Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1901. THE BOER WAR.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 13 November 1901, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1901. THE BOER WAR.

Ex-President Krugei, we are now informed, is willing to cede the Rand to Britain, conditional upon all other matters being restored to their former condition, and the Afrikander rule to be guaranteed by Russia and France, to be restored to its former position. The proposal, at this stage of the war, is one that could only germinate from a feeble intellect incapable of grasping the situation. At no time in the struggle, or even before it began, would Britain agree to any foreign intervention, and certainly she is not likely to agree to it now when the Boers are mere struggling bands of banditti, and when she has lost much blood and treasure in the war. Our cablegrams yesterday stated that a more active and aggressive attack was about to be commenced, fresh troops were being despatched for such purpose. And this is the only way of dealing with the struggle. War at best is cruel, and the best means of terminating the present trouble is to make it as cruel and merciless as possible. So long as the present high-strung, quixotic idea of honorable war on one s iq e _and dishonor, oath-breaking and murder on the other is maintained, so long will the struggle continue; so long will many valuable lives on both sides be sacrificed ; so long will the land remain unsettled and desolate ; and so long will women and children suffer and die from disease, privation and want. The high, honorable quixotic is really the more cruel, the sharp and apparently merciless procedure the more merciful. Yet such men of the Stead brand, who love every country and people but their own, prate about the undue hardships put upon the enemy, It affords instructive reading at the present moment to turn to the Philippines and see what the Americans are doing there.

The American Commission at Manila has just decided to impose i death on anyone assisting rebels and drastic penalties for sedi- ! tious utterances and oath-breaking and the American Government is still vigorously pursuing the war against the Filipinos. That war is confined to a group of small islands, and is being waged against a people who had none of the modern weapons or knowledge of military tactics possessed by the Boers. Great Britain is fighting a wily foe, in bis own country, full of inaccessible mountains, and nearly as large as Europe. The campaign is being carried on more mercifully than any war in history. And it is this very mercifulness that is prolonging the struggle. In the American Civil War the mistake of a merciful policy was realised by Grant and Sherman who brought war home in the shape of want and desolation to the very doors of the opposing party. In his celebrated Georgia campaign when the enemy appealed, in Mr. Kruger’s fashion, to humanity and God, Sherman answered them thus: “In the name of common sense, I ask you not to appeal to a just God in such a sacriligious manner; you who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into war—dark and cruel war —who dared and badgered us to battle, insulted our flag I . . If we must be enemies, let us bo men and fight it out as we propose to do, and not deal in such hypocritical appeals to God and humanity.” And the desolation he wrote did a good deal towards bringing the war to a close. Again in the Franko-German War of 1870 all persons not being regular soldiers were shot. Frenchmen of note were compelled to travel over railways that were suspected to be undermined. After German occupation peasants were shot and houses burned on the slightest show of resistence or treachery. And in this way the end was hastened. So in South Africa extreme steps will be found to be the most expeditious and the more merciful.