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MENTION has several times been made of B.-P.'s contributions to the Press, both as author and as artist. In addition to records of experience, which were published in such journals as Badminton, Blackwood's and the Cornhill, he did much occasional journalism. In 1896, for instance, he contributed a series of illustrated articles to the Daily Graphic under the title 'My Hats'; these were of a reminiscent character. They were later republished in The Greyfriar, a quarterly 'Chronicle in Black and White by Carthusians' which was founded in 1884. This was at that time a most unusual journal for a school; it was designed to encourage original work with pen and pencil, and work from past and present pupils was happily mixed. B.-P. was a faithful contributor, and some of his liveliest articles and sketches appeared in its pages.
The initial urge for this journalism was the need, as has been said, for supplementing the meagre income of a subaltern, but there was something more in it than that. Like most people with an artist's visual memory, he felt the need for recording on paper not only his experiences but his ideas and practical knowledge. One result was the series of small military handbooks which he wrote --- he was indeed one of the pioneers of a type of instructive manual with which we are all now familiar.
The first was an aide-mémoire entitled On Vedette (1883) which is chiefly notable as an early example of his ability to organize information in a memorable form; this was followed in 1884 by Reconnaissance and Scouting, described on the title-page as 'A practical course of instruction, in twenty plain lessons'. The ideas and general scheme of the book were to be more fully developed with experience, but even in this early form the outline of his future work in Scouting, both for military and for boy training purposes, can be clearly seen. His method of presentation was always the same; general ideas are briefly expressed and are then supported by instances drawn from his own experience, or from the experience of others, or from books. Thus he advises his readers to study from Life on the Mississippi how Mark Twain learnt the art of piloting a steamer, as a study in the value of observation. 'Observation' is indeed a key-word to the understanding of his distinctive methods of training. Its meaning may be gathered from the following quotation from Reconnaissance and Scouting.
Nothing should ever escape the eye of a scout; he should have eyes at the back of his head; he should take a pleasure in noticing little trifles or distant objects that have not struck the attention of his comrades.
Always notice all peculiar features and landmarks while going over strange ground, especially by frequently looking backward so that you may be able to find your way back again by them.
As this small book was purely instructional it lacks those lively sketches which became a feature of his later publications, but it contains some of the best examples of his own work as a maker of maps; one for instance, 'Sketch of road from Claygate to Farley', is an excellent specimen of its class. His next book was Cavalry Instruction, published in 1885. This was based on a course of lectures he gave when Adjutant of the 13th Hussars, and proved popular with both officers and men. That is not surprising, for he had an attractive and often surprising way of presenting his material, and his use of chalk and blackboard was always effective. He took the greatest care in preparation; sketch-maps, sets of instructions and special notes would be duplicated, and large diagrams and charts drawn to demonstrate the main points.
Although this book keeps closely to its title and covers the obvious subjects of cavalry training, it also includes much which it had not been customary to bother about; patrolling and scouting, reconnaissance and camping, reports and sketches were dealt with in theory and practice. Once more the familiar note is struck.
A man, to be a good scout, should get himself into the way of noticing every peculiar point of the bit of country he is passing through. If you practise this every time you are out on the march, or particularly when on detached duty across country at a field day, you will find that in a short time you will so readily notice and remember the different features of the ground that not only will you be able to find your way back with case, but will also be able to jot a sketch of the country down on paper on return to barracks.
The German scouts are said to have got quite a serious cast of countenance from gazing constantly at the country over which they pass. Well, I don't suppose the consequences would be quite so bad with any of you, but at the same time it shows how they practise this most useful art. A scout should, as it were, have eyes at the back of his head, and see trifling things, both near as well as in the far distance, that would escape an ordinary man's eye; and from little insignificant signs he should be able to 'put this and that together' and find out important particulars.
More must be said about Aids to Scouting, the book he planned when bear-hunting in India. He brought the manuscript home on leave in 1899 and had it ready for the publishers just before he sailed for South Africa. He insisted that the book should be published at a popular price so that the private could afford to buy a copy. The proofs were sent out to him on the 1st September and were received back in England on the 23rd October. They had been amongst the last letters which got through the lines before Mafeking was besieged.
When the small, dumpy volume was published in November 1899, it naturally attracted popular attention, for by then B.-P.'s name was on everyone's lips. But apart from this publicity the value of its teaching was so obvious even to the layman that individuals purchased hundreds of copies and sent them to regiments embarking for South Africa; the Australian Government bought thousands of copies; questions were asked in the House of Commons as to whether it was being supplied to the troops and in consequence the Stationery Office made large orders.
It may safely be claimed that had the type of training outlined in Aids to Scouting, and given to his men in the 5th Dragoon Guards, been common throughout the army, some of the disasters of the Boer War would have been avoided, for time and again British troops found themselves at the mercy of the Boers simply because preliminary scouting had not been effectively carried out. The army attitude is well expressed in a standard book, Major Callwell's Small Wars. In the 1899 edition the following comment is made on the subject of scouting, 'For work of this kind trained European soldiers are of little use'. No wonder Aids to Scouting opens with the words, 'The importance of scouting and reconnaissance cannot be overrated, although it is, as yet, only partially recognized in our Army'.
The book begins with a discussion of the qualities of character needed in a scout --- this was the starting-point for most discussion of the subject by B.-P. whether he was thinking of men or boys. The problem he had constantly in mind was --- how can desirable qualities of character be developed in a practical way? Indeed, the word 'character' came to mean for him a particular kind of character, and his use of it in this sense should he noted. Thus for the scout he particularizes the following qualities --- pluck, self-reliance, confidence and discretion. A typical sentence comes at the end of the first chapter:
One so often finds men full of pluck who would scout into the mouth of hell if you asked them --- they would go slap-dash, bang in; but what one wants is a man, who besides having the pluck to go there, has the discretion to see how he is going to get back again with the information of what it is like.
The chapter headings indicate the ground covered: 'Finding the Way', 'Keeping Yourself Hidden', 'Tracking', 'Reading the Spoor', 'Sketching', 'Reporting', 'Spying', and so on. The organization of the training in a regiment has some points of importance. The men were to be trained in small units of six; in the field, the scouts were to be sent out in pairs or singly. Many old-timers must have been shocked by the introduction of games as a method of training, and some B.-P. devised have now become familiar to many a boy; such as 'Spider and Fly', 'Flag Stealing', 'Despatch Riding' and 'The Missing Letter'. Competitions in sketching and tracking, in quick sight and reconnaissance, and in cross-country riding were also used as a means of capturing enthusiasm.
The book found unexpected audiences. The '90's' was the Sherlock Holmes period (Study of Sherlock Holmes' is one of the subjects of special training) and the devotees of the great detective must have been thrilled to find in this small book examples drawn from the actual experience of a living man of the science of observation and deduction. Two specimens must serve to show how B.-P. made his subject live.
The first illustrates how much can be deduced from even one sign.
We were camped near a high hill in the enemy's country, and we believed that he knew nothing of our being there. So taking a few men with me I started in the night to go and reconnoitre the enemy's position some six or eight miles away. Passing round the hill at the back of our camp I suddenly saw, high up on the hill-side, a quick flash and a short flicker of light evidently given by a match being struck, and then all was darkness again. But this one sign gave me much important information. It showed that the enemy knew of our presence, and had a party up on the hill, alert and watching our camp. This I gathered because the hill was not generally occupied by people, so if anyone were there they would be there for some special purpose; also these natives fear going about in the dark by themselves, so if there were one there must be a party of them up there; and a light being struck by one of them in the middle of the night showed that they were awake, which was unusual with them unless on some specially important duty.
Our plan had been to reconnoitre the enemy's main position secretly. and then to make a night march and a surprise on it, but with a party of the enemy thus watching our camp such a course of action would be useless, as they would signal our move (by means of an alarm fire) so soon as it began.
So on the strength of this one flash of a match our whole plan of action was altered.
