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Manawatu Standard, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 6714, 5 June 1900, Page 4

OF ±£ftITI3HV 1 * "<\ '■• t one interview with , — —Crbxvje, .>*»„' arid Atis- * ?" was a stock them. "Bo you think ?"—" "Well, yes, unHj^^^^^^^^^^V^ he is a good fighfcfng man," 'HJ^^^U think him as good as Loxd •„ -~ '-Eobert3 ?"-y No. We men -of BritisK ' ;blood don'c think there are many nign on c »rth as good as the- beyft-ef Canjia har." . ■}---■. " Do you think him as good a man as lord Kitchener ?" —No. Very many of ms consider the conqueror of the Soudan to be one whOi if be lives, will make as great a mark in history as \Yolling6on." At this a joyous amilo would illuminate the face of the Boer. He would reply: 'Yes, yes; Roberts is a great man, a very great man iadeed. Bo is Kitchener, so is General French, so is General Macdonald, so is General Methuen. Yet all those five men are attempting to get Gronje into a corner where they can capture him. They have ten times as many soldiers as Cronja has, ten times as many gans ;■ therefore What a really great man OroDJe must be on your own showing." That was before the fatal 27th of February, oq which Oronje surrendered. BOER MAGNANIMITY. I tried to persuade them that IdiJ not for one moment think that Britain would be vindictive towards so-called rebels in the hour of victory, and pointed out that in my opinion such a course would be foreign to the tradiiions of the Motherland, and was often met with the retort that if England did so the shame would be hers, not their 3. Many a time I was tpliUMlftHgrnber the Jameson raid, and <"^ not only the leriSMK.*' W ° k f adventurers butane nUK*!^ Jl „ here," saidjj^fi K htingma9^B§pfcii'l he leant; witfo negligent grace on his rifle, '< " I was one^ of those who helped to corner Jaoiespn and his men, and I can tell you that we Boers knew very well that we wouldnba^e been acting within" our rights if we had'shot Jameson and every man he had with him, because his was not an act of war, it was an act of piracy, and had we done so and Engla^a had attempted to avenge the deed, half the civilised world would have ranged themselves on our side; but we did not seek those men's blood, we gave them quarter as soon as they aaked for it, and after that, though we knew very well they had done ail that men could do to involve us in a war of extermina^" tion with a great nation, we sent their *°ader home to his nwn country to be tried by his own couutr/men. and the rank and file we forgave freely. We may be a nation of white savages, but our past does not prove it, and if Britain wins in the war now going on she will have to be very generous indeed before we will need to blush for onr conduct. . . . Why should we bow oar necks to Britain's yoke, even if it be a yoke of iilk?" And as hi spoke a murmur of deep and earnest sympathy ran through the ranks of the Boers who were standing around him. WHY BID THE COLONIES INTERFERE ? * I.often asked them how they, representing ». couple of small States, came to get held of the idea that they couia whip a colossal Power like Great Britain in a llfe. or Ae^h struggle, and almost invariably they informed me that they had expected that one of the great European Powers would take an active part in the ■ strßggle on their behalf, and futhermoro they had been taught to think that Britain's Empire waa rotten core ; through, so much ho, that as soon as > war commenced in earnest all her colonies would fall away from her, and hoist the flag of independence, and that India would leap once again, into open and bloody mutiny. They "expressed themselves as being dumbfounded when they heard that Australian \oops ware rallying under the iijnion I Jack, and seemed to fool most bittsrlj I that the mon from the land of the Stathern Gross were in—aysas. apaiWt them. "We fell out with E)^ov||Bß| we thought we had to figL^v^nßlsSß Instead we find we ha to to fight people from all parts of the world, colonials like ourselves. Surely AuitraJia and Canada might have kept out of this fight, and allowed us to battle it out with jha, country we had a quarrel with." " The Canadians and Australians are of British blood."—" Well, what if they are? Ain't plenty of the Cape Volunteers who are fighting under President i Kruger's banner born of Dutch parents? ! Yet because they fight against Englishmen you call them all rebels, and talk of puniihing them when the war is over if you win, just because thej lived on your side of the border and not on ours. Would you ask one Boer to fight against another Eoer simply because he lived oo one side of a river, and his blood relation lived on the other ? You Britishei-3 brag of your prids of blood, and draw jour fighting stock from all parts of (he world in war time, but you have no generosity, yon won't allow other people to be proud of their blood too." " You, of course, blameiall the colonials, Australians and others, for corning to fight against you ?"