War's Brighter Side Part 43

The artistic value of this means of ill.u.s.trating is becoming more and more realised every day, and will prove an effectual factor in crowding out the old-fas.h.i.+oned war artist who draws on his imagination.

The only excuse for artists of any description being at the front is their capacity for reproducing true and vivid impressions of what they have seen.

This is where the importance of the new school is at once apparent, and as long as the men practising this art are honest and do not attempt to foist "faked" work on the public, their efforts are bound to be acceptable and of artistic value.

In speaking of camera work as an art and the individuals adopting it as artists, I do not include the persons who simply press a b.u.t.ton and expose yards of film, regardless of subject, but the few who make pictures intelligently and pay as much attention to composition and lighting as a painter would when commencing a fresh canvas. The camera is not going to destroy the painter--and I say painter advisedly--as no black and white artist is any good unless he is a painter, and has a keen appreciation of colour value. Nature is teeming with colour, and unless this is felt how can it be suggested in line?

Why does Rembrandt stand out as the greatest master of etchings? Simply because his etched works suggest colour, and it is this power of suggesting colour that placed Charles Keene head and shoulders above all other black and white men. The power of selection of subject is not developed in all artists to an equal extent, but there is always room for such men as Melton Prior, W. B. Wollen, Lester Ralph, and a few others, whose work will always be looked for as representing actuality.

If the two schools of artists mentioned work with the full knowledge of the limitations of their mediums, there will always be a place for both.

The mechanical draughtsman is dead. He has been killed by the camera.

How would it be possible in Fleet Street or De Aar, quietly sitting in a little room with a north light, to give a true impression of Cronje's surrender, or of that wonderful sight, the approach of the captured army, like a cloud of locusts, over the expanse of veldt at Klip Drift?

If ever the surrender at Paardeberg is painted, it must be done by a man who saw it.

I shall never forget the defeated General's arrival, or the solemnity of it: this giant, broken sulky, his career finished. Everything was shown in the man, and shown in a way no imagination could possibly conceive.

I was privileged to view a sketch of Cronje leaving our camp, the work of Mortimer Menpes. It was a vivid slight impression. True, yet the economy of means--a few lines wonderfully placed--was wonderful, showing the artist a great master of technique. Now, talented as he undoubtedly is, he could not have imparted such a feeling of actuality to his work if he had not been present and studied his subject with the greatest attention. The long-haired, velvet-coated gentleman of Bond Street is not the man to depict the incidents of war, or to put up with the hards.h.i.+ps of a great march, and I am perfectly sure that the success of a war artist depends on physique. He is required to tackle his subject quickly and vigorously. Trickery does not help actuality, straightforward manly work being absolutely necessary to the war artist of to-day.

(We are sure that if the men in this Army who are engaged as artists or who feel strongly and lovingly the relation of true art to war, to photography and to the refinement of mankind--if these will take the trouble to answer this letter, we shall have a rich correspondence.--EDITORS, FRIEND.)

CHAPTER XXV

THE END APPROACHES

_We arrange to retire from our posts, but still possess the enterprise to start a Portrait Gallery._

"THE FRIEND," No. 23--actually the 25th number we had edited--contained a notice that Mr. Kipling had sailed for England on the previous day (April 11th), and we were doing our utmost to get rid of our offspring, to find some one to adopt it.

As long ago before this as when Sir Alfred Milner was with us in Bloemfontein, we had made known to him and to Lord Roberts, through Lord Stanley, that the employers of certain ones among us were complaining of our expending part of their time and our energy upon this outside work. I am certain that no interest with which any of us were connected suffered the least slight or injury, for the result of our labour of love for Lord Roberts was simply that we worked twice as hard--and learned twice as much of what was going on as those correspondents who held aloof and let the whole burden fall upon us.

My employer, Mr. Harmsworth, uttered no sound of criticism or complaint, by the way, and the only word about THE FRIEND that reached me from the _Daily Mail_ was a cablegram wis.h.i.+ng us success.

We were all tiring fast. I was lame with an injury which kept laying me up, and otherwise my condition was such that for weeks I had not been able to partake of any food except milk and soda water. I owe a great deal for moral and physical stimulus to Dr. Kellner, ex-mayor of Bloemfontein and head of the Free State Hospital, whose services to the British army should not be allowed to pa.s.s into history without his receiving some substantial honour and acknowledgment from this government. He told the n.o.ble matron, Miss Maud Young, and her nursing a.s.sistants (when they gave notice that they wished to leave at the outbreak of the war) that he "never heard before that politics had anything to do with the care of sick and wounded men," and up to that standard of duty he worked on with them as enthusiastically under the Union Jack as he had under the four-colour flag.

I did not know how ill and dispirited I was until one evening I went to the room of my a.s.sistant, Mr. Nissen, of the DAILY MAIL, and heard through his closed window in the Bloemfontein Hotel the sound of a banjo. It is a purely American instrument, and the plunk-plunk of its strings made my heart leap. I threw open the window and heard in nasal tones, affected by a Yankee colleague for the purpose of his song, a sentiment like this:--

Oh, I want ter go back to Noo York, Ther "tenderloin's" ther place, Where the men are square and the women are fair And I know evurry face.

