Approaching the centenary of the Anglo-Boer War, Benjamin Pogrund recalls the tale of how Edgar Wallace scooped the British government
NINETY-FIVE years ago last Saturday, Boers and Britons reached agreement on a peace treaty to end their nearly three-year war. The news of it caused consternation – not so much because it had been so eagerly awaited but because the first report appeared in a London newspaper, even before the British government knew of it.
Behind the scoop was an enterprising British journalist, Edgar Wallace, who was covering the war in South Africa for London’s Daily Mail.
When the conflict began in 1899 there was every indication that it would be short- lived. Britain was at the peak of its military power and wanted control of the Transvaal goldfields, discovered a mere 20 years earlier. The Boers surely had no chance.
Within months the British army occupied Pretoria and Johannesburg and the war was over to all intents and purposes. But the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State republics stubbornly refused to accept that they had lost and took to guerrilla warfare, roaming the countryside in their commandos.
Eventually, Britain mustered some 250 000 troops from its Empire to contain the 27 000 Boer citizen soldiers. Even this was not enough and Britain resorted to a devastating scorched-earth policy – from which came the notorious “concentration camps” with a high death toll among the 118 000 imprisoned, mainly women and children.
Boer generals finally agreed to come in for peace talks, and hostilities were suspended in mid-May 1902 while they and representatives of the republics met inside a barbed-wire camp near Vereeniging to discuss the British terms. They were accommodated in tents and held their meetings inside a large marquee.
Lord Kitchener had a personal loathing for the press and believed in strict censorship. He was determined that there should be no leak of information and that the world would learn of what transpired only through an official announcement.
He ordered that journalists were to be kept away from the camp. Soldiers were put on guard to keep the discussions secret.
While every journalist tried to beat Kitchener’s restrictions and spent their time lurking outside the barbed-wire fence, Wallace showed no interest. Instead, each day he took the train from Pretoria which ran to the Vaal River and placidly puffed his pipe and read a newspaper as he enjoyed the journey there and back.
He was also trading in shares. His first cable to London, advising that he had bought “1 000 Rand Collieries”, had been checked by the army censor who satisfied himself that it was a genuine transaction. Thereafter the censor paid no further attention to Wallace’s daily reports of his dealings. These were sent through a Johannesburg financier, Harry Freeman Cohen, with cables going to his brother, Caesar Cohen, in London.
Despite the shroud of secrecy, there was widespread astonishment that each day the Daily Mail in London published reports about the progress of the talks. And when the big moment came and agreement was reached on the night of May 31, the Daily Mail carried the news the next day – more than 24 hours before the government announced it to the House of Commons.
The British government was incensed. Kitchener was enraged.
Accusations of bribery and corruption were flung around – and the Daily Mail then revealed how it had achieved its scoop.
What no one had noticed was that the Vaal River train on which Wallace enjoyed his daily rides passed within sight of the camp. And what no one realised was that before becoming a newspaper correspondent Wallace had been an army medical orderly based in Simonstown – and one of his army mates from that time had landed up as a sentry guarding the marquee inside the camp.
Wallace had given him three coloured handkerchiefs – and each time the train passed the sentry wandered along the fence nearest the rail line and wiped his nose on a handkerchief: red meant “nothing doing” in the talks, blue was “making progress” and white was “treaty definitely to be signed”.
Wallace used these signals to send coded messages disguised as stock exchange dealings via the Cohen brothers to the Daily Mail. His last cable enabled the newspaper to announce that the Boers had agreed to peace. He had sent it even while the Boer delegates were still on their way from Vereeniging to Pretoria late that night to tell Kitchener that they would sign a treaty.
So highly was the story prized that the newspaper’s entire editorial staff, compositors and printers were locked into the Daily Mail’s headquarters, Carmelite House, throughout the night to prevent any leak to other newspapers.
There was at first much scorn for the Daily Mail’s reporting. “All the pretended revelations which have been given to the world are the veriest guesswork of speculation,” said the rival Daily Telegraph.
The following day the official news of the treaty was given to the House of Commons.
Wallace was fted by his newspaper but condemned by his fellow correspondents. Kitchener ordered that he no longer be given any facilities as a war correspondent and also refused to allow him to receive an Anglo-Boer war medal.
Wallace cared little about this, especially as his fame paid off: his friend, Freeman Cohen, bought the dying Standard and Diggers News in Johannesburg and three months later launched a newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail. Wallace accepted the editorship at a salary of 2 000 a year, compared with his 340 Daily Mail salary.
Alas, Wallace proved a spendthrift editor and within months drove the Rand Daily Mail into near-bankruptcy. He returned to Britain and after a turbulent and not always happy career in journalism, turned to writing. As older readers will know he became one of the century’s most prolific and popular thriller writers. His books were made into movies and he died in Hollywood in 1932.
As for May 31: the Union of South Africa came into being on that date in 1910 and it was celebrated as a public holiday until 1994, when the new South Africa came into being.