The Daily News. SATURDAY, JULY 14. IMPERIAL FRONTIERSMEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8157, 14 July 1906, Page 2

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JULY 14. IMPERIAL FRONTIERSMEN.

Bitmsu people, recognising the value of men expert in " country," trained to an arduous life, fitted more for fighting than the town-reared, machine-made soldier can hope to be, have started a " League of Frontiersmen," and the secretary of the League has written to the New Zealand Premier, asking him to bring the ob jeots of the League before the eligible men in the colony. About half the male population of New Zealand are available for the duty of paying n subscription every year for the privilege of being called on at anytime to partake in such horrible atrocities as are in progress in Natal at this mo • raent. The Natalians are coping with the Zulus lone-handed, and the Natalians are the kind of folk that the League of Frontiersmen wants. Not trained soldiers in the ordinary sense of the word, but men who will ! take big risks, and know how, when, and where to go " on their own " in j time of stress. The only advice that can conscientiously be tendered to [ colonials who are aching to join the I League of Frontiersmen is," Don't." • * * »

We do not suppose for an instant that our backblock farmers, our miners, horse-breakers, stockmen, or other handy men will make the League much bigger than it now is, and certainly none would join if they took our advice. In fighting most civilised nntions, all that is necessary is the machine-turned soldier and his death-dealing weapons. In fighting native tribes—the only people the League of Frontiersmen would be likely to be wanted for - all that is necessary is to have the bushman kind of fighting man and machine guns, If any frother after the distinction of being an Imperial Frontiersman, conscientiously believed he would be doing the correct thing by being one of that crowd of Natal butchers who ruthlessly swept to eter. nity, with machine guns, over five hundred almost unarmed Zulus -

well, he should be hanged out of hand. The League of Frontiersmen assumes that membership of the League will be so inviting that intending m-n'iers will be giad to pay for the pri\ i!"ge. On paying for the privilege, tin 1 potential Frontiersman is just as mi: '' a bound soldier as if he had, in the old-time words, " taken the shilling." The difference is that he gives the shillings The British Government has given the League " absolute freedom of acti-m," which is, of course, absurd whei one reads that in time of war these men who pay to be Frontiersmen shall be under the disciplinary command of any Jack in office with n star on his shoulder-strap, and —mark this well —be entitled to the ruling rates of pay. That is to say that a skilled bushman who wouldn't get lost on a dark night in a strange country, anJ who was forced to throw up his civil work when the War Office called, would, if lie had luck, receive two shillings a day for the glorious work pf slaying niggers by turning a handle, P l ' depressing the trigger of a iiiicihiiiii.i'iill, or poisoning the nigi nei-.i' water supply.

It is the proud boist of some New Zealand parents nt this present time that their brave boys arc holding up Ihe end of the Empire in Natal. Those parents haven't seen the desolated kraals, the hundreds of black widows, the myriads of starving children those brave sons have so gloriously helped to make. The League of Frontiersmen is purely a private affair " which the Secretory of State for War may utilise." If lie did utilise it, as he most certainly would on Britain's many nigger-slaying outfits, these men with " absolute freedom of action " would be about as free as a sheep-dog tied tp a tree with a tracechain. The lust for blood has had a lot of feeding during the past few years; and while we read that Britain is reducing her armaments, one of her colonies is indulging in a debauchery of murder thnt makes the Armenian massacres colourless in comparison.

There is nothing to prevent skillod colonists trotting out to battle for the Empire when the Empire is in a hole, and no one is going to be so sickly sent)mental over a fight that is a fight, l)uj; when alleged Britons, in cold blood, trap defenceless human beings in a gully and wipe them out without mercy and without the slightest danger to themselves, one begins to think it is time to keep one's nationality a secret. As for the League of Frontiersmen, there is not the least need of it as far as New I Zealand is concerned. Every man who can bobble is willing enough to help his own country or the Empire ivheii either is fighting a just battle, but to band together for the purpose of perpetrating ghoulish atrocities of the Natal kind would be a sin for which there is no adequate punishment known to man.