t the camp liar has neither slept nor slumbered, for the very air
is full of stories concerning battles which have not been fought and
victories which have not been won. From mouth to mouth, all along the
lines, the stories run as fire runs along fuse, and no man born of woman
can tell whence they came or where they will stop. Each soldier questioned
swears the tale is true, because "'twas told to him by one who never lied."
Yet, at evening, when the weary wretch who works for newspapers returns to
his tent, with his boots worn through with fruitless search for the author
of the "news," he learns that once again he has been the dupe of the "camp
liar"; and he may well be forgiven if he then heaps a whole continent of
curses on the invisible shape which, forming itself into a lie, is small
enough to enter a man's mouth, and yet big enough to permeate a whole camp.
What is a camp liar? It is not a man, neither is it a maid, neither is it
dog nor devil. It is a nameless shadow, which flits through the minds of
men, fashioned by the Father of Evil to be a curse and a scourge to war
correspondents. A mining liar is an awful liar, but he takes tangible form,
and one can grapple with him when he appears upon a prospectus. A political
liar is a pitiful liar, and vengeance finds him out upon the hustings, and
eggs and the produce of the kitchen garden are his reward. A legal liar is
a loquacious liar, but he is bounded by his brief and the extent of his
fees. But the camp liar has no bounds, and is equally at home in all
languages, at one moment dealing with an army in full marching order, and
the next battening festively upon one man in a mudhole. There is no height
to which the camp liar dare not ascend, there is nothing too trivial for it
to touch. It has neither sex nor shape; but, like a fallen angel ousted
from Heaven, and not wanted in Hades, it flits through camp a mental
microbe, spawning falsehoods in the souls of soldiers.

The camp liar concocts a story of a fearful fight, and fills the air with
the groans of the dying, and makes a weird picture out of the grisly,
grinning silence of the ghastly dead. Kopjes are stained a rich ripe red
with the blood of heroes, and arms, and legs, and skulls, and shattered jaw
bones hurtle through the air midst the sound of bursting shells, like
straws in a stable-yard when the wind blows high. The very poetry of lying
is touched with a master hand when charging squadrons sweep across t