The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1900. MAFEKING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 98, 19 May 1900, Page 2

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1900. MAFEKING.

The unofficial reports that Mafaking had been relieved, which were cabled through on Friday morning, have byno means satisfied the public mind that the relief has been effected. Welcome aa they are in the way of shadows of a coming event, nothing slioit o£ official and authoritative assurance that the relief is an accomplisned fact will be accepted as .the signal for general jubilations. It seems scarcely likely that such good news would be delayed, either in reaching the War Office, or in being made public once it had got there—seeing that English-speaking people in all parts of the world have for weeks past been eagerly and anxiously waiting 1 for the news. There are many and grave difficulties that we hardly care to think, of any one of which might seriously delay the operations of the small relieving column, while there are all the elements for a combination of circumstances that might involve both the besieged garrison and its would-be relievers in a common disaster. The fact that nothing has been heard for the last few days of Colonel Plumer's force and the Australian Bushmen's column march-1 ing from Beira via Fort Tuli raises a feeling of apprehension lest these should arrive on the scene too late to co-l operate with the troops from the south. Every Australasian would be glad to think that their contingent was at this] moment aiding in the raising of the siege, if not, indeed, already within the lines that have held for such a lengthy time and by such splendid courage and resource as will make the names of Mafeking and Baden-Powell famous amongst the many mighty ex-' ploits of the British Army. 1