The second example illustrates how the game of observation and deduction can be played on a country walk.
EXAMPLE OF DEDUCTIONS FROM SIGNS
Locality- A mountain path in Kashmir.
Weather: Dry and fine. There had been heavy rain two days before, but the ground had dried the same night.
Signs observed: Passing a tree stump, I noticed a stone lying on it about the size of a coco-nut. I wondered for the moment how it came to be there, and soon discovered the reason.
On the stump, and also sticking to the stone were some bits of bruised walnut rind, green, but dried up. Bits of shell of about four walnuts were lying about the ground near a leaning rock about 30 yards away south of the stump. The only walnut tree in sight was 150 yards north of the stump.
At the foot of the stump, Just where a man would stand to use the stone on it, was a cake of hardened mud that had evidently fallen from the sole of a grass sandal.
DEDUCTION
That the man was carrying a load: Had it been anyone not carrying a load he or she would have sat down on the stump or close to it; instead of that he had gone 30 yards away to where a slanting rock was; this would support his load while he leant back against it to rest and eat his walnuts (whose shells were lying there). Women do not carry loads on their backs.
He was on a long journey: As he wore sandals instead of bare feet.
Towards the south: He had got the walnuts 150 yards north of the stump, had stopped there to break them with a stone, and had gone 30 yards further on his road, to the rock, to eat them.
He had passed there two days ago: The cake of mud off his sandals showed that when he was there the ground was wet, and the dried husk of the walnuts corroborated this deduction.
Total information: A man had passed here two days ago, on a long journey, carrying a load southward.
This constant stressing of observation and deduction was such a well-known characteristic that B.-P. was sometimes challenged to read the story of tracks and other signs. Occasionally the challenger was not above pulling B.-P.'s leg, as the following story he told against himself shows.
I was taken down a peg in my boasted tracking by a young lady in England. She was the daughter of the late Lord Meath. As we were walking in the gardens of Sion House she suddenly pointed to footprints on the path and asked what they meant.
I said indulgently: 'A common or garden cat has recently passed this way.
'Yes, even I could tell that,' she replied, 'but I can further tell what was the colour of the cat --- can you?'
Thus put on my mettle I set to work to examine any twig or spray that might have caught a hair from the animal, much on the principle by which Zadig was able to say that a roan horse of sixteen hands high had passed through a wood.
But search as I would I could find no clue that would indicate the colour of that cat. My companion looked at the track again closely, and said: 'Yes, I am not mistaken. It was a light tortoise-shell cat.'
I also looked more searchingly on the ground but it gave back no helpful sign. At long last I confessed myself beaten. 'How did you arrive at the colour?' I asked. 'I saw the cat,' she replied.
A still more unexpected audience was found in the educational world. Some schools discovered in this small military handbook useful ideas on training children. The governess to the son of Field-Marshal Allenby also put some of the suggestions into practice, as the following incident related by B.-P. reveals.
The Brigadier-General, as he was at that time, was riding to his home after a field day when from the branches of a tree overhead his little son called to him, 'Father, you are shot. I am in ambush, and you have passed under me without seeing me. Remember, you should always look upwards as well as around you'.
So the General looked upwards and saw not only his small son above him but also, near the top of the tree, the new governess lately imported from Miss Charlotte Mason's training school at Ambleside.
Her explanation of the situation was that a vital point in up-to-date education was the inculcation of observation and deduction, and that the practical steps for this were given in the little handbook for soldiers, Aids to Scouting.
This incident was merely one among the various field stunts from that book which might be put into practice by her pupil and herself,
For example, they might, as another exercise, creep about unseen but seeing all the time, and noting down everything that the General did; they might lead him off on some wild-goose chase while they purloined some tangible proof of their having invaded his sanctum.
Taken as a warning of what he might expect, I dare say the governess's explanation opened the General's eyes pretty widely, if only in regard to his own future security against ambuscades and false alarms.
But when the General told me of his experience my eyes also were opened to the fact that there could be an educative value underlying the principles of Scout training.
The boy of this story was Michael Allenby who lost his life in the 1914-1918 war.
Then, the enterprising editor of Boys of the Empire serialized some of the contents of Aids to Scouting under the heading of 'The Boy Scout'--the first use of the term.
These uses of a manual intended for the soldier came as a surprise, and they set on foot a train of ideas which was to see fruition in a more famous book Scouting for Boys.
BADEN-POWELL arrived home on leave in June 1899. One of his first engagements was to take part in a theatrical Matinee with other Carthusians to raise funds for the school mission. Mr. Cyril Maude was the organizer and recalls that 'we did a song and dance together, he as a head master and I as a schoolboy. Armed with a large swish, he chased me, dancing all over the stage. He never failed to come regularly to rehearsals, and one day he turned up in full uniform having just been to a levee'.
But such diversions were not to last long. Ever since the Jameson Raid, the feeling had grown that sooner or later an armed clash was inevitable with the Boers in South Africa. There would be no point here in discussing the causes and merits of the 'wretched Boer War'--- as B.-P. termed it. Five years afterwards he was to write:
I saw again, with pleasure, on this trip, many of my old friends among the Boers, and we compared war-notes with mutual interest. I have always had a feeling of sympathy with the Boers, and when 1 was on a joint Commission of Boer and British delegates in Swaziland in 1889, I got to know and understand them, and to recognize the many sterling qualities which they possess.
As we have seen he had a better appreciation of the dimensions and character of the military problem than the home authorities, and had his reports and maps of 1884 on the Tugela region been appreciated, some of the early mistakes might have been avoided.
But in its high Imperialist mood --- the last manifestation, it is to be hoped, of that kind of national hysteria --England light-heartedly assumed that the Boers could not withstand trained troops for more than a few months, and the 'war will be over by Christmas!' --- an optimistic statement which we have heard more than once since 1899.
On the 8th July B.-P. was gazetted for 'Extra Regimental Employ'. He has himself recorded how he was appointed. One day he was lunching at his club:
George Gough, A.D.C. to Lord Wolseley, sitting at a table near by, suddenly came across and said: 'I thought you were in India. I have just cabled to you to come home as the Commander-in-Chief wants to see you.
With such coolness as I could command I said: 'Well, here I am'; and after lunch we went down together to the War Office and I was once more shown into Lord Wolseley's room.
He had a knack of trying to spring surprises on you and was all the better pleased if you were not bowled out by them. I think it was his way of judging a man's character, and I took care accordingly not to be caught out if I could help it.
On this occasion he said: 'I want you to go to South Africa.'
With the air of a well-trained butler I said: 'Yes, sir.'
'Well, can you go on Saturday next?' (This was Monday.)
'No, sir.'
'Why not?'
Knowing well the sailings of the South African steamers, I replied: 'There's no ship on Saturday, but I can go on Friday.'
He burst out laughing and then proceeded to tell me that there was danger of war with the Boers, and he wanted me to go and quietly raise two battalions of Mounted Rifles and organize the Police Forces on the North-West Frontier of Cape Colony, in readiness should trouble arise.
He had already appointed my Staff, Lord Edward Cecil, Grenadier Guards, to be my chief staff officer, and Major Hanbury-Tracy, Royal Horse Guards, to be staff officer.
He then asked me what my address would be before sailing, and I said that if he didn't want me in London I should be at Henley for the boat races.
'What about kit?'
'I have got all that is necessary, and --- South Africa is a civilized country.'
He then took me in to see Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State for War, who accorded me the high-sounding title of 'Commander-in-Chief, North-West Frontier Forces'.
Having had my instructions I had by that evening formulated in my own mind my plan of campaign.
Before leaving England, he paid a visit to Dr. Haig Brown at the Master's Lodge, Charterhouse. As they shook hands at parting, B.-P. said, 'I hope they send me to a warm corner'. On his return to his study, Haig Brown remarked to a friend, 'I do not know what it will be, but that man will do something which will move the world'.
