An Amateur’s Advice.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 310, 10 January 1902, Page 4

An Amateur’s Advice.

| By “ Toul'Noa,” ; When commanders are dancing and their men are being ill-fed is it not quite proper to call public attention ' When incapable commanders deliberately insult t heir subordinates is it not necessary to •all public attention '■ Obedience, yes! I tut intelligent obedience only, an 1 above

all things, intelligent command. We hear too much altogether of the duty oi the trooper. Arc we never to hear anything of the duty of those who command Obedience, vest But is it- not a fact that ho obeys best who knows when to disobey V Was Nelson shot for putting the telescope to his blind eye, or that aide-dc-can p who coined the false order that opened the

road through Lucknow to the gasping Residency Never lias it been the fault of out 1 .British soldiery that they tended to mutiny. It is the weakness of the British blood that it accepts orders too literally, that it rejoices in dying at the word of command, that it lurches along with a wooden intelligence which after two years veldt fighting has hardly yet learned enough to conic out of the wet. Frankly, if out' colonel had half the number of men and double the number of horses, and told his men that he didn t give a continental how they looked or what they said, or whether they saluted or not, so long as they nursed every ounce in their horses and took every ounce out and kept as wakeful as they would if they were droving a mob of cattle to market, Be Wet might well feel unhappicr. Tut five hundred picked men on the trail of Be Wet, with a led horse by every saddle, and reserve horse stations every coup.o of hundred miles, and if they don t run him to earth there is no virtue in common sense ! There are some who try to make out that spare horses arc an encumbrance, that relays are useless, and they argue that any' ridden horse will run down a riderless horse. Will it ? A. chased horse almost always runs in a circle, and the chaser keep inside it. A chased horse commonly slows down when it has galloped, for it is usually only having fun. But any who have seen wild stallions run down by relays of horses and horsemen, dropping finally of sheer exhaustion after hours of running, which no single ridden horse could possibly compete with, know the value of continual remounts. And the led horse is fresh and lively after hours of travelling. And the saddle horse freshens up the moment you shift saddle and lead him. But this is the ABC of back-country travelling. Only it is an ABC'which is not in the Imperial primer. . the Imperial primer from which our officers have to spell requires that horses be fed. At any rate a very few months ago it required them to be fed. Wo have the wonderful spectacle of one fed horse chasing a dozen grass-fed horses, and the onlookefSwondering why it can’t catch them, The Boer nurses his half-dozen or dozen horses along. Ho picks up every horse ho can get and drives it with his mob. If he can only get a dozen miles out of an abandoned military horse he takes that dozen miles for the saving of his own. He pulls up whenever he comes to a patch of good grass and rejoins his commando a few hours later, with cheerful and rested horses. He eats the grass up as ho goes, while our “ flying columns ” carry horse feed in carts, with their pianos and wardrobes, and leave the grass for the next Boer commando that crosses their trail. Our Imperial horses won’t do on grass, you know, and we find it hard enough to food one horse apiece, much less half a dozen. 1 Put the telescope to your blind eye, colonel, and play that the game is to win, obey or disobey. Lot us have a little, of the Do Wet stylo, the go-as-you-ploase-but-fight-as-I-ploaso style, the no-uon-sense-common-sense style! Let us have a little more of the drover touch and loss of the horse guards. See if you can’t run into Do Wot, colonel, instead of letting him run into you! But to do it you’ll have to bo disobedient, to break every rule and regulation ever printed at Whitehall, to take a leaf or two from the book which De Wet has been writing, not bo ashamed of the examples of Cromwell, Frederick, Nelson, and a few more. They may cashier you, colonel, but they can’t disgrace you in our oyes, if you only ride to win and take the lads with you. And if

you catch Dc Wet beforo you get cashiered, colonel, the odds are a thousand to nothing that tho,y won’t cashier you afterwards. —N.Z. Herald.

If Imperial officers bad beon as a class dependent on their pay there would have been no reports of mobile columns being encumbered with pianos and kitchen ranges, or of nightly jollifications with English beer at ds Cd per bottle. —Sydney Sunday Times. There is evidently going to bo a scramble for one of the vacant M.L.0.sliips. A correspondent of the Otaki paper urges the claims of Mr George Mcßeath, a local hotelkeeper, Mr Simcox, district coroner, and Mr John Davies, county chairman. —Masterton Times. Perhaps no maxims arc so misleading to tlie judgment of those who implicitly believe them as tlio.se which assert what is absolutely true actually and very often false metaphorically. For instance, “ Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” and “ .Straws slu.w which way the wind blows.” VC JJ by tffffdiST a iicfnd fire "at "all. Neither, metaphorically speaking, do straws show which way the wind blows, for such arc the cross currents of character that you can seldom judge of its general trend by a trivial action. A man may save a penny and yet not he mean, or throw away a pound without being generous or even habitually extravagant. Take, for instance, the common Yoikshirc saying, “ When in doubt do nought.” How very seldom the principle herein contained can be applied with advantage. How many weak wills, we should like to know, has this pestilential little proverb contributed to iiaraly.se ? “ All things happen to those that wait ’’—and so they do wait, till the only thing which is sure to happen to everyone does happen, ami they die. Could they have hut realised that “ lie who hesitates is lost ” contains far more truth than its opposite they might have done something in life. Not that this energetic assertion of an occasional fact is by any means a sure guide. Who is not familiar with the man who never hesitates before any decision and nearly always laments bis precipitation, usually aloud ? Who lias not got tired of 'imploring such a one to make the best of a bad job or of suppressing the obm’ous comment of “We told you so ” All the same, believers in a

motto, which spurs them into foolish action seem to do bettor in the race of life than those who rely niton one which preaches nothing hut caution. And hasty people generally seem to arrive at their goal, in however had condition. Mr Labouehere is one of those men who are never disconcerted either by people or by fate, and lie always manages to wriggle out of a difficulty no matter how grave it seems. Rather a laugnablc instance of this, according to the Week End, occurred in Germany not long ago. lie came 'into collision with the Custom House authorities over the question of luggage, and the wi angle threatened to involve the losing of a train and the consequent delay of several hours in a particularly uniiittjesling place. Naturally these

consideration:: did not affect the stolid Teuton officials in the least, hut Mr Lahonehere nude up his mind to ft!.: lie them. Calling for a telegraph form he directed it to Count von Rulow, and penned a concise despatch leg:ci ting his inability to keep his engagement to dinner owing to the outingious conduct of railway officials who were delaying him. Handing the document to a minor official with the j money for the cost of transmission, he calmly awaited the result. Even a Custom House official is human, and the guest of the Imperial Chancellor might do what an obscure English traveller could not. The haughty arrogance was soon changed to humble deference and all hands united to accelera'c tin* departure of Count, von liulow's “ fiiend,” whose smile as he took i.is seat was child-like and bland. Mr Laliuunhere's one wish now is to know wbat the Count thought when lie received that telegram, .