COMPENSATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 298, 24 December 1901, Page 1

COMPENSATION.

(Bloemfontein Post.) It has cost the British Government £37,500 to get the intriguing, mischief working Hollander brood out of South Africa. We do not think we are going too far when we assert that a guarantee that they shall never return would be cheap at ten times the price. That guarantee, however, we are not likely to get. No doubt when the war is over we shall find the majority of the more impecunious of Dr Leyd's importations trooping back to South Africa with lively hopes of renewing, on a small scale, the operations of their more successful countrymen, and making another covert bid for that Greater Holland enterprise with which the candid admissions of the estimable Van Kretschmar have made us familiar. Sad disappointment awaits them however. They came back to a changed South Africa—a land which knows not Joseph, or which knowing him only too well, will have no more of him. The day of the Hollander has passed for ever so far as this country is concerned—no more sleek Government billets await him, no more zarpships, no more railway guardships with all those opportunities for petty tyranny which the unfortunate patron of the N.Z.A.S.M. remembers even yet with indignation. The Hollander and his works are included in the list of those abominations of which the war lias purged us, and the protege of Leyds will come back, if and when he comes back, a dejected, humbled, chastened alien, shorn of all that prestige, all that power, and inlluence and prerogative which made him so formidable a factor in the ramifying scheme of Dutch Afrikander conspiracy. He left singing the Volkslied and waving the Vierkleur ; whatever the refrain, he will return singing particularly small.

And this is as it should be. To him in no small part we owe the war. He came into the South African family an alien and a guest; he was the true Uitlander. But he set himself to stir up strife in the domestic menage. He set its members by the ears, and callous to all consequences, and for his own profit, created dissension where none existed, intriguing, plotting, poisoning, conspiring, until the grand result of his assiduous labors revealed

itself in the war which has deluged in blood the land whose hospitality he so vilely outraged. Directly, it has cost the British Government £37,500 to exorcise this evil genius of South Africa, and indirectly, it has cost millions, and the lives of hundreds of England's gallant sons. To those who know Africa, and the evil part that the Hollander has played in plunging 'it into all the miseries which now afflict it, and the evil part which Holland is still playing in constituting itself the centre of all that intrigue by which the war is prolonged, the statement made at the sitting of the Commission that the amount paid in compensation to the Netherlands Government in satisfaction of the claims of its deported subjects is generous, and will cement the friendship of the two nations, is the rankest irony. Holland’s friendship ! What is Holland’s friendship worth to us after the war, when her malignant enmity is conspicuous in every act, in every intrigue, in every device designed to keep the war allame and encourage the fighting Boers m their mad persistence in a suicidal course ? What is Holland's friendship worth to us in any case ? Assuming that after she has done all the mischief it is in her power to do by prolonging the war and adding to Great Britain's burdens and anxieties, she displays an eagerness to claim benevolent acquaintance what is its value to us ? We are the benefactors, not the beneficiaries, and such friendship as Holland can offer is not worth the having. . , „ , , , , A Dutch diplomatist or undoubted authority has recently been protesting that as regards the general feeling towards England among the educated classes in Holland, a good deal of exaggeration has been indulged in, and patronisingly remarks “ There has been a good deal of misconception as to the feelings oi my country men towards the Britisli nation. It is not exact to sav that the general attitude is one of unfriendliness bordering on hatred, although the Dutch would be more than human if there were not a certain admixture of truth in such a view. A careful analysis oi the prevailing spirit among rational people in this country leads to the conclusion that the evil inflicted on the Dutch Republics is mainly attributable to those whose policy led up to the war. for which the English as a nation aic* not held responsible. Holland feels herself aggrieved and disappointed - to see a great and high-minded people temporarily blinded to its own interests ; and the burden oi the mistake is laid 'on the shoulders oi those responsible for it, and not upon the nation at large. Holland has a deep faith in the British people, and, conscious oi the inanv ties which unite the two races, wishes to maintain that confidenre'in the future. This explains the prayer which was offered at the recent service held at The Hague ‘ that t-.ie heart of the nation might be turned, ' anil that the scales might fall from its , eves.’ ” This, we suppose, represents the fullest extent oi Holland’s frtend- • ship for a nation to which she is united bv manv ties, principally, let us . add,'ties of gratitude—a prayer th.tt the heart- of the nation may be turned, ' and that- the scales may fall from its i eves. Not much of an int estnient for £37,500, we should say.