Reply to Mr Longdill.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 41, 18 February 1901, Page 1

Reply to Mr Longdill.

(To the Editor of the Times.

Snt—l was surprised when I read 0. P. W. Longdill’s letter, and I must say that he is to be pitied for his ignorance on the subject. He has no doubt a narrow mind or view of the whole matter, and it would be well if he would look a little back to the. history of the Boers’ cruelty and how they oppressed the native and stranger. If there was ever a war for truth and right,(for putting down oppression and wrong, for the deliverance of a people powerless to deliver themselves whose wrongs have cried up to heaven to deliver them, this is that war. It is not the grievances of the Uitlanders, though they have been very real, and have called for justice. It is not what British subjects have had to sufler, of indignity and wrongs, though they have been numerous, It is not the insult to England’s power and prestige shown by the refusal (o concede her moderate demands for justice to be done to her subjects, followed by un - paralleled act of defiance contained in the Transvaal war ultimatum, it is not .these things, however, that may justly stir the national heart which call upon us as Christians to bear upon this near question. These are apparent causes which have led the British nation to unite to wage this war, but behind that nation and behind these causes, is the moving power of the Omnipotent. These more recent wrongs and injustices done to comparatively a small number of British subjects, the foolhardy blindness which prevented the Transvaal authorities from seeing that the safety as well as the very existence of the Republics depended on their granting the just concessions demanded of them, and which the whole world thought fair and reasonable, while peaceful negotiations were still pending, rush into war and commence their work of destruction within the borders of the colony which had been so neutral as to allow supplies of ammunition to go through to them. And now your correspondent endeavours to excuse the Boers by saying that the British have robbed that noble race. What can he see noble about them in their past acts. It he would read some of the travellers’ terrible accounts of their doings or perhaps if he were to take a trip over and assist them he would be better acquainted with facts. For over 200 years the progenitors of the Transvaal and their descendants have crushed, maltreated, and as far as they had power to do so, robbed of all rights belonging to them as fellow human beings, the colored people of this land; British soldiers are dying on African soil today to put an end to a condition of atroriious wrongs, a wrong continued throughout generations, and which apparently nothing but this sacrifice of life could right. The crimes which have cried unredressed from the length and breadth of this land for over two hundred years defy description. To justice-loving people who have known of these wrongs it has been like some horrible nightmare. Social and political oppression by one race over another was b ing so grossly practised. To know that onl every side individual brutality was being committed cn defenceless victims, and that not by Arabs, but by a professedly Christian people who with the Bible in one hand and loud professions of faith and prayers, slew their helpless creatures with tho other. These are the people that 0. P. W. Longdill calls noble. He mußt have a strange idea of what the word means. These are saints who have practised barbarities in peace as well as in war which put to shame the records of what savages of this land have inflicted even in war time, upon white races. And now that war has been waged, and that the fearful wrongs of past generations are to be righted, let all those who live in comfort and peace under the British.flag uphold the just cause which called her to arms, and be more generous re speaking of the English as a cruel people. Sir, I defy your correspondent to give one instance of cruelty practised by the British soldier. They are the most humane people in the world. I could mention many instances in which our soldiers have lost tbeir lives in saving those of the enemy. I may mention also that the 250,000 of our soldiers that are at the front are spread over an area as large as the whole of Europe, and they have to be kept in large bodies to protect the conquered posts, which leaves but few to follow the cunning Boer who knows every yard of the country. And now lam sorry that I have wasted so much time in reply to C. P. W. Longdill’s letter, aad shall bring it to a close, but I must state that when the war is over the peoples will be brought under the just and beneficent rule of the British. The myriads of lives of the numberless nations with which the interior of Africa, is teeming, and which by the sue. cess of British arms can gain through future years oppoitunlties to develop and grow with