It was expected, however, that officers who devoted so much time to the honor and appearance of their regiments would at least be proficient in military science; but, when the supreme test arrived, they were found lacking, and what the observer in England took for indifference to the work was in reality ignorance. No one was half so surprised, however, at the ignorance of the British officer as the British officer himself. He was not able to realize that he did not understand his profession; and to this day hundreds of officers do not realize their ignorance, because so many have not yet had the fortune to be brought face to face with a campaign crisis sufficiently grave to show them their own weakness.
It has been a popular idea that the effect of the South African war will be to bind the colonies closer to the mother country. But the ignorance that has been displayed by some of the leaders of the imperial forces is bound to have its effect sooner or later upon the colonial dependencies, which heretofore have looked upon the English officer as a military idol.
For some days after Pretoria was taken, I was much in the company of officers of the Canadian contingent, and their views of the South African situation were refreshingly straightforward and enlightening. I talked with a Toronto captain who wore the ribbon of the Northwest Rebellion, and who had served with Roosevelt in Cuba merely for the fun of fighting, and I asked him what he thought of the whole show. He was a man whose judgment was sound, a man of the kind that we know as the sound business man of this continent--a character with prestige almost unknown in England.
[Illustration: British Colonel of Volunteers.]
“Well,” he said, “it isn’t the way we would do it, is it? We colonials have been taught that nothing we could do could possibly be just right; nothing we could say could just suit the point; and we are brought over here and dumped into a country under a lot of officers who don’t know as much as a child at home would know about the same game.”
[Illustration: Colonel Peabody, U. S. Volunteers.]
Throughout the colonial regiments that sentiment was manifest, for both the Australian and Canadian forces were volunteers of the same type that constitutes the United States volunteer army in time of war. Business men, professional men, and society men--all sorts and conditions--volunteered from purely patriotic feeling; they each went from a new country, where every man is to some degree an adventurer. The same spirit that had sent men to the colonies now sent men to the war. They are men with intelligence and courage enough to better their personal surroundings, and consequently are capable of approaching a situation with daring and executing it with success. While the colonials were in the field in South Africa, I think their opinions of the imperial officer took the shape of amusement rather than contempt; but when they have returned to their homes their derision is bound to become scorn; for that great respect which they have been taught to feel is broken, and they have suddenly awakened to the fact that they of the New World have outstripped the mother country in practicality.