B.-P.'s instructions were:
(i) to raise two regiments of mounted infantry,
(ii) in the event of war to organize the defence of the Rhodesia and Bechuanaland frontiers, and,
(iii) as far as possible to keep forces of the enemy occupied in this direction away from their own main forces.
No man could have been better suited by character and training to the carrying out of such general instructions, for they left much to his own discretion and initiative. The Times History of the War in South Africa describes him in these words:
A bold rider and a sportsman, he was devoted to his profession, and had shown much originality in his methods of training and instruction. The uncompromising enemy of hidebound rules and unintelligent drill, he made it his aim to develop initiative and individual responsibility, not only in junior officers but m every man of a regiment, and always laid great stress on the use of observation and intelligence in war.
Another character-sketch is taken from the Official History of the War in South Africa:
Baden-Powell was a soldier of a type which had become uncommon in European service. With him training with and command of regular cavalry, and experience upon the Staff, had been but a foundation, well and truly laid, for those less exact parts of the science of war which had been almost ignored, if not actually disdained, by the military school from which he sprang. That school, with its centuries of honours, he by no means despised; his own regiment, the 5th Dragoon Guards, he had trained in scrupulous accordance with its precepts, and none knew or taught better than he the value of strict regulations. His originality lay in a certain unquenchable and almost exotic attraction towards the unusual in warfare; in a preference for setting precedents rather than following them, for making rather than adopting experiments; and he was at once at home with any description of comrades whom the emergency which he courted might produce to meet it. A professional soldier by training, he was a soldier of fortune by predilection; and if, like many such, he was naturally adroit and prompt in minor tactics, his genuine education had endowed him with more soundness of strategy and a stronger grasp of organization than is usual with leaders of his tendency.
When B.-P. arrived at Cape Town in July, he was immediately faced with two problems. The Cape Government was not enthusiastic for energetic measures, and it was not permissible openly to recruit men in the Colony for an irregular force. Sir William Butler, then General in Command of the Cape forces, was obstructive and refused to authorize sufficient stores to be sent to Mafeking, which B.-P. had already selected as the most convenient centre for mobilizing men and stores. Mafeking came just within the Cape Colony frontier, and any open assembling of troops would have been too provocative to the South African Republic. B.-P., however, knew that at Mafeking were stores and arms left over from the Matabele Campaign. It was only after an appeal to the High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, that the path was smoothed. But even Milner could not solve the financial problem of paying for supplies; it was as if B.-P. had been proposing to raise a company of freebooters!
Supplies were only forthcoming when B.-P.'s chief staff officer, Lord Edward Cecil., the Prime Minister's son, gave his note of hand for £250,000.
B.-P. did not waste time arguing at Cape Town but set out for Mafeking and Bulawayo, the two centres where he felt sure there would be more chance of raising his force. Lt.-Colonel C. O. Hore was to command the Protectorate Regiment and Lt.-Colonel. Herbert Plumer the Rhodesian Regiment; the latter was particularly welcome as he and B.-P. had cooperated so effectively together in Matabeleland and Mashonaland.
It was not easy to recruit the right type of man. There were plenty of loafers --- and B.-P. always had as much dislike for such as Rhodes himself, but in default of better material some had to be enrolled. The period of enlistment was three months, or the period of war if war broke out, and the pay was five shillings a day. Amongst the men of Bulawayo were many who were quite willing to join for war but were reluctant to leave their businesses and employment otherwise. So they were trained in their spare time and proved eventually the most reliable element in Plumer's regiment.
As Mafeking itself was 'out-of-bounds', B.-P. fixed the Headquarters of the (Mafeking) Protectorate Regiment at Ramathlabama just on the Bechuanaland-Cape frontier, north of Mafeking. This tiny place had been the starting-point for Jameson's disastrous raid.
Training had to be done rapidly, and here the method of working in small units which B.-P. made his own, proved the best. Authority was decentralized; responsibility was placed on the younger officers and N.C.O.s for training their men; the minimum of drill was employed and greater emphasis was put on shooting and horsemanship; there were frequent field days and sham fights. It was a triumph of organization and inspiration that within two months the two regiments were ready for the field.
Three extracts from his letters home give an impression of this active period of preparation. The first shows that he had acquired a typewriter; the letter is dated 11th August 1898:
This is my first attempt at typing, my dear Mother, so that you must forgive mistakes. I am on my way down to Mafeking from Bulawayo, a two days' journey, and 1 took this machine with me as 1 have a lot of writing to do, and I thought this journey would be a good opportunity for learning, and I am playing off my maiden efforts on you, for which I hope you will forgive me. It is, or will be, when I get into it a little more, a great success, and quite gets over the difficulty of writing in the train.
A fortnight later he wrote from Bulawayo.
To-morrow I am going to live in camp about three miles out of the town, coming into my office every day. in this way I shall get fresh air, exercise, and save expense. It is very interesting preparing for every game that the Boers may try to play off on us, for all our railway and telegraph lines are laid along their border. So they can cut us oft at any moment. Their spies are continually among us. All very healthy and well.
The third extract is dated 22nd September.
In the train again, running up once more to Bulawayo after a very busy time at Mafeking, buying waggons and mules and organizing the defence of the railway, which run for the greater part of its length so close along the border that the Boers have only to run in and blow up the line and run back again into their own ground. Now I am on a short trip to Bulawayo to make sure that all is right and ready there before war begins. After that I shall return to Mafeking and make that my headquarters, as it is nearer to the first scene of action, and is for the moment the most important point of my command.
The comment in the Official History is worth quoting:
It will be seen that Baden-Powell from the first had scope for the display of one of his peculiar characteristics, that of making bricks without straw against time. The creation of a modern corps demands as much skill, and even more knowledge, than the command of it; the qualities necessary for both will not often be found in one man. By the end of September Baden-Powell had his two regiments raised, horsed, equipped and trained, their duties assigned, their pay and maintenance provided for, their economy settled and their tactics --- much of which were of a peculiar pattern --- laid down and fully practised. In completing all this work Baden-Powell had been ably and energetically assisted. His officers were men after his own heart, keen and adventurous, and like himself animated by that disciplined unrest which not only leads men out of the beaten path, but empowers them to beat out paths of their own.
By the end of September it was clear that nothing but a miracle could prevent war. Up to then B.-P. had been acting under the Colonial Office; he and his forces were then transferred to the regular army under Sir George White who had arrived in Natal to take command of the Natal Army which was reinforced with troops from India. These included B.-P.'s own regiment, the 5th Dragoon Guards. Writing in 1936, he said, 'When I heard that my regiment had been brought over from India to Natal, I applied to be sent back to rejoin it, and by way of strengthening my request I said to the Adjutant-General that my regiment was as precious to me as a wife (N.B. I was a bachelor then), and that I should hate to see another man commanding what was my regiment, just as much as he --- the Adjutant-General --- would hate to see some other man trotting his wife around.' But his request was refused; had he been allowed to rejoin the 5th Dragoon Guards he would have been besieged with them in Ladysmith.
Now that his force had become regular instead of irregular, he at once went to Mafeking. He detached Plumer and his Rhodesian Regiment to march from Bulawayo to Tuli with the following instructions:
The duty of the force under your command is:
1. To defend the border as far as it can be carried out from the neighbourhood of Tuli as a centre.
2. By display of strength to induce the Boers to detail a strong force to protect their northern district.
3. To create diversions in the north of the Transvaal, co-operating with the invasion of the south by our main force, if necessary advancing into the Transvaal for the purpose. No portion of your force is to cross the frontier till you receive orders. instructions will be sent to you as to the date for co-operation with the other column.
