Capstick, Peter Hathaway. Warrior: The Legend of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998.
Peter Hathaway Capstick is known for his many books of African hunting and adventure, an oeuvre carrying evocative titles like Death in the Long Grass, Death on the Dark Continent, Last Horizons and Sands of Silence. His personal selections of the finest in safari adventure by the like of Frederick Courtney Selous and Franklin Roosevelt, published by St Martin’s Press, make a substantial library of Africana. Capstick has also written several biographies of great white hunters from the glory days of the African safari: Wally Johnson, John “Pondoro” Taylor, and now Richard Meinertzhagen, who was not so much a professional hunter of lions and elephants as a hunter of men during the brief apogee of European colonialism in Africa.
Born in England of German immigrants, Meinertzhagen “was a soldier, a big-game hunter and discoverer of a hitherto unknown species [of antelope], an ornithologist of world repute specializing in migrating birds [his text on Arabian species “remains the bible on the subject to this day;” Peter Matthiessen favorably mentions Meinertzhagen in his recent The Birds of Heaven (see Book Review 15)], chief of intelligence against the Germans in World War I in the East African campaign and head political intelligence officer in the Mesopotamian theater, close friend of Lawrence of Arabia, advisor to the British throne, a founding force in modern guerrilla warfare, a Gentile who became one of the driving forces behind the birth of the modern State of Israel, a spy of great personal talent, and an intellectual whose personality and perspicacity shone like a new sovereign in a world known for bright men largely responsible for the fact that English was even then the world language. Dick was tricky, shifty, wealthy, well-connected and absolutely ruthless. Although he did not coin the term ‘the end justifies the means,’ it was his personal dictum.”
Meinertzhagen’s adventures as a soldier for Empire began in India, where he developed a deep antipathy to the Crown Colony’s Hindu soldiery (a disdain that became more pronounced given their discreditable performance against African and German troops in Tanganyika) as well as a lifelong love of bird life; he was methodically catagorizing the mosaic of subcontinental species whenever not preoccupied with military training. Transferred to the fledgling Kenya Colony in 1905, Meinertzhagen immediately became embroiled in the vicious tribal hostilities brewing along the borders of British control. Add to that a good deal of time for safari in the ultimate wilderness of the fin de siècle African veldt, the resolute stalking of troublesome maneating lions, savage colonial war against the Nandi and Kikuyu and finally the arrival of hostilities between British Kenya and German Tanganyika and you have an astounding series of exploits. The entire book is filled with enough wildlife, combat, horror, beauty, bloodshed, and scenic description to be valuable simply as an adventure tale, but Capstick goes out of the way to emphasize the otherness of Meinertzhagen’s worldview, worrying that fine line between diplomatic civility and acts of deliberate carnage that together formed and permitted global colonialism. In forcing peace between perpetually warring tribes, the Europeans often found themselves subject to violence themselves, and Meinertzhagen was fully committed to repaying each brutality with an even greater display of slaughter.
Meinertzhagen, like Kipling and most of his Victorian and Georgian contemporaries, was a true believer in the civilizing influences of enlightened, Christian Europe, and Capstick’s descriptions of African tribal conflict remind the reader of early English and French documentation of Amerindian warfare: a ceaseless cycle of robbery, murder, vengeance and reprisal. Capstick overtly sympathizes with the colonial ideal, and takes to task Meinertzhagem’s superior officers when they threaten him with court martial for his swift and ferocious reactions to African attack. Meinertzhagen remained serenely committed to his policies, however, as recorded here after a joint British/Irryeni campaign against the WaEmbo (a tribe of the Kikuyu nation that had been raiding the Irryeni cattle) when he’d killed several of his own Masai mercenaries for insubordination:
“Some may think I was too harsh, others may concur with what I did. I acted with a cool head, fully weighing the consequences, and would do it again under similar circumstances. War is necessarily brutal, but it need not be made too brutal. If black troops and undisciplined levies are allowed to get out of hand, as they most surely will if not ruled by iron discipline, disaster is the result.”