-" I don't know that I do, or that my people do in a sense. It all depends upon the spirit which animated them. If you? Australians, who are of British blood/came here to fight fer your Motherland, believing that her cause was a just and a holy one, and that she needed your aid, you did rieht, for a son will help his mother if he be a Bon worth having ; but if the Australians came here merely for the sake of adventure, merely for sport, as men come in time of peace to shoot buck on the veldt, then woe to that land, for though God may make no sign to-day nor to-morrow, 1 yet in His own time He will surely 1 wring from Australian a full recompense in sweat and blood and tears; fir _'~ whether we be right or wrong, our God knows that we are giving our lives freely for what we in our hearts believe to be a holy cause." THE FORTUNE OF WAR. " What do you fellows think of Australians as fighters ?"—" The Australians can fight. They wounded me and — they killed my father." (He had one

.he same cause filled tn'eblue anahed tears ' -^ X lUi .' ♦• It was in fair fight, lad." 1 said genty; "it was the fortune of war," HIS FATHER'S LONELY GRAVE. " Yes," he murmured, " it was in fair fight, an awful fight—l hope I'll never ■\ook upon another like it. Damn the fighting," he broke out fiercely. ' Damn the righting. I didn't hate your Australians. I didnit want to kill any of tUWn. My father had no ill-will to them, -SlQrJkhey to him ; yet he ia out there--out there between, two great kopios— where the wind always blows cold and dreary e>t night-time." The laddie shuddered. " Ifc makes a man donbfcthe love of Christ," he said. "My father was a good man, a kind man, who never turned the stranger empty-handed from his door; even the Kaffirs on the farm loved him, and no>v he is lying where no one can weep over his grave i Ob ( -damn the war I I don't know —only God knows—which side Js right or wrong, but I do know that the curse of the Christ will rest on the heads of those who have made this war for ambition's sake or the greed of gold, and the good God will not lot the widow and the orphan chikl go unavenged; blood will yet speak for blood, and it must rest either on the heads of Kruger and Stejn or Chamberlain and Khodes." "WORSE THAN MAJUBA." When I happened to speak .of Majuba this Boer laughed aloud. "Acb!" ho said, " I cannot understand you English, We beat you at Majuba, yes, and you surrendered ; and peace was proclaimed. Now you all cry out in your papers. You say Gladstone was a fool. Why ? Because he gave to us back the Transvaal, and did not send up your Lord Roberts with his 10,000 men. Soh ! It is good for you that Gladstone was just. It is nineteen years since we fought in the^Waro^jj^jyjfiriQence, and you come Hn!^o P take thelSt^0 *1 th, e PefH)le(iPfmany do you W^S ? Ten thousand ? Twenty thous» nd • Xo'l °ccc thought 40,000 was e^" h J was v ? No, Mynheer. I saw mT^ c, ape Times that there are nearly 200,000^" .">. ,_1 pointed out that there was so^B3"oii&o^enee between the Boer forces of 18811i2d-those of to-day. The prisoner srrGiokjfhis head. " Not such a difference as tojustify the increase of the British force to the present number," he said. " Supposing you had sent on your 10 000 to avenge Majuba, what would have happened ? They would have been cut up, and Majuba would have been forgotten because of a greater disaster." " But the Boer array of 1881 was altogether differently constituted. For in ~sti*g&ry"ou rTacTno artillery."—" Ach !" (my friend here grew contemptuous). "Artillery! Artillery! always artillery ! That is what the Hollanders of Prttoria said. Always promising what the big guns would do, always sneering at tbe-fA- And what has the artillery done ? JDrlHve take Kimberley ? Did we take Ladysmith ? Have we taken Mafeking ? How many men wore killed by the big guns at Ladyscaith ? Not two a day. Where did you lose ,your men most? At places like Magersfontein. I wag there, Mynheer, and it w»3 the rifle only that we used ; not till the evening did cur guns fire, only five shots." I pointed out that, in addition to the burgher population, there was a very tangible force of outsiders fighting on the Boer side, which was not so in 1881, My Boer friend grew even more contemptuous. ".Ta," he said; "Hollander clerks, German bandsmen, and Irishers who have to be kept under guard because they steal the burghers' goods. No, sir; you write to your papers and say that there might haye been worse things than Majuba." i