The Story of Baden-Powell / 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps'

A good description of Baden-Powell is that versatile officer's own sketch of a man with whom he soldiered on one of his campaigns: "He has all the qualifications that go to make an officer above the ruck of them. Endowed with all the dash, pluck, and attractive force that make a born leader of men, he is also steeped in common sense, is careful in arrangement of details, and possesses a temperament that can sing 'Wait till the clouds roll by' in crises where other men are tearing their hair." The public in the light of recent events will be quick to recognise B.-P. in the latter part of this portrait; I can assure them that the rest is equally accurate. As a regimental officer he exhibits all these good qualities. He can show the men dash and pluck in every sport they care for, his common sense makes him the friend of Tommy Atkins as well as his officer, and the affairs of his regiment are so admirably managed that there is no enervating air of slackness about the barracks from the first monitory note of "Reveillé" to the last wailing sound of "Lights Out."

And while Baden-Powell is loved in the barrack-room he is ever the most popular figure in the Officers' Mess. There is nothing of the namby-pamby, I mean, in his solicitude for the soldier's welfare, nothing to make him unpopular with his brother officers, nothing that makes even the youngest subaltern a little contemptuous. Tout au contraire. The place he holds in the affections of his brother officers may, perhaps, be seen in a quotation from the letter of an officer in the 13th Hussars, which I received during the most anxious days of the siege of Mafeking. After saying that relief ought to have been sent before, my Hussar says, "Poor dear chap, he must be severely tried. As I eat my dinner at night I always wish I could hand it over to him." Could a Briton do more?

Such then is Baden-Powell's character as a regimental officer. Beloved by the little fashionable world of the Officers' Mess, adored by the men who eat and sleep and clean sword, carbine, and boots in the one room, he presents to the gaze of the schoolboy whose whole thoughts are set upon Sandhurst the beau-ideal of a regimental officer.

To reach that ideal there are five great essentials—keenness, courage, high-mindedness, self-abnegation, humour. Ability to mix freely with private soldiers without loss of dignity is, I take it, the natural gift of a gentleman; and if the officer who devotes himself to his men is high-minded and courageous, always ready to ignore self, with the saving virtue of humour, he will earn not only their respect and admiration, but their loyal and unswerving love.

CHAPTER XIIIToC

GOAL-KEEPER

Baden-Powell was at Henley, preparing to enjoy the festivities of the 1899 Regatta in one of the pleasantest houses on the river, when a telegram arrived calling him to the War Office. This was on Wednesday, and the business the state of things in the Transvaal. On Saturday he was on the sea, sailing away from the coast of England.

As we have said before, Baden-Powell keeps a khaki kit in perfect readiness for emergencies ("he is terribly methodical," says one of his brothers), and, therefore, when Lord Wolseley asked him how soon it would be before he could start, the delighted B.-P. answered with a very enthusiastic "Immediately." But ships are not kept in such easy readiness as kits, and two whole days had to elapse before our hero could set sail for the land where war was brewing. Those two days he spent with his family and in paying farewell visits to his friends. The Old Carthusian naturally bent his steps towards Charterhouse, and sought out Dr. Haig-Brown in the Master's Lodge. "I hope they'll give me a warm corner," he said, gripping the Doctor's hand. And then in a few weeks this Old Boy was in his African corner, enjoying its Avernus-like warmth.

The story of the siege of Mafeking is one of the most interesting an Englishman can read about. One may truthfully say that it is the story of a single man—our hero, B.-P. Good men he has had under him, skilful officers and valorous troops; but all the daring, all the gallantry, all the heroism would have been powerless in such a situation without the unlimited resourcefulness of the intrepid Goal-Keeper. With a handful of men he has held at bay in a small and very exposed town as many as 6000 Boers, commanded at one time by the dogged and unscrupulous Cronje. And not only this. With his small force he has kept the enemy on tenterhooks all the weary weeks of the siege, sallying out at night to fling his gallant men upon their trenches, storming them in their lines by day, and actually giving the large army besieging his little garrison a taste of cold steel.