EUROPE'S BOER-LAND.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 30 January 1901, Page 4

EUROPE'S BOER-LAND.

Where Kruger will live is proBoer rather than anti-British.

(Robert Dennis in tho" Daily Express.") "Yes, sir," said the red-faced man, "we are going among the people who ran away at Waterloo, where the independence of their precious country was secured to them by the valour and blood of British soldiers." " And Prussian," I ventured to interject. " "Well, yes; the Prussians were useful, but the Belgians ran away, and they are the people who are now the most Anglophobe of any nation on the Continent — who try to kill our Royalties, who harbour our enemies, and who are now going to make a national lion of old Kruger." This rather one-sided conversation took place in the smoke-room of the Great Eastern Company's splendid steamer Colchester, as she ploughed her way from Harwich to Antwerp the other night. I myself had entertained some rather strong feelings with regard to Belgium's attitude on the war in South Africa, but my views were entirely outdistanced by those of my friend, to whom the Belgians were a race who, without exception, de-

serve hanging.

Brussels Looked Bad. In the country itself there certainly were some indications that my friend was not tco extreme in his opinions. "Willette's disgraceful caricatures of the Queen, although suppressed in France, are still on sale in the shops of Brussels —not secretly but openly. The Belgian papers are prc-Boer, every sheet of them ; and I am afraid it must be said that they go out of their way to paint the incidents of the war as black as they can for England and as white as possible for the Boers.

Lord Roberts's amiable generalship is made the subject of unlimited chaff. The Belgian public are told that 200,000 British are vainly endeavouring to subdue 10,000 burghers, and the British officers are charged with all sorts of crimes against the laws of war, such as looting private property, burning down the farms of inoffensive non-combatants, and otherwise behaving themselves like the brigands the Belgian public believe them to be.

Further one hears people talking on all hands about the coming of " President Kruger " (it is noteworthy that they 3till call him "President"), and they gloat over the idea that Belgium is offering the exile an asylum worthy of a fallen Napoleon. One of the leading Belgium nobles has offered him his chateau ; a committee of public men have inspected it, and pronounced it fit for the " President's " occupation ; and the Socialist party, are preachingin their journal, " Laßeforme," that nothing will suit the occasion of Kruger's arrival short of a tremendous public demonstration. Then, of course, one cannot forget that Brussels was, and still may be, the headquarters of Dr Leyds, from which he corrupted half the Press of Europe and carried on a secret diplomatic intrigue against England with most of the Governments. Was it not at Brussels also that Sipido, the would-be assassin of the Prince of Wales, was found "Not guilty " by the jury, although taken redhanded in the act? Certainly things looked black on the surface, but my friend of the Colchester and I went a little deeper into the matter. Wc saw several of the leading men of the country, and heard their views. Some of them will strike the English reader as paradoxical, but at all events they go a good way towards explaining things." The Acquittal of Sipido. "Why did we acquit Sipido ?" said a known deputy. "It was all the fault of our Advocate-General. In stating his case he alleged, without a shadow of proof, that Sipido was the instrument of a conspiracy, that Brussels was one of the headquarters of Anarchy, that the circle in which Sipido moved was a nest of assassins. To have found Sipido guilty would have "been to endorse these sweeping assertions, and to brand our country as infamous. ' No,' we said to ourselves, ' rather than declare to the world that we are as bad as the Advocate-General says we are, we will let this half-witted youth go free. We shall be misunderstood, nc doubt, but we will accept that as the lesser of two evils. "I tell you," continued the deputy, " that at the moment when we acquitted Sipido, and every Belgian was applauding the verdict, we were all praying in our hearts that the Prince would speedily pass through Brussels again. He would have had such a reception at Brussels never gave before to any man. The whole city would have turned out to cheer him. Not only so, but from every province of the kingdom there would have come troops of honest peasants, workmen, and farmers to join in the ovation." The logic of this explanation rather staggered the red-faced man; it seemed, however, to explain matters. A Paradoxical Explanation. "But why," he asked the director of "Le Petit Bleu" one evening, "why is Belgium so pro-Boer?" The editor at once drew a subtle distinction between pro-Boerism and Anglophobia. The former, he explained, represented a principle : the latter represented a state of mind which did not exist in Belgium. "We are not haters of England " said the journalist; " we admire and respect her so much that English customs, English fashions, English ways of bringing up the young, and several other of your national features are widely copied here. England, in all matters of private and public conduct, is looked upon by us as a model. " But what we feel with regard to the South African Republics is that you have struck the life out of two small and comparatively helpless nationalities. Belgium stands to Europe very much in the position the late Republics stood towards your South African Empire, and in protesting against the fate which has overtaken them Belgium is simply holding up her hand in self-defence."

The red-faced man pointed out (hat Belgium had no Outlandcr question, no enormous investments of British capital which were not properly treated by the Governments, no greatly disproportionate armaments, no open policy of driving other people into the sea—and that if Belgium were to follow the example of the two Republics she would very soon, and very justly, meet the same fate. " Ah," rejoined the editor, " that is where you make the mistake. Supposing a number of Englishmen came over here and settled and immediately agitated for civil rights, for an equal share in the government of the country, it being certain that in a very short time, by increase of numbers, they would gain the supremacy —and suppose that Great Britain said to us, 'You must submit to these things,' what would our independence be worth ? Nothing. Proofs of Goodwill.

" There is no Anglophobia worth speaking of in Belgium. There is, however, a great adhorrence of the policy which led to the war. Therein lies ourpro-Boerism, and we should be, under similar circumstances, pro-Swiss, pro-Montenegrin, or pro-Holland."

" Some time ago—before the war," remarked another Belgian who was of the party, " a man came over here from South Africa with an enormous mass of written material, describing the commercial and industrial capabilities of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and giving a vast amount of information useful to anyone who thought of embarking on business in connection with those countries. Mixed up with these matters were documents and records which made out an exceedingly bad case against England in her transactions with the South African Dutch.

" The man could not afford to publish a book embodying his materials, but he took them to the Belgian Government, M Frere-Orbau, who was then the Premier, undertook to purchase from the man as many copies of his book as would reimburse him the cost of producing it, but only on condition that everything unfriendly or injurious to England shoud he taken out of it.

" The offer was not accepted, and the man went to the editor of what was then the leading Belgian paper. Here, again, he was told that his book would be accepted and published in instalments if all the material likely to be offensive to England were expunged. This will show that Belgium has taken great pains throughout this affair to show her friendship for England."