WHEN PEACE IS PROCLAIMED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 100, 7 June 1900, Page 2

WHEN PEACE IS PROCLAIMED.

The Premier, replying, said it was [unnecessary to lecture the Imperial I Government, who were doing what they conceived to be tbeir duty, and with the confidence of the whole nation. The war was forced on by the Boers, The Board of Works subsequently after ft heated debate, to refer

Wellington, June 8. •a a a mee^n 6 of citizens, it wag decided to hold a monster demonstrate® nf Wedneßd& y after the dim tw! l ß uT tion L otpeaoe " There will be a thanksgiving servioeia the Basin Reserve, a proceuion in tbe morning and another in the evening, in which every local organisation of efeiy sort will be requested to join; UlumiS tions and fireworks at night. A oommittee was appointed to make arrangements and procure fundi. I| was also decided to give a welcome <f some sort to the invalids returning next week. BOER OPINIONS OF BRITISH TAOZIOf| I had more than one interview with the Boer fighting generals (writes Mr. Hales). One of their stock subjects of conversation was their great general—the man of Magersfontein—Oronje. " W hat do you Britishers and Aua* tralians think of Cronje S" was a question with them. "Doyou ttifnlr him a good fighter?"—" Well, yes, unquestionably he is a good fighting man." " " Do you think him as good as Lord Roberts ?"—« No. We men of British blood don't think there are many men on earth as good as the hero of har." "Do you think him as good a as Lord Kitchener?"—" No. Veiy many of us consider tbe conqueror of the Soudan to be one who, if he lives, will make as great a mark in history as Wellington." At this a joyous smile would illuminate the face of the Boer. He would reply: u Yes, yee; Roberts is a great man, a very great man indeed. So is Kitchener, so is General French, so is Genenl M»«Donald, so is General Methuen. Yet all those five men are attempting to get Cronje into a corner where they can capture him. They have ten as many soldiers as Cronje has, ten times as many guns; therefore what m really great man Oronje must be on your own showing." That was before the fatal 27th of Februaiy, on which Cronje surrendered.

BOEB HAONANXHITY. I tried to persuade them that I did 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 small opinion such a course would be foreign to the traditions of the Motherland, and was often met with the retort that if England did so the shame would be hen, not theirs. Many a time I was tola to remember the Jameson raid, ■nil the manner in which the Boers treated not only the leaders of that band of adventurers but the men also. " fnwfc here," said one old fighting to m®| as he leant with negligent graoe on his rifle, " I was one of those who helped co corner Jameson and his man, and I can tell you that we Boers knew vat* well that we would h&rs within our rights if we had and every man he because his was not an act waa an act of piracy, j*nd dona so and England hid attempted to ftvwgo the deed, half the civilised world would have ranged themselves on our side; but we did not seek men's blood, we gave them quarter as soon as they asked for it, and after that, though we knew very well they had done all that men could do to involve us in a war of extermination with a great nation, we sent their home to his own country to be tried by hia own countrymen, 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 our conduct. . . . Why should we bow our necks to Britain's yoke, even if it be a yoke oi silk?" And as ha spoke a murmur of deep and earnest sympathy ran through the ranks of tke Boers who were standing around him. WHY DO THE COLONIES INTEBFIBE ?

I often asked them how they, representing a couple of small State*, cams to get hold of the idea that they could whip a colossal Power like Great Britain in a life or death struggle, and almost invariably they informed me that they hud expected that one of the gi eat European Powers would take an active part in the struggle on their behalf, and furthermore they had been taught to think that Britain 1 ! Empire was rotten core through, so much so, 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 troops were rallying under the Union Jack, and seemed to feel most bitterly that the men from the land of the Southern Cross were in arms against them. "We fell out with England, and we thought we had to fight England, Instead we find we have to fight people from all parts of the world, colonials like ourselves. Surely Australia and Canada might kave kept out of this fight, and allowed us to battle it out with the country we had a quarrel with."

" The Canadians and Australians aia of British blood."—"Well, what if they are ? Ain't plenty of the Gape

V„_.vb» niiu are lighting unde President Kruger's banner born o « Dutch parental Yft because thej iqjfKsgainst Englishmen you call then all rebels, and talk of punishing them when the war ia ever J you win, jusl becanae they lived on your aide of th< border and not on ours. Would yoi aak one Boer to fight against anothei Soar aimply because he lived on one aide of a river, and his blood relation lived on the other I You Britishers brag of yoar pride of blood, and draw your fighting atock from all parts of the world in war time, bat yoa have no generosity, you won't allow other people to be proud of their blood too." "Too, of course, blame all the oolonials, Australians and others, for

