We made a money profit as well as a good newspaper—but the entire experience thus quickly passed into history.

Thus ends the history of this new departure in war and in journalism. Of it Mr. Kipling wrote afterwards, "Never again will there be such a paper! Never again such a staff! Never such fine larks." It has been impossible, after all my good intentions, to tell of scores of the peculiarities of the paper, and its editors' experiences. Sometimes copies of The Friend did not look twice alike for days at a time, as we strove to make it more and more workmanlike, and more and more original and attractive.

We began, as I have said, with advertisement "ear-tabs" on either side of the heading. Then we put the Royal coat-of-arms in their places. Next we put the arms in the middle of the title space and published mottoes and notices in new "ear-tabs." At first we put double leads only between the lines of the leading article each day, but presently we dignified the cable news and Mr. Kipling's contributions in that way. We once put some editorial notices in rhyme, and set them up in black job type—when we changed the price of the paper to one penny for everybody.

We knew that our money returns were in confusion, but because we had taken over a business manager from one of the two commandeered newspapers, whom we could hardly expect to be in sympathy with us, and because we had established two prices for the paper and were being victimised by some of our customers, we could not see how the finance of our venture was likely to come out.

A practised man of affairs, from the City Imperial Volunteer Mounted Force, Mr. Siegfried Blumfeld, most kindly took the trouble to look into our accounts, and we learned from his report that we were making money, but not nearly enough to satisfy our pride and hopes. However, as events proved, we gained a splendid profit, and were able to make Tommy Atkins's newspaper pay a handsome sum toward "Tommy's" relief. All that any of us have even thus far learned of the profits is to be found in the following formal letter I received from Lord Stanley:—

ARMY HEADQUARTERS, PRETORIA,

3rd October, 1900.

Sir,—I have been asked by Major-General Pretyman, C.B., to forward you a copy of a letter which he has received bearing reference to the use made of the profits of The Friend newspaper.

General Pretyman adds that there will be a further cheque, which he proposes to send to some other charity, but which he does not specify to me.

Yours sincerely,

Stanley.

Julian Ralph, Esq.,

(Enclosure.)

Stellenberg, Kenilworth, Cape Colony,
20/8/00.

Sir,—As Honorary Treasurer of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association, I enclose a formal acknowledgment of the cheques for £136 17s. 3d. so kindly sent to our Association by the War Correspondents. Should you have an opportunity of doing so, I should be very glad if you would convey to Lord Stanley and the other gentlemen our great appreciation of this kind and thoughtful gift.

Yours very truly,

(Signed) W. L. Sclater.

Had we been able to "inspan" a proof-reader with a Lee-Metford rifle and a determination to use it to enforce his "corrections," we should not have announced the Queen's reception in Dublin as a great tribute by London, neither should we have made Mr. Kipling speak of a "shixlvl" when he wrote a "shovelful." Four of us had to fill a great chasm nine columns long and wide every day, and to do proof-reading as well. We produced the nine columns incidentally as a thing done with our left hands, the while that our minds and souls and master-hands were devoted to correcting proofs. Bravely as we battled with them, they kept coming like a swift tide, until, in a reckless way of putting it, they were heaped on our table as high as the top button on each of our coats. When it came to time to go to press we regularly and daily observed that we had not only overlooked errors enough to wreck our reputations, but that the compositors had failed to correct many of those which we had marked. Gravely, in a body, we used to march to the printing-office and threaten to send the guiltiest culprits as prisoners to Simonstown, charged with being hostile to the blessings of enlightened government. Then we would go to lunch and the paper would come out—so full of mistakes that there was clearly nothing to do but to allow the humour of the situation to have its way, and to laugh until we almost cried at the extravagance of the offences we were committing against journalism and "the art preservative of arts."

Despite its whimsicalities, The Friend was a dignified newspaper, and very nearly a complete one. The largest daily circulation of any Bloemfontein newspaper had been 400 copies, but we regularly sold from 5,000 to 5,500 copies. We published Reuter's telegrams from all over the world (semi-occasionally when military messages did not block the wires), and the Capetown Argus's tidings of what went on in South Africa.

As I have written elsewhere, "its unique origin and purpose, and its eccentricities, combined to make it the basis of a collecting mania." Copies with a mistake in a date line, corrected after one hundred papers had been struck off, brought five shillings on the date of issue, and ten shillings two days later, and the price had risen to a guinea by the time the newspaper was turned over to the managers of the Johannesburg Star and Capetown Argus. This took place when it was apparent to all of us that two or three of us were not in the physical trim to serve The Friend and our distant employers without causing one or the other to suffer great neglect.

The competition for complete sets of the newspaper ran the price up to £10, and this strife ran neck and neck with the rivalry to obtain sets of Free State postage stamps made British by the letters V.R.I. on an overline of printing. One of these stamps was quoted at £10 while the army lingered in Bloemfontein, but I have my own reason for thinking that The Friend will receive a higher valuation than any "pink sixpenny stamp" or any set of stamps, for it fell to the lot of that journal to emphasise the present power and usefulness of the press as no other journal has ever done.

A single copy of this newspaper is reported to have fetched £25 at a London charity bazaar.

Since the return to England of three of the editors we have decided to perpetuate the little organisation in a fraternal "Order of Friendlies," and Rudyard Kipling has designed a badge which Messrs. Tiffany & Co., jewellers, of Regent Street, have most ably and artistically executed in gold and enamel. Facsimiles of it adorn the cover of this book. It is of the size of a two-guinea coin. On its obverse side are the colours of the old Free State and Transvaal, upon which is imposed the red cross of Saint George. In the ends of the cross are the initials of the four editors in Greek capitals. Lord Roberts's badge has his initials in the centre of the cross in green under a golden coronet, and where the ring is, on top of our badges, his has a green enamel shamrock leaf. On the reverse side are four pens crossed and surrounded by a motto, "Inter PrÆlia Prelum," "In the Midst of War the Printing Press," here couched in monkish Latin. Lord Roberts's badge has a drawn sword of gold on top of the crossed pens. Only seven men in all the world belong to this order: Lord Roberts, Lord Stanley, Messrs. Gwynne, Kipling, Landon, Buxton, and myself. All others are eligible, however, who have dedicated themselves to "telling the truth at all costs and all hazards," so that the mind fails to grasp the future possibilities of its membership.

THE END.