THE ORIGINAL CALUMINATOR.

Motueka Star, Volume II, Issue 60, 11 March 1902, Page 4

THE ORIGINAL CALUMINATOR.

The Daily Chronicle, which is renfdfering excellent service to the cause of sane Imperialism, published a striking (commentary on Lord Roberts’ official de lial of one of the worst oPthe many atrocious libels on the Britith Army now being circulated in Germany. Mr Maxwell, the Standard correspondent, in his spirited denunciation of this campaign of calumny, had declared that the libels were manufactured in Germany. . The Daily Chronicle has unquestionably tracked down the lying story of the maltreatment of the Boer women in the Irene camp to a leaflet printed in America by ObaT-les Pierce, Consul General of the Orange Free State, reproducing an interview with a certain Fred La Yelle, which appeared in the Clarion Ledger, of Jackson, Mis-

souri, for 14th May,, of last year. On the back of these leaflets are anonymous letters, -purporting to come from English people, ordering supplies of these documents, of which -they had come to know “ through the Stop-the-War office” in London, or through Pro Boer journals. One of the leaflets prints a statement about -Kiteheher’s ‘Hints to Kill Prisoners,’ which ■ is given on the authority of what purports to be an extract from a Pro-Boer newspaper in London. The trail is followed up one stage farther by a correspondent in the Chronicle, who quotes from Mr W. T. Stead’s circular, “British Atrocities in south Africa,” issued on 7th November, 1900, a passage in which the writer, after charging the Government with inflicting death by famine on women and children, asks — “ Is cannibalism less awful than the enfoiced degradation of matron and maid compelled by hunger to submit to the extremity of shame in Bi-itish camp and Kaffir kraal ?” The •“ foul and filthy lies” are in their origin neither of German nor American fabrication. Calumny, like charity, top often begins at home.