earning to fight against you?'—" ] dart know that 1 do, or that mj people do, in amm It all depend* "P® the spirit which them. If your Australians, who an of British blow!, cam* here to fight far your Motherland, believing that her cause waa a just and a holy one, and that ■he needed your aid, you did right, far ft son will help his mother if he boa eon 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, yet in His own time He will surely wring from Australia a full recompense in sweat and blood and tears; for 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 lOBTUHE OF WAL. u What do you fellows think of Australians as fighters f—" The Australians can fight. They wounded me, and—they killed my father." (He had (me arm in a sling, and a bandage round his neck hid a bullet wound.) Ftrhaps it was the wind m'ghing through the hospital trees that made the Jtioer lad's voice grow strangely husky;possibly the same cause filled the blue eyes with unshed tears. u lt was in fair fight, lad," I said gently; "it was the fortune of war." his ruan'a lonely gkayk. "Yes," he murmured, "it was in fair fight, an awful fight—l hope lH ■ever lode upon another like it. Damn the fighting," he broke out fiercely. " Damn the fighting. I didn't hate your Australians. I didn't want to kill aay of them. My father had no ill-will to them, nor they to him; yet he is out there—out there between two great kopjes—where the wind alway blows cold and dreary at night-time." The laddie shuddered. "It makes a man doubt the love of Christ," he said. "My father was a food man, a kind man, who never tamed the stranger empty-handed bom his door; even the Kafirs on the Cum loved him, and now he is lying where no one can weep over his grave. . . . Oh, damn the war! 1 don't know—only God knows—which aideis 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 let the widow and the orphan child go unavenged ;\Aood yet apeak for blood, and it must rest either on the] tl ijteyn or Cham- » bsriain and Rhodes." MAJOR IDDY FELL. of the AusThey were my (Hountpymen." "It was a cruel fight," La said. * We had ambushed a lot of the British troop*—the I think, they called them. They could neither advance nor retire, we had penned them in like sheep, and our field cornet, Van Leyden, was beseeching them to throw down their rifles to save being slaughtered, for they had no chance. Just then we saw about a hundred Australians come bounding over the rocks in the gully behinds us. There were two gnat big men in front cheering them on. We turned and gave them a Volley, bat it did not stop them. They rushed over everything, firing as they came, not wildly, but as men who know the use of a rifle, with the quick, sharp, upward jerk to the shoulder, the rapid sight, and then the shot. They knocked over a lot of our man, but we had a splendid position. They had to expose themselves to get to us, and we shot them as they came at us. They were rushing to the rescue of the English. It was splendid, but it was madness. On they came, and we lay behind the boulders, and our rifles snapped and snapped again at pistol range, but we did not stop those wild men until they charged right into a little basin which was fringed around all its edges' by rocks covered with bushes. Our mm lay there as thick as locusts, and the Australians were fairly trapped. They wen far worse off than- the Worcester* up high in the ravine. J*roawAW>, Australia! bo surbexdke!" " Oftr field cornet gave the order to cease firing, and called on them to throw down their rifles or die. Then one of the big officers—a great roughlooking man, with a voice like a bull —roared out' Forward Australia t No surrender!' Those were the last words he ever uttered, for a man on my right put a bullet clean between his eyes, and he fell forward dead. We found

later that his name was Major Eddy, of the Victorian Rifles. He was as I brave as a lion, bat a Manser ballet wiD stop the bravest. His men dashed at the rtcks like wolves; it was awful to Me them; they smashed at oar heads with dabbed rifbi or thrust their rifles up ngmingt us through the rocks and fired. One after another their leaders fell. The second big man went down early, bat he was not killed. He was ■hot through the groin, but not dangerously. His name was Captain M'lnoflrajr. There was another one, a little 1 man named Lieutenant Thorn; be was shot through the heart. Some of the^ others I forget. The men would B* throw down their rifles; they fought like furies. One man I saw climb right on tothe rocky ledge where Big Jan Aldrecht was stationed. Just as he got there a bullet took him, and he staggered and dropped hits ride. Big Jan jumped forward to catch him before he toppled over the k-dge, but the Australian struck Jan in the mouth with his clenched fist and fell over into the ravine below and was killed. We killed and wounded an awful lot of them, bat some got away; they fought |bar way out, I a*i Jwg row of

[ their dead and wounded laid out on the 1 slope of a farmhouse that evening;! they were all young men, fine big fellows. I could have cried to look at them lying so cold and still. They had

been so brave in the morning, go strong, but in the evening, a few little hours, they were dead, and we had not hated them nor they us. Yes, I could have cried as I thought of the women who would wait for them in Australia. Yes, I could have shed tears, though they had wounded me, but then I thought of my father, and of the mother, and little Zacoba on the farm, would wait in vain for him, and thee I could feel sorry for those, the wives and children of the dead men, no longer."

[ "worse than majuba." t When I happened to speak of Majuba s this Boer laughed loud. " Ach!" he . said, " I cannot understand you Engi lish. We beat you at Majuba, yes, ■ and you surrendered; and peace was i proclaimed. Now you all cry out in ; your papers. You say Gladstone was • a fool. Why ? Because he gave to ud i 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 War of ' Independence, and you come again to take the land from the people. How many do you bring? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand ? You once thought 40,000 was enough; was it? No, Mynheer. I saw in the Cape Times that there are nearly 200,000." I pointed out that there was some difference between the Boer forces of 1881 and those of to-day. The prisoner shook his head. "Not such a difference as to justify 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 army of 1881 was altogether differently constituted. Foi instance, yoa had no artillery."— "Achl" (my friend here grew contemptuous). " Artillery 1 \rtillery! always artillery 1 That is what the Hollanders of Pretoria eaid. Always promising what the big guns would do, always sneering at the rifle. And what has the artillery done ? Did we take Kimbeiley ? Did we take Ladysmith? Have we taken Mafekiog ? How many men were killed by the big guns at Ladysmith ? Not two a day. Where did you lose your men most ? At places like Magersfontein. 1 was there, Mynheer, and it was the rifie only that we used; not till the evening did our 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. "Ja," 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 have been worse things than Majuba." TRUTHFUL "BOBS." According to the World's interviewer, President Kruger has great respect for Lord Roberts:— The President has had a number of communications with the enemy's General?, and amODg the number he says he can find only one who speaks tha truth. "The Eaglish Generals had lied to us," he said, " ai.d we can place no confidence in what they say. "All are liars except Lord Roberts, who appears to be aa truthful as he ie gentlemanly."