I want ter go back to Noo York Ter hear Gawd's people talk.

Yer may say what yer please Only just give ter me My little old Noo York.

I felt like shouting, "fellow citizens, them's my sentiments."

Suddenly I, too, wanted "ter go back ter Noo York"--with London as an alternative. I had not known it or felt it before, but that song, as new to me as any that will be written five years hence, touched the b.u.t.ton that produced a nostalgia which Heaven knows I had good reason to feel without any such additional or peculiar incentive.

Mr. Landon was also very ill of what I took to be a slow African fever. We laid the facts before the authorities, and suggested that our colleague, Mr. F. W. Buxton, now back at work with us, was able to promise that the accomplished staff of the _Johannesburg Star_ would gladly take THE FRIEND off our hands if its members could be pa.s.sed up to Bloemfontein on their way to Johannesburg. They were all receiving salaries though nearly all were idle; the owners had suffered grievously by the closing of their establishment at the outbreak of the war, and they certainly deserved well of the British Army.

With this view our military editorial chiefs coincided, and Mr. Buxton busied himself in arranging for the coming of the editors, reporters, and printers, and the transfer of the little Organ of the Empire to their charge.

This number of April 12th began with a leader on "The Queen in Ireland," and this was followed by a play upon the society notes of other papers, written by Mr. Gwynne. Our prolific soldier-poet, "Mark Thyme," contributed two sets of verses, and once again we published the news of the world, like any genuine newspaper at home.

On this day we printed our first "alleged" portrait, No. 1 of a series of pictures of the notable characters in town. We selected Mr.

Burdett-Coutts as the leading figure in this gallery, and made a most modest announcement that we had secured the portrait and were able to present it to our readers.

I am quite certain that never before in the Free State had a newspaper published a portrait made on the spot and of a newly arrived visitor.

There were in the Free State no means for doing such work. But such is the non-thinking habit of the human race that not a soul questioned what we announced, or asked how the feat was accomplished. It was declared to be, in a way, like Mr. Burdett-Coutts, and every one took it for granted that there was nothing THE FRIEND and its editors could not do if they tried.

NOTICE.

By kind permission of Lieutenant-General Kelly-Kenny, C.B., the ma.s.sed bands of the 6th Division will play on the Market Square from 4 to 5.30 p.m. on Easter Monday.

SOCIETY'S DOINGS.

BY H. A. GWYNNE.

A most successful dinner was given by ---- Battery on Sat.u.r.day night.

The A.S.C. awning was most artistically arranged between two buck waggons and was decorated with much taste, the junior subaltern having attached to it the fas.h.i.+on-plates and pictorial advertis.e.m.e.nts from _The Queen_. The "Maggi" soup was p.r.o.nounced a success, and it was evident that the battery _chef_ had put his heart into the work. A somewhat unpleasant incident occurred soon after dinner, which put rather a damper on the evening's hilarity and dispersed the party. An order had come for one of the ammunition waggons to go into Bloemfontein to fetch ammunition, and the sergeant, wholly without malice prepense, hitched his horses to one of the sides of the dining-room and removed it suddenly. We are glad to say that the collapse consequent upon this manoeuvre, although very disagreeable, produced no injury, and the company was able to leave sound in limb but swearing strange oaths.

---- Horse, always to the fore, whether bullets are about or the scarcely less dangerous glances of female eyes, entertained at tea yesterday a great number of guests of both s.e.xes. It is a pity, however, that their camp is so far out of town, for most of their gentlemen guests were obliged to walk home, having "lost" their horses.

The Naval Brigade gave a _soiree musicale_ on Monday night, which was perhaps the most brilliant affair of the season. The proverbial hilarity of sailors induced in their guests a corresponding feeling, and songs, toasts, speeches made the time pa.s.s merrily enough. A new game, the details of which we hope to give in a further issue, was played with great success. It is called "Hunt the Tompion." At the beginning of the evening Captain Bearcroft, R.N., gave a most instructive and bright lecture on the "New Tactics--Horse Marines."

A "small and early" was given yesterday by the Royal Diddles.e.x Regiment. Dancing went on briskly until a transport mule came and died in the extemporised ball-room, causing two ladies to faint.

A _conversazione_ was given by the A.S.C. in their camp within the immediate confines of the town. The novel subject, "When will the War end?" was chosen for discussion. The arguments, which were often of a highly intellectual grade, were punctuated by sniping from trees and bushes on the kopje side. Two of the attendants who were distributing the choice and light viands to the guests were shot. True, their wounds were slight, yet the incident interrupted the even tenor of the _conversazione_.

SOCIALISM IN VERSE.

BY MARK THYME.

Now, I always was a 'ardly-treated bloke, I'm a martyr to my cause, as you may say-- I used to own a barrer and a moke, And I'd sometimes earn a thick-un in the day.

But them Socialists they comes along our court, And they says as 'ow all things should common be, So, to 'elp the cause on quicker, I goes off and lifts a ticker, 'Cause the bloke 'ad no more right to it than me.

Well, for that I 'ad to do a bit o' time, Though I argued it afore the majerstrit As I'd done it out o' politics, not crime; But the cuckoo couldn't understand a bit.