How brilliantly Plumer carried out these orders cannot be described here. 'The other column' was under Hore, and was stationed at Mafeking. B.-P. even managed to persuade the Boers that a third column was operating somewhere between Mafeking and Bulawayo. He did this by sending a letter to an Englishman who had settled just within the Transvaal border; he knew that the man was dead and that the letter would therefore be opened by the postal authorities. The letter hinted that a British force would make a raid into the Transvaal in the direction of his farm. A force of 1,200 Boers was despatched --- as B.-P. had hoped --- to watch the district. Some years later the commandant of this force was describing the incident to B.-P., and suddenly he broke off his narrative and said, 'Did you write that letter?' He harboured no ill-will for the deception; indeed throughout the Boers admired B.-P.'s ingenuity, however irritating his devices might prove.
Meanwhile B.-P. was trying to persuade the Cape authorities to send him more artillery. At last they telegraphed to say that two 4.7 guns were on their way. The train was eagerly awaited, but when it arrived there were no guns visible; then two small seven-pounders were found in the guard's van. A Matabele veteran recognized one as 'old Crooked-tailed Sal' which even in Rhodesia had proved unreliable. A mistake had been made in using the code, and the word for 4.7 had been substituted for seven-pounder.
War was declared on the 11th October, and immediately Cronje with 9,000 Boers advanced on Mafeking, which to his surprise refused to be frightened. The siege had begun.
B.-P. described the siege as 'a game of bluff from start to finish. It was not what you would call a proper military feat of arms, but just a minor episode in the course of the greater campaign'. And a modern historian has described how the little town 'sustained a gallant siege upon a heartening diet of gaiety and wild improvisation'.
Two extreme views have been expressed on the importance of the siege on the course of the war. In the enthusiasm of the time it was sometimes regarded as an event of the greatest moment; the reaction to this exaggerated claim was to cry the whole affair down as a kind of stunt, ,and even as a piece of self-advertisement on the part of B.-P. The latter accusation has frequently been made against him, but he neither went out to seek notoriety, nor to gain it by an exaggerated modesty. The truth about the importance of the siege lies between these two extremes.
Mafeking was a place of importance for the reasons so clearly set out in the Official History:
Especially was the native question here paramount; and in this the interests of the British and Boers at once clashed and were identical. Whilst both desired above all to keep quiescent the warlike tribes, whom the advances of both in past years had thrust mainly out to the westward beyond the railway, and northward across the Limpopo, yet each --- foreseeing this to be impossible should conflict arise between themselves --- was anxious to impress the tribesmen with his own superiority by initial successes. For this reason, amongst others, Baden-Powell. decided as the prospect of a siege became imminent to make Mafeking his own Headquarters. That town was the centre of a district peopled by nearly a quarter of a million natives, and itself harboured a black population which outnumbered the white by nearly six to one. Besides this, Mafeking had strategic and other claims to become the pivot of operations. It was the half-way house between Cape Colony and Rhodesia and the outpost for both. It contained large supplies of food, forage and railway material; and though --- these things being only of value as means to an end --- it is usually a military blunder to allow the guardianship of them to dictate immobility, the loss of them here would have been tantamount to defeat in the eyes of the natives, their transference elsewhere would have taken too long, and their dispersion into weakly guarded posts would have been equivalent to their loss. Finally, and most important, Mafeking was situated on the flank of the Transvaal, impressing Johannesburg and Pretoria along the lines of the Witwatersrand, as Kimberley made its influence felt up on Bloemfontein along the line of the Modder. The enemy, therefore, could not ignore the presence of a British garrison there, and Baden-Powell's object (see No. 3 of his instructions) was above all to attract attention.
Mafeking was without either natural or artificial defences. It stands on the right bank of the Molopo River amidst the veldt. The railway reaches the river from the south-west and then runs north between the native stadt and the town itself. This at that time occupied an area roughly square in shape, each side being about a thousand yards long. To the south about 1,500 yards from the river was an isolated hill about 200 feet high, named Cannon Kopje, which had been rudely fortified by Sir Charles Warren in 1884, but long since abandoned. This was the only prominent feature in a bare landscape. The water reservoir lay to the north-east of the town and was soon cut off by the Boers, but wells were dug and the water supply assured.
B.-P. began to fortify the town at the earliest possible moment. The scheme devised was most elaborate and effective. Some sixty forts or earthworks were constructed at intervals on a perimeter some seven miles long; communication trenches made access relatively sheltered, and an extensive telephone system connected with the headquarters at the south of the town simplified the problem of issuing instructions quickly. There was also an interior line of defence drawn close to the town for repelling assaults.
The weakest part was the native town which stretched irregularly along both sides of the river; this was inhabited by the Baralong tribe under its headman, Wessels. Though at first there was some unrest, they remained loyal to the British, and this was in large measure due to the care with which B.-P. saw to their welfare.
An unwelcome arrival just before the siege was Dr. Jameson. B.-P. realized that if he remained the Boers would stop at nothing to capture the town and the leader of the Raid. So Dr. Jim was unceremoniously hustled out of the town to his annoyance. Quite apart from the provocation of his presence, he might have proved as great a nuisance as Cecil Rhodes was to Kekewich in Kimberley. Rhodes indeed did send some messages to B.-P. telling him what to do, but their reception was far from encouraging.
The population of Mafeking at the opening of the siege consisted of about 1,500 whites and 8,000 natives. The garrison was made up as follows:
Protectorate Regiment (Lt.-Colonel Hore), 489 officers and men; British South Africa Police, 91; Cape Police, 103; Bechuanaland Rifles, 82; the Town Guard, 302; Railway and other civilians, 116; Cape Boy (coloured) contingent, 68; total 1,251. Of these, 576 were equipped with magazine rifles and the rest with obsolete Martini-Henry single loaders. The woefully inadequate artillery consisted of four 7-pr. guns, one 1-pr. Hotchkiss, and one 2-in. Nordenfeldt. These were far from serviceable; fittings were worn, carriages in disrepair, and the fuses so shrunken with age that they had to be wedged into the shells with paper. It was with such antiquated weapons that Mafeking awaited the Boers equipped with long-range guns of the latest Krupp manufacture.
Until the Boers cut the line on both sides of the town, great use was made by the defenders of an improvised armoured train. B.-P. was not going to be content with pure defence; whenever an opportunity occurred he attacked ---his aim throughout was to keep the Boers puzzled, and in that he thoroughly succeeded. Thus on the 14th October, the day after the town was invested, he ordered out the armoured train to attack a party of Boers advancing from the direction of Ramathlabama. As he watched events from the lookout tower erected above his headquarters, he telephoned his orders for troops to go out in support. The result was a successful small action which heartened the defenders and made the Boers more chary of attacking. This was but the prelude to many such sorties. Thus there was a very successful night attack on the enemy's advanced trenches on the 24th October, which were carried at the point of the bayonet.
But a small garrison could not achieve much in that way against 9,000 armed men. So cunning had to be employed to deceive the enemy. The following extract from B.-P.'s general instructions set the pattern.
Bluff the enemy with show of force as much as you like, but don't let yourself get too far out of touch with your own side without orders, lest you draw them on into difficulties in their endeavour to support you.... Do not always wait for orders, if you see the situation demands action. Don't be afraid to act for fear of making a mistake ---'A man who never made a mistake never made anything.' If you find you have made a mistake, carry it through nevertheless with energy. Pluck and dash have often changed a mistake into a success.
Early in the siege an unintended effect added to the Boer bewilderment. Two trucks of dynamite were in the railway siding and as these would obviously be a constant source of danger, it was decided to get rid of them. They were pushed forward out of the town by an unattached engine which abandoned them at the top of a gradient. As the trucks slid down the line, the Boers, thinking this was another armoured train, attacked and were considerably astonished when their firing blew up the whole lot.
Another ruse may be described in B.-P.'s own words:
For instance, we laid explosive mines all round the place. They were contained in small boxes and were made up by an expert in a certain building and were then carried with the greatest care by natives, who were warned against the disastrous explosion that would follow if they should drop one of them. These boxes were carefully buried at different points round the front of the town, and wires were laid connecting them with the central observation post. Notices were posted in English and Dutch, warning the inhabitants that if they allowed their cattle or children to wander there it would be at their own risk.
