War's Brighter Side Part 45

It is with great pleasure that we present to our readers to-day a portrait of Lord Stanley, the present popular Press Censor with Lord Roberts' Field Force in South Africa. The portrait is by W. B. Wollen, R.I., and is a masterpiece. We like it, but we are surprised that the censor should wear precisely such an antediluvian collar as we saw on Mr. Burdett-Coutts in yesterday's view of our Portrait Gallery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lord Stanley.]

THE ABSENT-BODIED BURGHER.

BY A. B. PATTERSON.

_A Screaming Farce now being played daily with great success in the Theatre of War near Bloemfontein._

CHARACTERS:

1. JACOBUS JOHANNES VAN DER MAUSER (The absent-bodied Burgher).

2. KATINKA VAN DER MAUSER (His Wife).

3. REGINALD TALBOT DE VERE-CROESUS (English Cavalry Officer).

_Scene_: A Farm in the Free State. Pony saddled at the door.

J. J. van der Mauser preparing to mount.

J. J. VAN DER MAUSER (_Centre of Stage_). Katinka! Katinka! Bring me the old rifle that is in the barn among the sheep-skins. The old muzzle-loading Boer rifle, with which my ancestor, the great Ten-britches van der Mauser shot the lion in the days of the Great Trek.

KATINKA: Nay, Jan! Pause and reflect! 'Twill blow thy head off. It has not been fired these thirty years.

JAN: Nay, woman! I purpose not to fire it. I intend to hand it in to the British--I only wish they'd try to let it off! Then will I return speedily, provided with a pa.s.s, and go up into the laager to do a little Rooinek shooting. While I am gone, Katinka, be not afraid. The English will put a sentry on the farm so that not a blade of gra.s.s shall be touched, not an onion taken from the ground. Be diligent, and sell them all the b.u.t.ter you can.

KATINKA: The proclamation says the price of b.u.t.ter is to be two-and-sixpence a pound!

JAN: Then don't take a penny less than three s.h.i.+llings and sixpence.

If you run short of milk, drive in the cows of our neighbour Smith, who has fled to the English. And Katinka (_whispers tenderly_), if you see the Rooineks out in the open, don't stand anywhere near them, darling! You might get hit! You understand? Now, farewell!

(_Proceeds to pull on an extra pair of breeches, and so goes off to the laager, while the band plays "My dear old Dutch."_)

[Interval of some days, during which the British encamp near the farm, and Katinka sells them, at famine prices, every drop of milk and every pound of b.u.t.ter that the cows will yield, and every egg that the hens can be induced to lay.]

SCENE TWO.

The open veldt. Row of kopjes in the middle distance. Enter cavalry patrol with Reginald Talbot Vere-Croesus at their head. (Band playing, "Let 'em all come.")

FIRST SOLDIER: I thought I heard a rifle shot.

REGINALD TALBOT DE V.-C.: Nay. 'Twas but a soldier being shot for stealing a bar of soap from an enemy's cottage. Serve the miscreant right. Take open order, there. Walk, march!

_They ride round the stage with one eye on the kopjes and the other admiring the fit of their breeches. Rifle shots are heard from the kopjes. Band changes to, "You never know your Luck!" Heavy rattle of musketry from kopjes. Patrol driven back and retire to pom-pom accompaniment from the big drum_. R. T. de V.-C. _falls p.r.o.ne from his charger_. KATINKA _rushes in (r.u.e.) weeping hysterically and throws herself on his body_.

ENTER JACOBUS JOHANNES VAN DER MAUSER _(l.e.), and leans on his rifle, staring gloomily at the scene._

JACOBUS: Ha! ha! So it has come to this! She secretly loves the young English officer who reconnoitres kopjes with an eye-gla.s.s! (_Sticks his chin out, claws the air and ambles about the stage a la Henry Irving._) But I will be revenged! Ha! ha! I have it! I will go and join the Johannesburg police! False woman, what sayest thou?

KATINKA (_hysterically_): I am innocent, Johannes. I am innocent!

(_Coils herself round the body of R. T. de V.-C. a la Sarah Bernhardt._)

JACOBUS: Innocent! Then why weepest thou?

KATINKA (_rising suddenly_): Weep! I should think I _would_ weep.

Didn't he owe us three pound seventeen and sixpence for milk! How am I to make the dairy pay if you persist in shooting my best customers?

(JACOBUS _embraces her_. REGINALD TALBOT DE VERE-CROESUS _being, fortunately, shot exactly through the head with a Mauser bullet, recovers at once and embraces her also, and joins in a song-and-dance trio, "Be careful what you're doing with the gun," and the curtain falls to the tune of, "It mustn't occur again_.")

NOTE.--This farce will be continued till further orders.

A. B. P.

THE WAR ARTIST OF TO-DAY.

_To the Editors of_ THE FRIEND,--SIRS,--The present campaign has most decidedly, as your correspondent in THE FRIEND of the 11th says, commenced a new era in the history of ill.u.s.trated journalism, but not to the extent that he thinks.

The camera and the pencil can, and will, live together during a campaign, but I venture to doubt if the camera will be able to do all that its champion claims for it, and the war artist who knows his business, which cannot be learnt in a single campaign, will come out on top. For reproducing and putting before the public scenes representing the strife and clamour of war, with its accompanying noise and confusion, the man with the kodak cannot compete for one single moment with the individual who is using the pencil.

How can he produce a picture that will show the public at large anything like an accurate bird's-eye view of what a modern battle is like? The brain of the camera cannot take in all that is going on. The man with the pencil does so. A few lines to indicate the background and the characteristics of it, and he is able to put before the world what has taken place, that is if he knows and has seen what troops have been doing.

In another paragraph there is a sentence which is a very unjust reflection upon "the old-fas.h.i.+oned war artists, who draw on their imagination." I should very much like to know who the old-fas.h.i.+oned war artists can be who are referred to in this manner. The few men who are still alive, and there never were many of them, are all men who have seen a large amount of fighting, have sketched and worked under fire, sent their work home often under enormous difficulties, and been in very many tight places. Why should these men be referred to in this way?

I suppose there has not been one single campaign in which the camera has been in such frequent use; but is it possible, by this means, to bring before us the various phases of a battle--a modern battle, I mean, with its absence of smoke, enormous expanse of front and general invisibility of both the attackers and defenders? Take a battery in action. Can it show us the excitement and turmoil round the guns, will it show us (unless it is a cinematograph) the trouble amongst the teams when a sh.e.l.l drops near them? I think not. What it can do, and does, is scenes which are more or less peaceful, such as camp views, incidents in regimental life and also bits on the line of march, but of an action--no! None of us artists are at variance with Mr. Scott in other parts of his very able letter, and we cordially welcome the camera artist, knowing very well that he has his field of work in which we cannot hope to compete with him for a moment; but to put the camera, which, after all, is only a very fine piece of mechanism, on a par with a sketch is more than most people can put up with, especially

Yours very faithfully, W. B. WOLLEN, R.I.

CHESTNUTTY--BUT GOOD.

_To the Editors of_ THE FRIEND,--SIRS,--Is this a chestnut? Johannes Paulus Kruger sent a commissioner home to England to find out if there were any more men left there. The commissioner wired from London to say that there were 4,000,000 men and woman "knocking about the town,"

that there was no excitement, and that men were begging to be sent to fight the Boers. Kruger wired back "Go North." The commissioner found himself in Newcastle eventually and wired to Kruger, "For G.o.d's sake, stop the war! England is bringing up men from h.e.l.l, eight at a time, in cages!"

He had seen a coal mine.