspapers organ*. It is a condition so extraordinary that- I cannot comprehend it, though overy one of us in >outh Africa knows n, to be true. I have soon the fiies of a Boer newspaper dating from the bi ginning of the w ir, and every battle report ended with "our 1 )ss and two killed «nd fifteen wnundftd," <>r l 'on<i kid id. while the English dead covered the field.', Kimsley's relief, surrender, Ladysmith's freedom, were all denied,

and at the same time the commandants told their fighting men that Eussia and England were at war, that Eussia had seized a large part of India, and that 15,000 Eussian troops had landed in Natal, Ido not exaggerate when I say that the only case of veracity I have yet heard of among the Boers brought upon the truth-teller’s head a sentence for treason. He had fought at Belmont, and on returning homo to Barkley West had declared that the British won the battle. Since it is an axiom that “truth will prevail,” and since every lie about tlm war has to be retracted more or lass quickly, I cannot understand the minds which at one and the same time indulge in the pracicc and are humbugged by it. "What it leads to has to do with the fighting habits of the Boer, so that; these remarks arc not of the nature of a digression. It loads to British soldiois being invited into a Dutch garden _to help themselves to fruit, and then being shot at by Boers hiding in the garden. It leads to such incidents as that at Jacobsdal, where every garden wall vomited shot, and yet whore, when the town was taken, the men came out —very many with Bed Cross badges on their arms —to welcome the soldiers and tell them how glad they were that the British were coming to give them good rule and honest rulers. It leads to an instance the exact opposite to that, in which, at a village near Ladybraud, Colonel Broadwood and his men, while scattering Lord Roberts’ proclamation, were entertained at tea in the best houses, and were told that all the people _ were glad the British had come. Within the half hour that the little band of British enjoyed the hospitality of the place a galloper came to warn Broadwood that several thousands of Boers were approaching. The colonel and his men leaped upon their horses and made a hasty escape, but—as they fled —from the windows and the garden walls the Boers who had welcomed them fusiladed them with rifle fire. Both this form of deception with the other one called lying arc included in the definition of the Boer word “ slim.” To be “ slim ”is the aim of every man of that much-mixed blood. They openly boast of and glory in it. In the dictionary the word would stand thus: Slim —canning, tricky, able to get the better of all with whom one has to do.

Some of the well-to-do Free State Boers used to drive to battle in their Cape carts, a luxurious practice of which I never heard anywhere else, and wholly justifies the late Mr Stevens’s happy designation of them as “amateur soldiers.” When they had slain as many Baitish as they thought possible, and the tide of victory was setting towa ds the foe, they rolled back to their ranches in their comfortable carts (for aCtpo cart is a very roomy, heavy, two-wheeled carriage of somewhat the pai tern of an old-time chaise or gig,) or, more often, upon the fleet spare horse which they had left behind them in the morning. I saw this at Belmont and at Graspan ; and there also, I saw the wolfish tangle-bearded, wretchedly poor dead to whom I have made reference. I inferred, from there being the only dead on the kopjes, that the poor wretches, whoso surroundings showed that they had lived and slept in their rocky crannies for weeks, were laborers, and had been commanded to stay there, and continue a hopeless fight and to mask the retreat of the others. I know better now, and what I have learned reveals one of the most peculiar habits of the Boer in battle. They were left lying dead where they were killed because they wore poor, and because they had no relatives in the commando, at least none were able to carry their bodies away. Understand that the British find very few dead on the field, even after the hottest batilo. Thisis because a Boer who dies in baitle dies among his people, and they carry his body away. He has his brothers, sons, uncles, or cousins fighting by his side’ and it is as if fell on his own ranch. Immediately one of his relations takes away the body. The bodies that are left—and none are left unless the field is vacated by sudden flight—are the always despised foreigners, and those who have no kind at hand to care for them.