We gave notice that on a certain day trial would be made with one or more of the mines to see that they were in working order, so people were warned to keep clear of the east front between 12 and 2. Between 12 and 2, with everybody safe indoors, Major Panzera and I went out and stuck a stick of dynamite into an ant-bear hole. We lit a fuse and ran and took cover until the thing went off, which it did with a splendid roar and a vast cloud of dust.
Out of the dust emerged a man with a bike who happened to be passing, and he pedalled off as hard as he could go for the Transvaal, eight miles away, where no doubt he told how by merely riding along the road he had hit off a murderous mine. The boxes were actually filled with nothing more dangerous than sand!
It was little use trying to keep anything secret in Mafeking --- there were too many spies about who could easily pass into the Boer lines at which B.-P. wanted the enemy to know about could he passed on in the form he found most useful for his own purposes. The information about the land-mines was not to be the only misleading news the Boers received.
It was part of the genius of B.-P. that he stimulated others to use their wits and inventive powers; there was never a touch of jealousy in his character, and he welcomed any good suggestions, whatever their source, with as much glee as he revelled in those of his own devising. One civilian was an expert in the use of acetylene lighting; his skill was used in devising a portable searchlight made out of a biscuit tin nailed on top of a pole. It would be turned on at night at one fort, and then rushed off to another place and a few flashes made before being taken to a third position. The Boers got the impression that the place was equipped with a series of searchlights and therefore were discouraged from making the night attacks which B.-P. feared most of all.
He invited all to contribute ideas. Thus there was a public competition for the best life-sized dummy figures representing men of the Defence Forces; these had to be equipped with mechanical arms; they were effectively used in the forts and trenches to draw the fire of Boer snipers and gunners.
Each of these forts was held by fifteen to twenty men who had with them food and water for forty-eight hours. New forts, some dummy. were constantly being constructed in varied positions. Shelters were excavated for the townspeople, and by a system of alarms, it was possible to get every woman and child under bomb-proof cover, and every man at his post.
The first shell was fired into Mafeking at 9.20 a.m. on the 16th October; firing continued until 2.15 p.m. when Cronje sent a messenger with a flag of truce demanding the surrender of the town, 'to prevent further bloodshed'; to this B.-P. replied that so far the only blood shed was that of a chicken. Some critics have carped at this and other seemingly light-hearted messages, but B.-P. did little without good reason, and he knew the value of even persiflage in keeping up the spirits of his men and the townspeople, and its equally depressing effect on Boer mentality. Throughout the siege he acted on the principle of letting the inhabitants have the fullest news possible; copies of letters between him and the Boer Commandant were posted up or printed in the Mafeking Mail, a news-sheet which was produced daily throughout the siege and, as white paper ran short, was printed on a queer assortment of red, green, blue and orange papers intended for other purposes. The first issue appeared on the 1st November with the sub-heading 'issued daily, shells permitting'.
There were four war correspondents shut up in the town: J. E. Neilly of the Pall Mall Gazette; Major Baillie of the Morning Post; J. A. Hamilton of The Times, and Vere Stent (who has been quoted on the Matabeleland Campaign) of Reuter. Early in the siege, B.-P. explained to them that he would not permit criticism of the conduct of the siege or of the officers, since the correspondents could not have possession of all the facts on which to base a sound judgement. The first three later wrote books on Mafeking, Hamilton's being the most critical.
The strain was lessened by the observance of Sunday as a day of truce on both sides, and this resulted in yet another bit of bluff. B.-P. describes how the Boers
used to come out of their forts to stretch their legs. We could see that their forts were surrounded by barbed wire, because of the upright posts and the careful way in which the men lifted their legs over the wire. So we put up barbed wire round ours. We had no barbed wire, but we put up forests of posts and then on Sundays when our men stepped out to stretch their legs they lifted these with the greatest care and difficulty over imaginary barbed wire --- a performance which fully impressed the enemy watching them.
But Sunday was the great day for recreation. After morning services, there was always some kind of outdoor sport or amusement and later in the day a concert. Guy Fawkes's Day fell on a Sunday and this was celebrated in traditional manner after warning had been sent to the Boers that the fireworks were harmless. Polo, football, sports, athletics and gymkhanas were organized, and later on a series of exhibitions and competitions were held; one of these --- for a dummy soldier --- has been mentioned; another was for agricultural produce which, perhaps incongruously, included a Grand Diploma for the best siege baby! There were some people who frowned upon these goings-on and one pastor was reprimanded by his congregation for playing football; he promptly resigned his charge.
In all these activities B.-P. took a leading part, and the sight of him masquerading as 'Signor Paderewski', or as a meditative coster, or attending a gymkhana dressed up like a circus director in no way lessened his authority as commander.
The chief problem of the garrison was lack of artillery. This was the more marked when towards the end of October the Boers brought up a 94-pounder siege-gun which was at first placed at the Jackal Tree about 3,500 yards south of the town. This gun was variously known as 'Long Tom', or 'Creaky'. By a system of warnings from the lookout, the inhabitants had time to take cover before the shell arrived; fortunately many of the shells did not burst and there was a rush to secure the trophy. There was indeed a regular trade in souvenirs, and the Mafeking Mail gave regular quotations from 'the conchological market' as it was called. Many devices were used to overcome the disparity in guns. Hand grenades were made out of potted meat tins filled with dynamite, and one ingenious soldier found that he could fling these most effectively from the end of a line on a fishing-rod. The railway workshops made an excellent howitzer which was christened 'The Wolf' after B.-P.'s Matabele name. This was constructed out of the steam-pipe of an engine. reinforced with some iron railings melted down and shrunk into it; the whole was mounted on the wheels of an old threshing machine. The use of this queer gun is described by B.-P.
With home-made powder and shot, 'The Wolf' did not carry so very far, so in order to make up for this we used to move it out in the night as silently as we could, with its wheels wrapped up in canvas and straw, till we got within its range of the enemy's camp. Then we hung up blankets all round it so that the flash would not be very visible. Then we loosed off our shots as fast as we could and lay low while the enemy spent the rest of the night firing vaguely at where they thought we were --- which was generally where we were not.
The 'Wolf' is now preserved in the Royal United Service Institution.
Then one day Major Alexander Godley who was in charge of the western defences, noticed that one of the gate-posts of a farm was an old gun. It was dug up and it proved to be an eighteenth-century carronade, and on it, by curious chance, were the initials B.P., being those of the makers. The discoverer's account of its first use is typical of the spirit in which the defenders faced their dangerous situation.
The resourceful railway workshops made cannon balls for it, mounted it on a wooden carriage, and we soon had it down on the eastern front ready for action. The first shot was aimed down the main road to Johannesburg, and with great interest we watched the flight of the projectile, which looked exactly like a cricket ball. It bumped down the road into the Boer laager among the waggons, and one old Boer tried to field it, with disastrous results to himself. The effect was that the Lager moved about three miles farther back. This great piece of ordnance was appropriately named 'Lord Nelson'. The plucky crew of the Nordenfeldt, not to be outdone, started to creep out at night and get within range of 'Long Tom', with the result that he also had to shift farther back.
Sir Alexander Godley testifies to the important part played by B.-P. in maintaining the spirit of the whole company of besieged, soldiers and civilians alike:
Had it not been for B.-P.'s amazing energy, personality and ubiquity, I think that there would have been a good deal of alarm and despondency in the garrison. But he was always thinking of various stunts to keep up our spirits, and there was nobody and no part of the defences that he did not visit continually. Frequently, after spending, as one did, most of the night wandering round and visiting the outposts, I have lain down for a little sleep, and have been awakened at daybreak --- to see B.-P. sitting at the edge of my dug-out, having walked out before the sun rose. It really was a rather strenuous time, and it is curious to reflect that one never had one's boots off for eight months, except in the daytime.
