THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2596, 2 March 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER.

Is an interesting article which be contributes to the December Fortnightly, Lord Wolseley discusses the military qualities of the negro and the cause:-' to which they are due. "I know of nothing so debasing," says Lord Wolseley, "as cowardice in a people," Yet of the three peoples whose courage ho extols, he attributes the possession of it in the first to fear (the Ashantees), in the second to pride (Zulus), and in the third to bigotry (Soudanese). Of the old slave recruited West India regiments Lord Wolseley entertains a high opinion. The African slave had two great merits as a soldier—derived from his instinct as a savage and his training as a slave. "The African in our West India regiments has always displayed that childlike affection for, and implicit reliance upon, the officers who treated him well, which is so marked a feature in the character of the negro slave. Many amusing stories on this point were current at Government House when I was at Cape Coast Castle. A previous Governor, finding that his native servants were giveu to robbing him by daily carrying away bundles of things from his kitchen, had orders given to the sentry before his door that no one was to he allowed out carrying any parcel with him. Very shortly afterwards the Governor, in a hurry to consult his chief justice, put some papers into a despatch box to taka with him to the judge's house. He reckoned without his host, however, for the sentry, standing in front of him with bayonet at the charge, would not allow him to pass with the offending despatch box. The sentry said that his ' cop'ral' had told him not to allow any one with a bundle to pass, and the ' cop'ral's ' order was his law." Coming now to the Ashantees, whom Lord Wolseley describes as " a fine, brave fighting people," we are told that tlioir courage is based almost entirely on fear : If in battle the Ashantee turns to fly, there are men on the look out close behim who have positive orders to kill him without any question. If theso men in the second line fril to do their duty in this respect, their superiors again in tho third line, whom J may call the subaltern officers, will kill both them and the runaway coward. There are several lines of several grades behind the front fighting line, each having a similar preventive duty imposed upon it, until the general commanding is reached. If he Tails, if he is defeated, ho answers for his failure with his head when he returns to his king nt Coom.'issie. In the organisation of all civilised armies much stress is laid upon the chain of responsibility that runs through all ranks from the commander-in-chief to the private soldier. In the Ashantee army, or nation, for they aro one, the emblem of that responsibility is the executioner's knife. The man iu front feels that uuder every circumstance he incurs less risk by going forward than by rusniug away, for the latter at least is certain death. The refrain of the Ashantee war song, which they sang together in a shouting voice when going into action, was — If I go forward I die, If I go backward I die ; Better go forward and die. Finally, Lord Wolseley has something to say about "the influence which an intensely bigoted religious enthusiasm has exercised, and still exercises, over the Soudan negro":—"Tho strength of Muhdiism lies in this feeling. It has converted the most peaceable and inoffensive of Arab tribes into fierce warrior*, for whom death has no horrors. The Arab tribes who bcoome followers of the Mahdihave almost all been influenced by a sincerely religious sentiment, closely resembling that which spread over Europe at tho beginning of the lGth century. The abuses of tho Roman Criurch then prepared tho ground for Luther, as the laxity of morals and tho neglect of the teaching of the Koran among the Soudanese did for tho man who styled himself the'Mahdi,' What caused the Arab spearman to charge home upon our squares, from which they wcro shot down in hundreds, was solely the religious side of the question. Their religion taught them to risk everything in Allah's cause, for if they feel each man firmly believed that his spirit parsed at mice into that paradise which (he I'rophet kuew how to make so attractive to all Easterns. This spirit of religious enthusiasm is very infectious ; even the uegro soon caught it up, and when he entirely adopted it, his fierceness and his daring were scarcely los« remarkable than the fierceness and daring of tho Aiab dervish. It was tho dervishes who charged up to our squares at Abu Klea with reckless indifference to danger. Those dervishes died to a man, not only in the attacks upon us, but in the fights which took place before our arrival between them and the Mudir of Dongola."