With Methuens Column on an Ambulance Train | Page 3

is no easy task to control the eccentric and unexpected gyrations of such a beast when the rider is encumbered with the management of a heavy Lee-Metford rifle. Since the day on which I first saw the squadron in question it has passed through its baptism of fire at Colenso. The Light Horse advanced on the right of Colonel Long's ill-fated batteries, and was cruelly cut up by a murderous fire from Hlangwane Hill.
Capetown is not well furnished with places of amusement. There is, it is true, a roomy theatre, whose manager, Mr. de Jong, sent an invitation to the staff of the "Pink 'Un" to dine with him and his friends at Pretoria on New Year's Day! How the Boers must have laughed when they read of this cordial invitation! During the few days which elapsed before our ambulance train started for the front we paid a visit to the theatre, but we found the stage tenanted by a "Lilliputian Company," and it is always tiresome and distressing to watch precocious children of twelve aping their elders. One feels all the time that the whole performance scarcely rises above an exhibition of highly-trained cats or monkeys, and that the poor mites ought all to be in bed long ago. Nevertheless, this dreary theatre was, in default of anything better, visited again and again by British officers and others. A friend of mine in the Guards told me with a sigh that he had actually watched the performances of these accomplished infants for no less than seven nights.
There are several music halls in Capetown. I have visited similar entertainments in Constantinople, Cairo, Beyrout and other towns of the East, but I never saw anything to match some of these Capetown haunts for out-and-out vulgarity. There was, it is true, a general air of "patriotism" pervading them--but it was frequently the sort of patriotism which consists in getting drunk and singing "Soldiers of the Queen". On one occasion I remember a curious and typical incident at one of these music halls. Standing among a crowd of drunken and half-drunken men was a quiet and respectable-looking man drinking his glass of beer from the counter. One of the _habitués_ of the place suddenly addressed him, and demanded with an oath whether he had ever heard so good a song as the low ditty which had just been screamed out by a painted woman on the stage. The stranger remarked quietly that it "wasn't a bad song, but he had certainly heard better ones," when the bully in front without any warning struck him a violent blow in the face, felling him to the ground. A comrade of mine, a Welshman, who was standing near the victim, protested against such cowardly behaviour, and was immediately set upon by some dozen of the audience, who savagely knocked him down and then drove him into the street with kicks and blows. These valiant individuals then returned and were soon busy with a hiccuping chorus of "Rule, Britannia". How forcibly the whole scene recalled Dr. Johnson's words: "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of a scoundrel".
The Uitlander refugees were numerous in Capetown, and the principal hotels were full of them. Those whom I happened to meet did not seem at all overwhelmed by their recent oppression, and some of them contrived out of their shattered fortunes to drink champagne for dinner at a guinea a bottle. I do not think that the average Johannesburg Uitlander impresses the Englishman very favourably. Mining camps are not the best nurseries for good breeding or nobility of character, and one could not help feeling sorry that gallant Englishmen were dying by hundreds while some of these German Jews wallowed in security and luxury. Quite recently an officer overheard a "Jew-boy" loudly declaring in a shop that "after all, British soldiers were paid to go out and get shot," etc., and in a fit of righteous indignation the Englishman seized the Semite and threw him out of the door.
English visitors to the Cape who, like myself, wished to contribute our humble share towards the work of the campaign had several directions in which to utilise their energies. The Prince Alfred's Field Artillery was raising recruits, and on the point of leaving for the front for the defence of De Aar. The Duke of Edinburgh's Rifle Volunteers enlisted men on Thursday, drilled them day and night, and sent them off on the Tuesday. This fine corps has, much to its vexation, been almost continuously employed in guarding lines of communication and protecting bridges and culverts from any violence at the hands of colonial rebels. The South African Light Horse has already been mentioned. For those of us who found it impossible to pledge ourselves for the whole period of the war, owing