CAPETOWN TO-DAY

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 121, 9 March 1901, Page 1

CAPETOWN TO-DAY

Edgar Wallace, in the Daily .Mai,]. After you have left the ship and have strolled round the town, yo;.u will return again . and ask the purser to let you remain as a boardei for the few days the mail boac is in dock. Y r ou will do this in preference to camping out on the beach or contenting yourself with the shakiest of shakedowns in the dirtiest of third-rate Capetown hotels. There will be a room empty in a day or so perhaps, but at present they ko full up. The guinta-a-day hostelry and the five-pounds-a-montb lodging-house have one story to tell—“full up.” Every week the boats from England bring fresh boarders, and every week aimless young men in Baden-Powell hats trudge the red-hot pavements of the capital in search of accommodation.

Capetown in these days is nee- ssarily a khaki town. It is rather depressing, this dirty yellow uniform, particularly when you have worn it yourself, marched in it, fought in it, and slept in it for the greater part of the ye; r* The novelty of the tint wore til months before these gay youth; e who sport it to-day in cab, cafe, ■oid bar, thought of doffing their turn i'Tulh for the mustard-hued turn.’.

A.* USHERED AMD NOT ASHAMED,

Also it is difficult for one who has a nodding acquaintance with dress regulations to reconcile himself to the artistic get-up of the Capetown warrior, for the Capetown warrior is a being beauti£i:.„ Ho is an imitative exquisite, an;, like the genius he is, -he htrim proved greatly upon the hard and fast rules that War Office fogies have laid down regarding the manner in which officers of His Majesty’s Army shall array themselves when in His Majesty’s highways. In the ffield the British; officer troubles very litttle concerning his personal appearance, carrying his intervals; but in Adderley street the British officer is a thing <jf beauty and a joy for the whole morning. Ths khaki tunic, whic,h several distinct regulations direct shall be fastened, is carefully tumajl down at „the Throat. to shqw - f thg snowiest of hunting-cravats, or evop an immaculate collar and tie I—hts Loots of white buckskin are newly pipeclayed; and the helmet which filled the bills at Meerut and Atbara is now discarded for the soft felt smasher,” which has the advantage of supplying, better than any other article of attire, the local colour necessary for the . South African campaigner. One sees many regiments,represented in Capetown. Bushmen jostle men of the Guards,. New Zealanders fraternise with Imperial Yeomen.

In the smoking-room of the City Club, painfully youthful subalterns of 'Militia expound ; ponderous theories on war and its conduct to good-natured captains ,of irregular horse, men who .wear weird whiskers and are unashamed. .POLICE ! police ! These khaki men have all been somewhere north. They have aii marched or ridden, and shot ho’ lessly at bushes which had, it was alleged, hidden Boers. They have all ■ instinctively ducked as wailing little messengers of deatn sang over their head'. -Now the war is over —to them- They stiil wear their uniforms, ,and in a sort of way identify themselves with the front, which has now become a place for which the nine o’clock tram, leaves nightly. After all, the war is over. It is now a brigandage, our enemy is a moonlighter, his colonial sympathiser, a boycotter. We arc sending our generaiS/home, and are increasing our rpiice force—which exactly explains the situation. The Boer army has, tp a.ll intends and purposes, ceased to exist. : ft has dissolved into murdering particles. Flying columns havje dwindled down to marauding bands. Night attacks, have sunk to the level of cowardly assassinations, and thije cry pf South Africa is .'no longer# wail for flank attacks, nut "rather that with Which the denizens dr Suburbia long made iis fjftniliac: “Give ns more police*.. "At the corner of -

■ij the Standard Bank, a man site it a table—a table littered witfc. lusty pamp’ets and covered with .lice clean newspapers. A placard pinned to fcho edge of the table calls upon the passer-by to sign a petition to the King. It is the new reform movement. It is the new grievance of the new Uitlander.. Kruger has passed, and with him hie corrupt regime. The franchise bogie has vanished into thin air P Now it is the capitalist, the demon capitalist, who is going to crush the Uitlander —the hateful capitalist whom Lord Roberts has placed in positions of trust in the gold reef city.

THE FOCUS OF DISLOYALTY. I rather think that it is not a real danger, but the refugee is getting very short of money, and anything that appears in the slightest degree to bo suggestive of further privations produces a kind of panic—the panic of desperate men hard up. Soon the refugees will begin returning to the Rand, and the questions which are now of life and death will resolve themselves into those mild phases of social and economic legislation, the discussion of which enlivens the proceedings of town councils.

At present the reformers’ troubles are very High Politics. There is in Capetown a class of refugee which probably will never trouble the relief committee, aui takes only the most languid inten d in the possibilities of a spt C y opening of the Rand,; a class wh (fe is only 1 moved to gleeful excite me.

by intelligence of a sot however temporary—to' Britmu arm?. Good souls, these donor d Hollander families and their Capttown friends. The ladies are so charming, so frankly disloyal, and yet so ready to bow to the inevitable, that the officers of the garrison who turn up in time for afternoon tea vote them “ no end of good sorts, don’t you know !” If I were asked what is the most dangerous centre of sedition in South Africa, I should without hesitation award the questionable, honour to Capetowa. There are the same old rebellious circles—stronger numerically than they were of yore—babbling the same traitorous sentiments with increased bitterners. There is the same coterie of traitorous women binding themselves into a thousand and one high-faintin’ leagues—little rocks of discontent that serve to indicac the hidden reefs of hate and treason,.

FOOLISH AND LOYAL. Yet in spite of their unmistakeable detestation of everything that is British, and their alleged love for their country—which in all cases means Pretoriau social circles—there is nothing of the Joan of Arc about these bellicose dames. Perhaps a Charlotte Cor lay might ba found, who, strengthened in her purpose by the knowledge of kidgiove military retribution, would be willing to risk a mouth’s imprisonmerit devised by staff cuing graduates, by slaying a general e two, or even a correspondent.

Meanwhile the loyal refugees the foolish ones, increase in nmutt’ daily. Almost day by day a? t-h ships arrive, but mostly on the bi mail days, they come docking! from England, till one feels incline to stop the stream of men the straggle from the docks to the tow and ask them if they can roadthey do not understand that tl Rand is still closed and the Refug Relief Funds are running low; ask them if they do not realise th unless they have funds to last the for at least six months they mig as well return to England again the next steamer.

And so week by week the town hidden by the new-come swar: It is full, it is more than full, but titanic hand seems to shake it ii compactness, and then there is roc for the last new comers. Koo though they overflow and somes over the edge into the vague " country.” Overcrowded, but st room for all. Tightly packed a trickling into Suburbia, but si room—and then—well, then, little blue and red flag crawls laz up to the flagstaff on Signal H another liner has been sighted, a the shaking up begins all o again.