And again:
His courage was unbounded, his versatility was extraordinary and his sympathy with all sections of the community most marked.
It was during one of his nocturnal prowlings that B.-P. found he was stalking one of his own scouts. He was reconnoitring the position of 'Creaky', and as he lay hidden among some rocks, he noticed a man with a black face cautiously approaching. B.-P. froze, but as the man came nearer he recognized him as one of his own scouts who had blackened his face by way of camouflage.
Here it will be of interest to record the opinions of B.-P. which were set down by two of the war correspondents who had every reason to observe the man upon whose judgement the fate of Mafeking depended. The first is by J. E. Neilly of the Pall Mall Gazette.
None that I have met could beat Baden-Powell in the matter of alertness and sleeplessness. From cockcrow till nightfall he was at it. Now you saw him snatching half an hour's leisure with a book, lying on the verandah of his headquarters, or relieving his brain by making a sketch or a painting; you looked around for a moment and he was gone --- he was on the top of the house with his glasses glued to his eyes, keeping a watch on the enemy's laagers, standing there like a graven image. reading the very mind of the Boer commandant, and guessing what the wily enemy would be up to next. Anon he had disappeared, and was riding around the lines with his A.D.C., or walking around with a stick in his hand and Cavalleria Rusticana on his lips. When he returned he was in conference with Lord Edward Cecil, an equally hard-working officer, listening to reports and complaints, and to the crop of grumbles from the discontented few, and generally straightening out the town and all that therein was.
Before now Baden-Powell had made his name in Africa --- in Ashanti and Rhodesia and elsewhere. His doings as a scout had raised him to a pinnacle as dizzy as that upon which Buffalo Bill himself stood in his palmiest days, and made him the talk of the cavalry world. The natives up-country knew him. To them he was 'the Wolf that never sleeps', and they still remember him and talk of him. In Mafeking I verily believe he seldom if ever slept. I often saw him lying on his stoep in a reclining chair with his eyes closed, but his alertness and wakefulness were there all the same. At all hours of the night I saw him prowling around the veldt, and coming in at dawn with the usual whistle going; and the sentries told many stories of a figure that pounced upon them out of the silent darkness while they kept their vigils and gave them advice --- a figure that turned out to be that of the commander.
He was a mild-mannered, fresh-looking Hussar captain when I first met him years ago. Since then he has lost the softness of his unplucked young Hussar days. He is seasoned, he is knowing, he is trained in the most refined tricks and artifices of war, and it would take a sharp enemy to outwit the man who held Mafeking. He was the right man for the work. Had we been sent a general from India with a bad liver and a gruff manner he would have had the town about his ears in mutiny if he had not rashly left us at the mercy of the Boer by bringing us out. The position demanded tact in the handling of a population full of sturdy independence as well as military training; a 'hang him at sunset' officer would never have held the fort.
The reference to B.-P.'s habit of whistling ---often to cover his annoyance---is supported by the experience of a civilian who had been guilty of a serious offence against the siege regulations. As he came out a comrade asked why he was looking so angry. The reply was, 'The Colonel called me before him and told me that if I did it again he would have me gaoled; he then most insolently whistled a tune!'
The second opinion, more critical, is that of J. A. Hamilton of The Times.
As I returned from a visit to the women's laager Colonel Baden-Powell was lying in his easy-chair beneath the roof of the verandah of the Headquarters Office. Colonel Baden-Powell is young, as men go in the army, with a keen appreciation of the possibilities of his career, swayed by ambition, indifferent to sentimental emotion. In stature he is short, while his features are sharp and smooth. He is eminently a man of determination, of great physical endurance and capacity, and of extraordinary reticence. His reserve is unbending, and one would say, quoting a phrase of Mr. Pinero's, that fever would be the only heat which would permeate his body. He does not go about freely, since he is tied to his office through the multitudinous cares of his command, and he is chiefly happy when he can snatch the time to escape upon one of those nocturnal, silent expeditions, which alone calm and assuage the perpetual excitement of his present existence. Outwardly, he maintains an impenetrable screen of self-control, observing with a cynical smile the foibles and caprices of those around him. He seems ever bracing himself to be on guard against a moment in which he should be swept by some unnatural and spontaneous enthusiasm, in which by a word, by an expression of face, by a movement, or in the turn of a phrase, he should betray the rigours of the self-control under which he lives. Every passing townsman regards him with curiosity not unmixed with awe. Every servant in the hotel watches him, and he, as a consequence, seldom speaks without a preternatural deliberation and an air of decisive finality. He seems to close every argument with a snap, as though the steel manacles of his ambition had checkmated the emotions of the man in the instincts of the officer. He weighs each remark before he utters it, and suggests by his manner, as by his words, that he has considered the different effects it might conceivably have on any mind as the expression of his own mind. As an officer, he has given to Mafeking a complete and assured security, to the construction of which he has brought a very practical knowledge of the conditions of Boer warfare, of the Boers themselves, and of the strategic worth of the adjacent areas. His espionagic excursions to the Boer lines have gained him an intimate and accurate idea of the value of the opposing forces and a mass of data by which he can immediately counteract the enemy's attack. He loves the night, and after his return from the hollows in the veldt, where he has kept so many anxious vigils, he lies awake hour after hour upon his camp mattress in the verandah, tracing out, in his mind, the various means and agencies by which he can forestall their move, which, unknown to them, he had personally watched. He is a silent man, and it would seem that silence has become in his heart a curious religion. In the noisy day he yearns for the noiseless night, in which he can slip into the vistas of the veldt, an unobtrusive spectator of the mystic communion of tree with tree, of twilight with darkness, of land with water, of early morn. with fading night, with the music of the journeying winds to speak to him and to lull his thoughts. As he makes his way across our lines the watchful sentry strains his eyes a little more to keep the figure of the colonel before him, until the undulations of the veldt conceal his progress. He goes in the privacy of the night, when it be no longer a season of moonlight, when, although the stars were full, the night be dim. The breezes of the veldt are warm and gentle, impregnated with the fresh fragrances of the Molopo, although, as he walks with rapid, almost running, footsteps, leaving the black blur of the town for the arid and stony areas to the west, a new wind meets him --- a wind that is clear and keen and dry, the wind of the wastes that wanders for ever over the monotonous sands of the desert. It accompanies him as he walks as though to show and to whisper with gentle gusts that it knew of his intention. It sighs amid the sentinel trees that stand straight and isolated about the Boer lines. He goes on, never faltering, bending for a moment behind a clump of rocks, screening himself next behind some bushes, crawling upon his hands and knees, until his movements, stirring a few loose stones, create a thin, grating noise in the vast silence about him. His head is low, his eyes gaze straight upon the camp of the enemy; in a little he moves again, his inspection is over, and he either changes to a fresh point or startles some dozing sentry as he slips back into town.
In November, Cronje with 6,000 Boers withdrew from the siege leaving General Snyman in command of the investing force of some 3,000 men. Before he withdrew Cronje made a very determined attack on Cannon Kopje; the casualties were high on both sides, and the attack was repulsed with difficulty. Snyman showed even less enterprise than Cronje, and it must remain a mystery why the Boers did not attack in force. On good authority it is said that Kruger forbade any attack which might endanger more than fifty Boer lives; the jumpiness which B.-P.'s aggressive methods produced may in part be an explanation combined with the fact that the Boers had little training as an army, and large schemes involving close co-operation were not to their taste.
Though Cronje was gone, the outlook was far from hopeful: Gatacre's defeat at Stormberg, Methuen's at Maggersfontein, and Buller's at Colenso, and the fact that Kimberley and Ladysmith were still invested, produced in England a feeling of gloom and despair during December. The continued resistance of the three beleaguered towns, and especially the cheerful messages B.-P. sent out from Mafeking, were the only consoling features of a campaign which had developed in such an unexpected manner. In the middle of December B.-P. smuggled a message out of Mafeking to his mother, who received it in February. A kaffir took it through the lines concealed inside his pipe.
