THE LUXURY OF DANGER. T HE rush of applications for employment
as volunteers which is among the minor embarrassments of the Colonial Department whenever there is the slightest prospect of active service, has been diverted to the offices of the Chartered Company. War in Matabeleland presents such attractions to unemployed Englishmen that the Company feel obliged to notify that, for the present, the services of more volunteers from England are not required. Should any reverse unfortunately overtake Mr. Rhodes's column, it would be interesting to see whether the spirit of adventure cools, or is merely whetted by opportunity, as it happened after the loss of the Victoria,' when the streets outside the recruiting stations of the Royal Navy were crowded with boys who thought "there must be a few vacancies now." To judge by an advertisement which appeared in Monday's Times, there can be little ground for doubt. Englishmen anxious for a fight are usually indifferent to pay. But it appears that they are now expected not only to be ready to risk their lives, but to pay money-down for the luxury of danger, or to what are we to attribute the following lines P- " wan in SOUTH AFRICA.—Expedition now organising to proceed to the Front -
GENTLEMEN of position, who ride and shoot, may JOIN. Cost 4200. Guides provided.—African, G915, Address and Inquiry office, The Times Office, E.G."
Two hundred pounds will secure to gentlemen of position the pains and pleasures of an ocean voyage, to be followed by weeks of early rising, bad food, mud, morning mists, pro- bable sickness, and certain fatigue, which may at last offer the opportunity of a personal experience of the prowess of the warriors who figure in the pages of " King Solomon's Mines," and the powers of the mounted White and his rifle when pitted against the impi and the assegai. The idea of a " Sacred band" of well-to-do bachelors from the neighbourhood of St. James's Street, led by Mr. Scions, playing the part of Alan Quartermain—for it is some such typical scout who must be the guide provided, if not the organiser of the party—and bent on convincing the Matabele that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander ; and that fighting Lobengula's impis presents much the same attraction to our " braves " as raiding Ma shonas does to his, has a kind of wild justice about it, however abhorrent it may be to the principles of the Peace Society. The late Lord Derby, in recalling his experiences as Colonial Secretary during the Abyssinian War, used to dwell with emphasis upon the immense reservoir of unemployed physical force in England indicated by the irrepressible eagerness of volunteer applicants for service. The type of character is a permanent one, and has not changed in England since our Colonies were first founded, but is constant here, just as it has been in the East since the days of the Caliphs of Bagdad, or of Xenophon him- self. There are men who can only exercise their full faculties in the atmosphere of physical danger. It braces them like a tonic, and is as necessary to their existence as oxygen. It matters not in what quarter of the globe the requisite con- ditions are to be found ; there the "adventurer "—to use his old title be found also. He migrates ; but, like the predatory birds that follow the prairie fires, his signal for flitting is the smoke of battle. Tho impulse seems quite irresistible in some natures ; yet it differs from the sudden lust of battle which rises like a gust of passion, and drives men headlong into the fray without premeditation. That is the kind of fighting ardour which possesses men like Benvenuto Cellini. The class of man of whom we speak has a steady craving for the excitement of looking death in the face, and of proving to others that he can do so without loss of nerve, and with credit to himself. It carries men thousands of miles beyond the seas ; and the taste, when once indulged, often occupies a lifetime in its satisfaction. It is not patriotism, and hardly knight- errantry, for it always has for its object the gratifica- tion of a purely personal desire, which was never better described than in the simple words of the Smith of Perth, after taking part as a volunteer in the combat a outranee between the Clan Chattan and the Clan Quhele, that he "fought for his own hand." There is something self-absorbed and solitary in the very independence which makes such a life delightful. John Smith, the recoloniser of Virginia, spent months in a but built in a wood near his Lincolnshire home, after his return from his campaigns in Hungary, a brooding hermit, cooking his own food and grooming his horse. Albert Spiers, one of the earliest and perhaps the ablest of the pioneers of the Far West, could never endure for long even the society of English country houses, in which he was a general favourite. He would disappear without the slightest warning of his intentions, and be next heard of in some desperate border-fight with the Apaches or Comanches, or leading his mule-team on the Santa F6 trail. The only attraction which drew him for any time from the congenial occupation of outwitting the craftiest savages of the world, was the excitement of speculation in Wall Street, in which, for a time, he was hardly less successful. There is rarely a fight outside Europe in which the roving Englishman does not figure to advantage,—coming from no one knows where, and disappearing when the excitement is over. In all irregular conflicts he is much in evidence, even in Europe itself. Garibaldi had his company of English volunteers, and nothing but the love of battle for its own sake could have induced Englishmen to lose their lives in the bloodthirsty skirmishes of the Oarlist War. In India the English volunteer is coldly discouraged ; but there the " services " are supreme, and the native States, which would otherwise be happy hunting grounds for English adventurers of all sorts, are protected by the all-seeing eye of a paternal Government.
