Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1902. The End of the War.

Manawatu Herald, 8 July 1902, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1902. The End of the War.

The war in Booth Africa has cost Great Britain much in life and treasure, Australia sent 16,000 officers and men and lost 400; New land and Canada in like proportion \ Great Britain lost a little over 21,000 officers and men. In money Great Britain expended £225,000,000 a sum thrice as large as the Crimean war cost. The Colonies must have expended very large sums which in time will bo known and have to be added to this total. But what are the gains of the war? This is answered in the last Review of Reviews as followslt was not undertaken for booty ; and not ah ounce of gold from the conquered Transvaal" will find its way as loot to the British Treasury, Yet the direct material gain to the Empire, and to every part of it, is vast. Defeat would have meant the loss of the Cape, and that would have meant the disintegration of the Empire. We may quote here a passage written by Mr W. T. '.Stead, in March, 1897. The Cape, ha says, is “ the key-stone of the Imperial arch it is more to us than the Suez Canal:—

Whether we have regard to India or to Australia and the fair lands of far Cathay, the Cape is the universal stepping-stone of the world-wander-ing Biiton. Without the Gape the world-Empire which our fathers have reared, and which we, their sons, are rapidly filling with English-speaking homes, would be impossible. Plant the Tricolour or the German Eagle on the slopes of Table Mountain, and our communications with our nascent Commonwealths in Australia would exist but by sufferance of Paris or Berlin. Its value with regard to India is vital. In the supreme moment of the Mutiny the possession of South Africa enabled us to save India. It may easily happen that it will save it again. Nor is it only a coaling station and dock for refitting and repair, or as a place of arms, the impregnable eyrie from which it is possible to swoop down upon the trade routes of the world, that South Africa is essential to Britain. Even in the darkest hour of Little Englandism, the coaling station at Simon’s Bay was admitted to be indispensable. But it is now recognised that the coaling station irreducible minimum entails much more than an allotment garden on the toe of the continent. Who says coaling station must say Cape, who says Cape must say the colony, and who says the colony must say South Africa up to the Zambesi. Nor is it merely for the sake of the coaling station that South Africa has come to be regarded as indispensable. The world is filling up. Great tracts have been pegged out by. hostile and rival powers within which no British emigrant need apply. South Africa is the temperate end of the great continent that awaits to be colonised and civilised. We have but scratched its surface as yet, but it has poured out diamonds as from the mines of Golconda, while the fabled river of Paotolus is thrown into the shade by the auriferous splendour of the Rand. So generally is this recognised, that if by any conceivable accident Britons were no longer able to hold their own, there is no great power that would not deem it well worth the incalculable risks of a great* war to seize the wreck of our South African inheritance.

That is a striking estimate of the value of the Cape to the Empire, and if the war has saved the Cape for the flag, this is a gain past measuring.