Mafeking
December 12, 1899All going well with me. To-day I have been trying to find any Old Carthusians in the place to have a Carthusian dinner together as it is Founder's Day; but so far, for a wonder I believe I am the only one amongst the odd 1,000 people here. This is our sixtieth day of the siege, and I do believe we're beginning to get a little tired of it; but, I suppose, like other things, it will come to an end some day. I have such an interesting collection of mementoes of it to bring home. I wonder if Baden is in the country? What fun if he should come up to relieve me! I don't know if this letter will get through the Boer outposts, but if it does I hope it will find you very well and flourishing.
Lord Roberts, with Kitchener as his chief of staff, arrived at the Cape in January 1900 to take over command, but he could promise no help for Mafeking for some months. He sent cheering messages, but wisely raised no false hopes.
Plumer was trying with his tiny forces to make contact from the north, but it was clear that he could not relieve the town without assistance. B.-P. kept in touch with him by native runners who got through the Boer lines at night, and he decided that they must try to push the lines farther away from the north of the town in order to give any help possible to Plumer should he get within striking distance. An attack was therefore planned for Boxing Day on the Boer fort at Game Tree Hill about three miles north. Unfortunately spies gave information of the coming attack with the result that it was a complete failure; three officers and twenty-one men were killed. This was the only serious setback of the siege. This attack seems to have roused the Boers, for the bombardment became heavier and did most damage to the hospitals and the women's laager. B.-P. protested vigorously against this kind of warfare, for all these places were conspicuously marked with flags, and early in the siege he had sent exact information of their positions to the Boer Commandant. By February the food situation was getting more serious. All food stocks were commandeered and a rigid system of rationing enforced. Special rations of sugar and milk were arranged for the women and children. A porridge, called sowens, was made from the husks of oats, and sausages were manufactured out of horseflesh, while the same animal's hide and hoofs provided a tough kind of brawn. Soup kitchens were set up, and 'there was little animal life of any kind which did not find its way into the soup'. Locusts, which are normally a plague, provided a welcome change of diet on several occasions.
There was also a shortage of money and of stamps. B.-P. designed a one-pound note, and suggested that Bechuanaland stamps should be overprinted with the words 'Mafeking besieged', and the charges should be one penny for letters in the town, threepence for the forts, and a shilling for outside the lines. As so much controversy has been caused about the Mafeking stamps, the facts are best set down in Sir Alexander Godley's own words.
The local penny stamps were subsequently the cause of a great deal of adverse criticism, and it was said that Queen Victoria was seriously annoyed at B.-P.'s head having been put on them. But I am sure that B.-P. was in no way responsible. I had frequently to go from my outpost headquarters to see Cecil, and upon one occasion, when I found the postmaster with him, they told me about the surcharge on the stamps. As we all were always trying to think of anything that could be done to create interest, or amuse, or keep up the spirits of the garrison, I said at once that I thought this was an excellent idea, and one of us suggested that the local stamp should be a special one of our own, which we all agreed would be a good idea. This led to a discussion as to what it should be like and what should be on it, and one of us three---I cannot in the least remember which---said (more in joke than anything else, and solely with the idea in our mind of doing something that would amuse the garrison), 'Oh, B.-P.'s head, of course!' My recollection is that Cecil and the postmaster then arranged to have this done, entirely as a stunt, and as a surprise to B.-P., certainly without consulting him. I am afraid that none of us thought it might in any way be misinterpreted, or even that these special stamps would get abroad, as they were to be used only in the town.
When it was realized that there might be criticism of the B.-P. stamp, a new one showing a boy-messenger on a bicycle was substituted.
The boy-messengers had been organized by Lord Edward Cecil as a corps of Cadets to take over miscellaneous duties and so relieve more men for more dangerous duties. Major Baillie in his account of the siege gives this account of the Cadets.
The Cadet Corps have been lately doing their messages mounted on donkeys captured from the Boers. Like the other mounted corps, however, their ranks are gradually being depleted for the soup kitchen. This corps is formed of all the boys of Mafeking, ranging from nine years upwards. It does all the foot orderly work, thereby sparing several more men for the trenches, and is dressed in khaki with 'smasher' hats and a yellow puggaree. It is commanded by a youth, Sergeant-Major Goodyear, the son of Captain Goodyear, who was wounded in the brickfields, and is directly supervised by Lord Edward Cecil. It drills regularly, and the boys are wonderfully smart.
B.-P. had noticed how useful these boys were and how they responded to responsibility being put on them. Here was another link in the chain which was ultimately to lead to a worldwide movement. A competition devised for them during one Sunday's amusements will at once be recognized by any Boy Scout.
Each Cadet will receive a letter on the Recreation Ground. He will carry it to the Staff Officer; route via Carrington Street. He will there receive a verbal answer and return to the Recreation Ground to the sender, and repeat the verbal message to him in a loud, clear tone of voice.
During February and March the chief fighting was at the Brickfields east of the town along the river. The fortune of the struggle swayed to and fro, but the Boers were eventually evicted on the 23rd March. By this time the aspect of the war had changed, though the full facts were not known in Mafeking. Kimberley was relieved on the 15th February and Ladysmith on the 1st March. Cronje had surrendered to Roberts at Paardeberg on the 27th February, and at last the tide had turned.
Plumer had managed to get as far south as Ramathlabama, 16 miles north of Mafeking, by the end of March. His intelligence officer, Lieutenant Smitheman, got through the Boer lines and was thus able to give B.-P. first-hand information of the position. During his few days' stay he saw the headman of the Baralongs and persuaded him to get as many of the natives out as possible. About a thousand of them left, and so relieved the food situation considerably. Plumer, however, was once more forced to retire before the advance of superior numbers.
On the 1st April, Queen Victoria sent the following telegram to B.-P.: 'I continue watching with confidence and admiration the patient and resolute defence which is so gallantly maintained under your ever resourceful command.'
In the middle of April the Boers were augmented by another thousand men under a young Field Cornet, Sarel Eloff; he had influence as a grandson of President Kruger and he longed for a more active policy, but Snyman was not immediately responsive. Eloff sent a message to B.-P. suggesting that one Sunday he should bring a cricket team and play the town eleven. B.-P. replied that it was impossible to play two games at once. 'Mafeking, in the game it is playing at present, is 180 [the days the siege had then lasted] not out against the bowling of Cronje, Snyman and Eloff. Don't you think you had better change the bowling?' It is said that Eloff, when he read the letter, said: 'Erg maar, waar' (Rude, but true). There was some increase in the intensity of the bombardment, but after some, weeks of persuasion, Snyman at last gave Eloff permission to organize an assault.
The attempt was made on the 12th May. Eloff's scheme was to attack from the west while Snyman supported him from the east. The first part of the plan came perilously near success. Using the river banks as cover, Eloff's men got into the native town and set it on fire, then they advanced to the headquarters of the B.S.A. Police and took prisoners Colonel Hore and eighteen men. B.-P. from his watch-tower saw how things were going, and he ordered Major Godley to round up the Boers still in the native town while a squadron of defenders advanced on Eloff. The Boers were thus split up into small groups and had no alternative but to surrender, and Eloff in turn became Colonel Hore's prisoner. Snyman had but half-heartedly carried out his part of the great plan. The prisoners were disarmed and marched into the town under the escort of the youthful Cadets who had been under fire all day.
Vere Stent, Reuter's correspondent, makes this comment:
It has been asserted that B.-P. was no general, no strategist. I was standing alongside him during Eloff's attack at Mafeking, and it seemed to me that he was an ideal commander. His decisions were arrived at rapidly, his orders clear and unmistakable. There was no hesitation and no excitement. He countered Eloff's tactics by moving his reserve and by that move saved the town from what came very nearly being disaster. He seemed to me to possess all the attributes of good generalship; that is, personal courage, quickness in decision, fixity of purpose, and rapid appreciation of a situation.
