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

can never grow old. I can't help it if my toys take the form of all that has to do with veldt life, and if they remain my toys till I drop.

'Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its grey, The stars of its winter, the dews of its May; And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, Dear Father, take care of Thy children, the boys.

'May it not be that our toys are the various media adapted to individual tastes through which men may know their God? As Ramakrishna Paramahansa writes: 'Many are the names of God, and infinite the forms that lead us to know of Him. In whatsoever name or form you desire to know Him, in that very name and form you will know Him.''

CHAPTER IXToC

ROAD-MAKER AND BUILDER

King Prempeh was the first celebrity to receive the attention of B.-P. In his capital of Kumassi, which being interpreted is 'the death-place,' this miserable barbarian had been practising the most odious cruelties for many years, ignoring British remonstrances, and failing, like another African potentate, to keep his word to successive British Governments. Among the Ashantis at this time (1895) the blood-lust had got complete dominion, and the sacrifice of human life in the capital of their kingdom was so appalling that England was at last obliged to buckle on her armour. To quote B.-P. in a characteristic utterance: 'To the Ashanti an execution was as attractive an entertainment as is a bull-fight to a Spaniard, or a football match to an Englishman.' Even the most coddled schoolboy will appreciate the force of this comparison.

To give a general idea of these cruelties we will quote a vivid passage from Baden-Powell's book, The Downfall of Prempeh: 'Any great public function was seized on as an excuse for human sacrifices. There was the annual yam custom, or harvest festival, at which large numbers of victims were often offered to the gods. The late king went every quarter to pay his devotions to the shades of his ancestors at Bantama, and this demanded the deaths of twenty men over the great bowl on each occasion. On the death of any great personage, two of the household slaves were at once killed on the threshold of the door, in order to attend their master immediately in his new life, and his grave was afterwards lined with the bodies of more slaves, who were to form his retinue in the next world. It was thought better if, during the burial, one of the attendant mourners could be stunned by a club and dropped, still breathing, into the grave before it was filled in.... Indeed, if the king desired an execution at any time, he did not look far for an excuse. It is even said that on one occasion he preferred a richer colour in the red stucco on the walls of the palace, and that for this purpose the blood of four hundred virgins was used.'

The expedition to bring Mr. Prempeh to his senses was under the command of Sir Francis Scott, and Baden- Powell received the pink flimsy bearing the magic words, 'You are selected to proceed on active service,' with a gush of elation, which, he tells us, a flimsy of another kind and of a more tangible value would fail to evoke. Of course he was keen to go. The expedition suggested romance, and it assured experience. To plunge into the Gold Coast Hinterland is to find oneself in a world different from anything the imagination can conceive; civilisation is left an infinite number of miles behind, and the Londoner is brought face to face with what Thoreau calls the wild unhandselled globe. The message was received by Baden-Powell on the 14th of November 1895, and on the 13th of December he was walking through the streets of Cape Coast Castle, and had noted how well trodden was the grave of the writer L.E.L., who lies buried in the courtyard of the castle.

It was the business of B.-P. to raise a force of natives, and to proceed with this little army as soon as possible in front of the expedition, acting as a covering force. That is to say, the work of these undrilled, stupid, and not over-brave natives was scouting, a duty which while it is the most fascinating part of a soldier's life is also one of the most difficult. This then was an undertaking of which many a man might have felt shy, but Baden-Powell (the army is full of Baden-Powells) went at it cheerfully enough. On the arid desert outside the castle, which is called the parade ground, B.-P. and Captain Graham, D.S.O., taught these negroes, under a blazing sun, the rudiments of soldiering. In one part of their drill a few simple whistle-signals were substituted for the usual words of command, such as 'Halt' and 'Rally,' and a red fez was served out to the Levy (which in the end amounted to 860 men) as a British uniform. The glory of this 'kit,' however, was somewhat obscured by a commissariat load which each warrior carried on his head; but there was no heart under those shiny ebon skins which did not beat quicker for the possession of the red fez. The Levy, of course, had its band—a few men who made a tremendous din on elephant- hide drums, and a few more who produced two heart-breaking notes on elephants' hollowed tusks garnished with human jaw-bones. At the head of this force B.-P. and Captain Graham set out on their journey from Cape Coast to Kumassi, a distance of nearly 150 miles, on the 21st of December.

Soon after leaving the coast the little expedition plunged into the bush, and then amid the giant ferns and palms began to appear 'the solemn, shady miles of forest giants, whose upper parts gleam far above the dense undergrowth in white pillars against the grey-blue sky.' The Levy had now reached the regular forest, the beautiful, awe-inspiring, but, alas, evil-smelling forest. Here it was found by Baden-Powell that, in addition to scouting, his force would have to play the arduous part of road-makers, and, therefore, whenever he came upon a village such tools as felling-axes, hatchets, spades, and picks were requisitioned. But it was no easy task teaching the negroes to perform this labour. The man who was given a felling-axe immediately set about scraping up weeds, while the grinning warrior armed with a spade incontinently hacked at a hoary tree with Gladstonian ardour. 'The stupid inertness of the puzzled negro,' says B.-P., 'is duller than that of an ox; a dog would grasp your meaning in one-half the time.' But B.-P. did not despair of his men, neither did he ill-treat them. For three days he worked hard at tree- felling himself, and he only desisted from this labour on the discovery that the sight of his hunting-crop brought more trees to the ground than all his strokes with the axe. This hunting-crop was called 'Volapuk,' because every tribe understood its meaning, and during the march Baden-Powell found it of inestimable value. 'But, though often shown,' he says, 'it was never used.' The men might be stupid, they might be idle, but B.-P. can get work out of the worst men without bullying and without continual punishments.

It is men like Baden-Powell who exercise the greatest power over the negro's mind. When he condemns them for cruelty or stupidity he is quick to protest against the assumption that he is 'a regular nigger hater.' Here is the secret: 'I have met lots of good friends among them—especially among the Zulus. But, however good they may be, they must, as a people, be ruled with a hand of iron in a velvet glove; and if they writhe under it, and don't understand the force of it, it is of no use to add more padding—you must take off the glove for a moment and show them the hand. They will then understand and obey.' British rule is only imperilled when men in authority discard the velvet glove altogether, or—what is probably worse still—wear only the velvet glove, much padded, over their flaccid hands.

Just as he encourages Tommy Atkins to learn scouting and the more intelligent parts of soldiering, so he encouraged these negroes, duller than oxen, and made them useful pioneers. Here is his own simple record of the way he got to the hearts of the Levy: 'How they enjoy the palaver in which I tell them that 'they are the eyes to the body of the snake which is crawling up the bush-path from the coast, and coiling for its spring! The eyes are hungry, but they will soon have meat; and the main body of white men, armed with the best of weapons, will help them win the day, and get their country back again, to enjoy in peace for ever.' Then I show them my own little repeating rifle, and firing one shot after another, slowly at first, then faster and faster, till the fourteen rounds roll off in a roar, I quite bring down the house. They crowd round, jabbering and yelling, every man bent on shaking hands with the performer.'

But Baden-Powell, while humane and nothing of a bully, knows the value of strictness, as we have shown, and he admits that sometimes it is even necessary to shoot one's own men in order to maintain discipline. He is, however, careful to remark that an extreme step of this kind 'should be the result only of deliberate and fair consideration of the case.' 'Strict justice,' he adds, 'goes a very long way towards bringing natives under