Mr. Bennet Burleigh took Mr. Kipling to the fight in his Cape-cart, and they started out with more style and comfort than an Oriental general swaying on the cushioned howdah of his elephant charger. But the course of a day in war is as uncertain as that of love or as the nature of the white men, and, early in the day, the Poet of the Empire was under a hot Mauser fire. Far from being nervous or regretting the experience, he seemed to feel only the tingle of the excitement. If you could get him to refer to it you saw that he rejoiced to have felt the breath and heard the weird, low song of the leaden rain.
For myself I had such an inglorious escapade as no man would care to dwell upon who was in a war to get the best or the worst, but not to be incapacitated by what could have happened at home. In a word, I went into a wire fence off the back of a frightened racehorse, and was obliged to go on to the battle, belated and with both fore-arms torn into strips, not to speak of injuries which must stay by me as mementoes of the day so long as I live.
Mr. Barnes's number of THE FRIEND was a good one. His editorial, "As to the Future," was very vigorous, and must have pleased Sir Alfred Milner, who did us the honour to say that he valued the paper as a most efficient arm of the effort to pacify and reconcile to their fate our neighbours of the Free State. He suggested to me that we should address ourselves more directly to the Boers, and always with a view to impressing them with our magnanimous intentions, and the benefits and advantages of enlightened British rule. It was his suggestion, also, that all articles calculated to encourage resignation on their part should be duplicated in the Taal language, and this wise plan we began at once to endeavour to follow. We succeeded but feebly, because we did not know the Taal ourselves, and we could not trust the majority of the sometimes "slim" ones among the few who were able to perform the work of translation creditably.
In this number of the paper Mr. Barnes published No. 4 of Mr. Kipling's "Fables for the Staff," and the poem by Mr. Kipling on Perceval Landon's birthday. "A Realistic Comedy," by an anonymous writer, the third of Mr. Gwynne's articles on the art of war, and a bit of a brief correspondence between the army telegraphists and Mr. Bennet Burleigh were also in this entertaining number.