Spoken like a true oppressor, however truthful in those circumstances of time and place (and how can we judge otherwise?). Yet Capstick allows us to see other aspects of Meinertzhagen’s character that are less easy to stereotype. He refused to kill elephants, for instance, a decision Capstick peevishly takes to task, and despised animal cruelty in any form, risking his position several times to interupt it: “Whenever I come across cruelty,” he said, “my nature makes me fight it regardless of consequence.” Although vehemently and prejudicially pro-British (he castigated the great Afrikanner general Jan Smuts for denouncing an incompetent British officer and explained himself by saying “I dislike a Dutchman calling an English general a coward”), he was the first to recognize and argue for the fighting spirit and resolve in black African troops, such as the crack Tanganyikan Schütztruppen led by German officers. His feeling for the plight of the Jews and his subsequent aid to the Zionists of the mid-1940s was rewarded with heartfelt public thanks from Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first prime minister. And decades ahead of his time, Meinertzhagen saw the need to involve local peoples in the conservation process, positioning their needs and desires in such a way that they will actually benefit from national parks and preserves. As Capstick argues, “If game does not have a value on the ground that also benefits the local inhabitants, it will disappear … If you want game to survive, let the ethical hunter and his bank balance take charge.”
War, wildlife and hunting were Meinertzhagen’s greatest loves, and he was as unapologetic about hunting and killing as he was about taking up the white man’s burden:
“When I arrived in (Kenya) I was obsessed by an unashamed blood-lust. Hunting is man’s primitive instinct, and I enjoyed it to the full … The hunting of big game gave me good healthy exercise when many of my brother officers were drinking rot-gut or running around with somebody else’s wife; it taught me bushcraft and how to shoot straight. After all, the hunting of men—war—is but a form of hunting wild animals, and on many occasions during World War One I thanked my God that I had learned several tricks of my trade when hunting wild and dangerous game.”
Honest, persevering, faithful and merciless, Richard Meinertzhagen was truly a product of his era. For him the chief good in the world of men was to perform with excellence under pressure, thus earning the liberty to pursue one’s dreams to the ends of the earth:
“Wide horizons in thought and vision, freedom and always more freedom, fresh air and exercise and a contempt for Death—that it what I love. Those are the conditions I understand.”
Peter Hathaway Capstick is known for his many books of African hunting and adventure, an oeuvre carrying evocative titles like Death in the Long Grass, Death on the Dark Continent, Last Horizons and Sands of Silence. His personal selections of the finest in safari adventure by the like of Frederick Courtney Selous and Franklin Roosevelt, published by St Martin’s Press, make a substantial library of Africana. Capstick has also written several biographies of great white hunters from the glory days of the African safari: Wally Johnson, John “Pondoro” Taylor, and now Richard Meinertzhagen, who was not so much a professional hunter of lions and elephants as a hunter of men during the brief apogee of European colonialism in Africa.
Born in England of German immigrants, Meinertzhagen “was a soldier, a big-game hunter and discoverer of a hitherto unknown species [of antelope], an ornithologist of world repute specializing in migrating birds [his text on Arabian species “remains the bible on the subject to this day;” Peter Matthiessen favorably mentions Meinertzhagen in his recent The Birds of Heaven (see Book Review 15)], chief of intelligence against the Germans in World War I in the East African campaign and head political intelligence officer in the Mesopotamian theater, close friend of Lawrence of Arabia, advisor to the British throne, a founding force in modern guerrilla warfare, a Gentile who became one of the driving forces behind the birth of the modern State of Israel, a spy of great personal talent, and an intellectual whose personality and perspicacity shone like a new sovereign in a world known for bright men largely responsible for the fact that English was even then the world language. Dick was tricky, shifty, wealthy, well-connected and absolutely ruthless. Although he did not coin the term ‘the end justifies the means,’ it was his personal dictum.”