It does not follow that, because the pioneer Briton is an interesting, character he is also a nice man. Some- times he is quite the reverse. The " touch-and-go " life which he enjoys naturally tends to make him callous, if not unscrupulous. When hard pressed he is apt to make short cuts to success which disclose a frightful familiarity with expedients which make the home-staying Englishman first incredulous and then sick. The French conscripts raised after the Russian disaster, had much the same feeling for the "view; d'Espagne," who had learned the art of making war support itself. Doctors, as in the days of Kingsley's hero, Tom Thurnall, in " Two Years Ago," are still among the most enterprising "adventurers." Their profession insures them an income in any cliniate or country. Even in time of peace the young doctor can gratify a taste for adventure in a way denied to most professional men. He is an indispensable part of all expeditions in search of big game which annually leave London for India, the Rocky Mountains, and Africa. An expedition from London to Berbera, and thence into Somali- land, hardly lasts beyond the limits of a long vacation, and affords more than a possibility of a fight with the blacks, as well as an encounter with lions, rhinoceros, and buffalo. Africa, whether north or south, has for some time been with- out a rival in its attractions to the adventurer. The events which have closed the greater portion of its hunting-grounds to the sportsman have supplied a stronger and more deadly lure. "The whole Soudan," writes Sir Charles Wilson, "is not worth the deaths of Gordon and the two Stewarts." Volunteering in Zululand cost the life of the Prince Imperial and ruined the hopes of a dynasty. Yet the attraction of the African fights, at a short three weeks' journey from London, is irresistible. Zululand, the Transvaal border, Suakim, and even the Nile Expedition itself, became in turn the goals of the volunteer, to which he struggled as a miner struggles to a new gold-field. Sometimes, though rarely, he gains his heart's desire,—plenty of danger and fighting, and a quasi-public recognition of the qualities of courage and coolness on which he secretly prides himself. After the desert march from Korti to Metemmah, Sir Charles Wilson was requested by Lord Charles Beresford to appoint a Mr. Ingram to a command on one of Gordon's steamers, and he was made an acting-lieutenant of the Royal Navy upon the spot. "Ingram," writes Sir Charles Wilson, " had come up the river as correspondent of a small news- paper, making this an excuse for getting to the front. He had brought out a small steam-launch, but had been obliged to leave the engines at the cataract, and then, by sheer pluck and energy, got his boat up to Korti. He fought in the front rank as a volunteer in the squares at Abu Klea and Metemmah, and was always cool and collected, using his rifle with great effect. Many of us noticed his gallantry and quiet, determined manner, so that it was a real pleasure to give him a definite position in the force. Men of his stamp are invaluable at critical moments such as when the square was broken." But such an opportunity cannot be expected either to occur or to be created in the ordinary course of things. Not a single naval officer was left except Lord Charles Beresford, who was sick ; and an expedition which had begun on camel-back was concluded on war-steamers.
The experience of Captain Montagu in Zululand gives a more probable estimate of the fate of the volunteer. "My escort were four Volunteer Horse," he writes, "rough-looking men at first sight, in cord suits of warm brown faced with scarlet. On closer acquaintance, the troopers proved to be gentlemen, unshaven, not unlikely unwashed too ; was I not all but the same? There was an ex-captain of the Line, a young draughtsman from an engineer's office, and a couple of medical students from Trinity College. All had come out for the fun of the thing; some had been promised commis- sions; others nothing ; all had, in the end, to be content with berths in the Volunteer Horse, to be dressed in brown cords, and to carry the mails." It may well be that the volunteer could be turned to better account in our frontier wars. His heart is in the right place, and he is presumably of better physique than the lads who enter the Army as recruits. He often has a knowledge of riding and shooting, and a general intelligence far beyond that of the young private soldier, and his en- thusiasm should make him an apt learner. That fine body of men who were enrolled as " Methuen's Horse," and formed a part of the troops under the command of Sir Charles Warren when fresh trouble was feared with the Transvaal, became first-class shots in a very few weeks, and capable of holding their own with the Boers either with the rifle or in the saddle, a fact which was freely acknowledged by the Boers themselves. Their pay was four times that of the private soldier. But their prestige averted a second Boer war.
Previous page
