Mafeking : $b a diary of the siegeBaillie, Frederick David
History
Mafeking : $b a diary of the siege
Baillie, Frederick David
Mafikeng (South Africa) -- History -- Siege, 1899-1900; South African War, 1899-1902
What a funny little Frenchman that Prince Henri d’Orleans must be? His
compliments to a French comic paper on caricatures of the English would
almost entitle him to a prominent position on its staff, where, at any
rate, he would score a greater success than posing as an unemployed
patriot. By the bye, was he not once attached to the British Army, and
if so, whence this venom? But of tea-table tacticians and sofa
strategists you must, indeed, have more than enough. Reading the papers
from home one sees excellent persons with presumably nothing to do,
recommending people generally to turn the other cheek to the smiter;
personally, I and, indeed, most of my neighbours, think that the smiter
has had quite sufficient chances at our entire carcasses during the last
few months, and if they feel themselves so imbued with an overflowing
Christian spirit, I should suggest their taking a turn themselves. I do
not love the Boer, and I don’t think I shall until the Boer loves me.
There is only one way to obtain his respect and even toleration, and
that is by proving yourself the better man. There will then be peace in
the country which, at the present moment, there is not. I do think,
too, that people at home should not be so free in their comments upon
intelligence from this part of the world. For many years I have read
Mr. Baillie Grohmann’s letters on big game shooting with much interest.
I have also tried to shoot big game and Boers with about equally
moderate success. I do assert most emphatically that the Boers use
explosive bullets. I have seen the bullets, heard the bullets, and
picked up the base of bullets with fulminate caps in them. They were
not Mauser bullets, they were not expanding bullets, they were explosive
bullets pure and simple, and the Boers have confessed to their use.
Therefore, I think it would only have been fair had Mr. Baillie Grohmann
waited to know on what grounds people out here have made these
assertions, before writing a somewhat conclusive letter in which the
main point appeared to be that there was no such thing as an explosive
Mauser bullet. It is rather hard on some hundreds of thousands of
Englishmen who happen to be serving their country out here, that because
they are on that service they should be immediately considered to be
destitute of that sense of fair play with which the race generally is
credited, and I am sure that Mr. Baillie Grohmann himself, would be the
first to admit it. We don’t expect much more from a Boer than a bullet,
and as far as we know have not particularly grumbled at their using
explosive ones, but it is hard lines to be told they didn’t when we
mention the fact. I personally felt a sense of great disappointment that
I was not reading Mr. Baillie Grohmann’s usual letters to _The Field_,
instead of this one in _The Morning Post_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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