Meinertzhagen’s adventures as a soldier for Empire began in India, where he developed a deep antipathy to the Crown Colony’s Hindu soldiery (a disdain that became more pronounced given their discreditable performance against African and German troops in Tanganyika) as well as a lifelong love of bird life; he was methodically catagorizing the mosaic of subcontinental species whenever not preoccupied with military training. Transferred to the fledgling Kenya Colony in 1905, Meinertzhagen immediately became embroiled in the vicious tribal hostilities brewing along the borders of British control. Add to that a good deal of time for safari in the ultimate wilderness of the fin de siècle African veldt, the resolute stalking of troublesome maneating lions, savage colonial war against the Nandi and Kikuyu and finally the arrival of hostilities between British Kenya and German Tanganyika and you have an astounding series of exploits. The entire book is filled with enough wildlife, combat, horror, beauty, bloodshed, and scenic description to be valuable simply as an adventure tale, but Capstick goes out of the way to emphasize the otherness of Meinertzhagen’s worldview, worrying that fine line between diplomatic civility and acts of deliberate carnage that together formed and permitted global colonialism. In forcing peace between perpetually warring tribes, the Europeans often found themselves subject to violence themselves, and Meinertzhagen was fully committed to repaying each brutality with an even greater display of slaughter.
Meinertzhagen, like Kipling and most of his Victorian and Georgian contemporaries, was a true believer in the civilizing influences of enlightened, Christian Europe, and Capstick’s descriptions of African tribal conflict remind the reader of early English and French documentation of Amerindian warfare: a ceaseless cycle of robbery, murder, vengeance and reprisal. Capstick overtly sympathizes with the colonial ideal, and takes to task Meinertzhagem’s superior officers when they threaten him with court martial for his swift and ferocious reactions to African attack. Meinertzhagen remained serenely committed to his policies, however, as recorded here after a joint British/Irryeni campaign against the WaEmbo (a tribe of the Kikuyu nation that had been raiding the Irryeni cattle) when he’d killed several of his own Masai mercenaries for insubordination:
“Some may think I was too harsh, others may concur with what I did. I acted with a cool head, fully weighing the consequences, and would do it again under similar circumstances. War is necessarily brutal, but it need not be made too brutal. If black troops and undisciplined levies are allowed to get out of hand, as they most surely will if not ruled by iron discipline, disaster is the result.”
Spoken like a true oppressor, however truthful in those circumstances of time and place (and how can we judge otherwise?). Yet Capstick allows us to see other aspects of Meinertzhagen’s character that are less easy to stereotype. He refused to kill elephants, for instance, a decision Capstick peevishly takes to task, and despised animal cruelty in any form, risking his position several times to interupt it: “Whenever I come across cruelty,” he said, “my nature makes me fight it regardless of consequence.” Although vehemently and prejudicially pro-British (he castigated the great Afrikanner general Jan Smuts for denouncing an incompetent British officer and explained himself by saying “I dislike a Dutchman calling an English general a coward”), he was the first to recognize and argue for the fighting spirit and resolve in black African troops, such as the crack Tanganyikan Schütztruppen led by German officers. His feeling for the plight of the Jews and his subsequent aid to the Zionists of the mid-1940s was rewarded with heartfelt public thanks from Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first prime minister. And decades ahead of his time, Meinertzhagen saw the need to involve local peoples in the conservation process, positioning their needs and desires in such a way that they will actually benefit from national parks and preserves. As Capstick argues, “If game does not have a value on the ground that also benefits the local inhabitants, it will disappear … If you want game to survive, let the ethical hunter and his bank balance take charge.”
War, wildlife and hunting were Meinertzhagen’s greatest loves, and he was as unapologetic about hunting and killing as he was about taking up the white man’s burden:
“When I arrived in (Kenya) I was obsessed by an unashamed blood-lust. Hunting is man’s primitive instinct, and I enjoyed it to the full … The hunting of big game gave me good healthy exercise when many of my brother officers were drinking rot-gut or running around with somebody else’s wife; it taught me bushcraft and how to shoot straight. After all, the hunting of men—war—is but a form of hunting wild animals, and on many occasions during World War One I thanked my God that I had learned several tricks of my trade when hunting wild and dangerous game.”
Honest, persevering, faithful and merciless, Richard Meinertzhagen was truly a product of his era. For him the chief good in the world of men was to perform with excellence under pressure, thus earning the liberty to pursue one’s dreams to the ends of the earth:
“Wide horizons in thought and vision, freedom and always more freedom, fresh air and exercise and a contempt for Death—that it what I love. Those are the conditions I understand.”
