Peaceful Traders.

Manawatu Herald, 16 April 1898, Page 2

Peaceful Traders.

. The London Spectator recently remarked ; "We ara a people of peaceful traders — shopkeepers, our rivals of the Continent affirm— and are consequently at war on only eight points of the globe, with forces which in the aggregate only just exceed 60,000 men. There are 86,000 on the Indian frontier fighting th< clansmen of the Northers Himalayas who, according to the Afridi pubofficers interrogated by Sir Henry Havelock- Allen, are all eager to enter our service ; 25,000 about to defeat the Khalifia at Omdurmau ; 1000 doing sentry duty in Crete ; 400 putting down an outbreak in Mekran; 800 crushing a mutipy in Uganda ; and some hundreds more restoring order in Lagoa, Borneo, and Basuto* land. All these troops, though of different nationalities- English men, Sikh?, Gboorfcaa, BajpootsY Malaya,^ Egyptians, Soudanese, Haussaa and Wigandas —-are under British officers are paid from funds under British controlf and are engaged in the selfsame work, that of solidifying - the ' Fax Britanieca,' so that a commercial civilization may have fair chance to grow. It is good work on the whole ; it is fairly well done, and the officers who do it are the mo9t merciful of their kind ; but we need not say the the strain on the army is severe, and we might, we really think, give up talking so ranch about the peacefulness of our special ' mission. Like Christianity England intends peace, but carries a sword. We say nothing of the fleet, which throughout the world restrains war*, like ambitions, clears the seag of piracy, and would were the Govarnment quite honest in the matter, clear the planet of that sum of all iniquities, the ocean-borne slave trade.