The same observer's general remarks on B.-P. are also worth recording.
In Mafeking, as I say, we saw many sides of B.-P.'s character. He was an actor of no mean ability. At our siege entertainments he more than once burlesqued the traditional sergeant-major, to the delight of the rank and file. He had a keen sense of the dramatic. I saw him once, when the town was being subjected to heavy shelling --- as heavy shelling went in those days --- stroll out from headquarters and mount to his 'look-out' built on the roof and exposed to fire from all sides. Thence he surveyed the scene with an air of detachment that heartened the whole garrison. 'It's all right,' said the women. 'The Colonel is on the look-out.' 'Seems to know what he's doing,' said the men. It was dramatic, melodramatic, if you like, but it served its purpose, it reassured the garrison.
When Eloff was brought to B.-P. at headquarters, after his attempt to take Mafeking by storm, as a prisoner of war, B.-P. said: 'Good evening, Eloff, you are just in time for dinner.' Throughout that dinner no mention was made of the war or the events that led to Eloff's surrender.
That same day news at last arrived from Lord Roberts that a flying column was to attempt the Relief. It consisted of just over 1,000 men under Colonel Mahon and was assembled at Barkly West. The plan was that Mahon should march towards Mafeking and join up with Plumer to the west of the town. Much skirmishing had to be endured before the two forces could unite. In all they numbered some 2,000 men, and between them and Mafeking was a body of Boers of equal strength under Delarey --- one of the best of the Boer commandants. A hard-fought battle dispersed these, and in the evening of the 16th May, an advance party of the relieving force rode into Mafeking. Amongst them was Major Baden Baden-Powell of the Scots Guards. He immediately went to greet his brother and, for once, found him asleep! B.-P. rode out the next day to meet the main force.
On the 16th May, Lord Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, wrote the following letter to Queen Victoria:
16th May, 1900 Lord Wolseley presents his humble duty to the Queen, and is anxious to bring before her Majesty the question of promoting Colonel Baden-Powell, now defending Mafeking, to the rank of Major-General as soon as that place is successfully relieved. It is hoped it may have been relieved to-day.
Colonel Baden-Powell has now been three years a full Colonel, and is one of the most promising of officers. His defence of Mafeking is beyond all praise, and Lord Wolseley feels that his promotion would be hailed by the Army as well deserved.
Young general officers are wanted badly at present. I have the honour to be, your Majesty's most obedient and faithful servant,
WOLSELEY.
This request was immediately granted. To Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, the Queen telegraphed, 'What a blessing and satisfaction is the relief of Mafeking so heroically defended!'
The siege had lasted 217 days; some 20,000 shells had been fired into the town during that period. of the combatants, 326 had been killed or wounded or were missing, in addition to 487 non-combatants. Fifty per cent of the officers were casualties.
A war correspondent who was with Mahon's force expressed his sensations in the following words:
After the engagement on Thursday morning the relieving column formed up and entered the town, headed by Colonel Baden-Powell. Colonel Mahon, and his staff As one passed house after house, one with a gaping hole in its side, another with the chimneys overthrown, another with a whole wall stove in, none with windows completely glazed, all bearing some mark of assault --- as this panorama of destruction unfolded itself one marvelled that anyone should have lived throughout the siege. And when the procession formed up in the dilapidated Market Square, and the whole of the Town Guard mustered --- Kaffirs, Parsees, Jews, Arabians, Englishmen, Dutchmen, nearly every sort and nationality of men --and when the Mayor read an address expressing in the conventional terms of such compliments the emotions of this motley crowd, one asked oneself what it was that had held these very ordinary-looking people to so heroic an intention. Remember that the defence of Mafeking had been one big bluff, that there was nothing to prevent the Boers, with determination and careful arrangement, from taking the place at almost any time, and you will realize how startlingly that question asserted itself. I like to think that there were many men in Mafeking whose courage alone would have disdained surrender; but there was one man in whose face one found the answer to the riddle. Brains alone would not have done it; heart alone would have fainted and failed under those long months of danger; but the officer commanding this garrison had both brains and heart, and so he taught his men to endure.
In her journal, Queen Victoria made the following entry:
Windsor Castle, 19th May 1900. --- Fine day. Went with Beatrice to the kennels. The following telegram was received from Major-General Baden-Powell dated 17th May: 'Happy to report Mafeking successfully relieved to-day. Northern and southern columns joined hands on 15th. Attacked enemy yesterday, 16th, entirely defeating them with loss. Relieving force marched into Mafeking this morning at nine. Relief and defence force combined, attacked enemy laager, shelled them out, nearly capturing Snyman, and took large amount of ammunition and stores. Townspeople and garrison of Mafeking heartily grateful for their release.'
Started at half-past three ... for Wellington College. The whole way along people turned out and cheered, especially where there was an immense crowd, who came up quite close to the carriage, cheering loudly, and finally singing God Save the Queen. Flags were hung up and pictures of General Baden-Powell exhibited in honour of the relief.
On the 26th May, Cecil Rhodes, harbouring no ill-will at the rebuff his suggestions had met with at the hands of B.-P., wrote to Lord Milner, 'Baden-Powell is a good example of thinking of others and showing some feeling of gratitude, which is generally absolutely lacking in his profession'.
The Relief was hailed with delight throughout the Empire, and some of the more extreme manifestations led to the coining of the term 'mafficking'. The best comment on this may be found in J. L. Garvin's biography of Joseph Chamberlain.
London immediately went mad and went 'mafficking'. That opprobrious word requires some rational consideration here. Filled by the anti-war party with saturnalian suggestion, it was used then and for years after to prejudice Chamberlain and the whole spirit of Imperialism. Most foreign hostility no doubt was quick to pounce on any cue; but even moderate opinion abroad was led to deplore our degeneration.
Let us see what happened. By one spontaneous impulse the whole nation and the whole race under the flag burst into rejoicing, just as they would have done years before had Gordon been found living at Khartum. But London went wild with a difference. Arriving late in the evening the news spread like the wind. Enormous crowds gathered; they seemed to rise out of the ground; so swiftly had these dense masses swarmed by all means of access into the main centres and thoroughfares of the metropolis. That night the labyrinth of London seemed to give up its millions to view. From East End to West End, from the Bank to Park Lane, they packed the streets with huge humanity, cheering and singing. Sometimes under opposite pressures immense multitudes found themselves unable to move an inch. Again, they surged this way and that by slow degrees, contrary currents working through each other and roaring like a storm.
How was this prodigious outpouring of people turned to vulgarity? The street hawkers did it. They were ready with the peacocks' feathers and the little trumpets seized upon by the young hobbledehoys of both sexes, shouting their music hall catchwords and refrains. All this was just like the ordinary popular vulgarities of Bank Holiday nights as then celebrated, only stupendously magnified. The English-speaking democracies were and are sober and enduring in adversity, but given to riotous hilarity and uncouth horseplay in their tumults of rejoicing after pent-up anxiety. The eighteenth century mobs were coarser though smaller.
At Mafeking, by exception, the pluck and wits of a British handful had won against the odds. It was a peculiar satisfaction to the British soul. It meant not crowing over the enemy but delighting in a signal proof of British quality man for man. Throughout the Empire popular instinct was the same.
It was, of course, as B.-P himself maintained, foolish to talk of the siege of Mafeking as if it had been of major military importance. But it is equally foolish to regard it as a stunt. During the most critical weeks of the war at least 9,000 Boers were kept idle when they might have been active in Natal or the Cape against the inadequate British forces. At no time were there less than 2,000 held there. The effect on the morale of natives and Boers was also of significance. While the prolongation of the siege kept the natives from rising, it depressed the Boers who regarded Mafeking as of considerable importance. As long as the town held out, it was an obstacle in the way of enemy movements towards Bechuanaland and Rhodesia. But not least of all was the fact that at a time of the deepest gloom, the gay audacity of the besieged came as the one gleam of encouragement during a series of disasters.