The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1914. FRENCH-CANADIAN AND BOER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 114, 7 October 1914, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1914. FRENCH-CANADIAN AND BOER.

When British foreign policy developed along tho lines of an entente with i France, it touched a vital and responsive chord in tho breast of the FrenchCanadian (writes the Wellington Post). Though over a century and a-lialf has elapsed since Wolfe defeated Montcalm <m the Heights of Abraham, the FrenchCanadian's love of ihis original Motherland lhas ever flourished, and throughout the important territory of Quebec the Entente produced a quickening of loyalty which has reached its culmination in the present war. Enthusiastic devotion to the cause of "our two mothers"—to use the peculiar but expressive phraeo of a French-Canadian orator—has been very marked in Quebec since the gage of battle has been thrown down, and its outcome is noticeable in the cabled statement that Governmental authority has been given for the despatch of a French-Canadian Expeditionary Force of 6000 men. Here in tho South em Seas French ships and men have co-operated with the purely Englishspeaking Dominions of Australia- and New Zealand; in fact, one of the warships that assisted us in tlie Pacific enterprise bears the name of the French, hero who fell on the Heights of Abraham. A race that has preserved its French national characteristics through ft century and a half of British citizenship, and that has brought to the counsels of the Empire a man of.the calibre of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, is an asset of which a free and autonomous Empire may well be proud. The statesmanship of Lord Lansdowno and Sir Edward Grey has not only put Britain on the right side, but on the side where the heart of the French-Canadian can go forth with fervour to the nation that his forefathers fought. For Canada the war is a great event. It is a sweeping away of party disputes as to how Canada shall do her share in Imperial defence. It is a tightening of the bonds between both Canadian sections and the Motherland. The attitude of the French-Canadian suggests" a comparison with the parallel case of the Boers—parallel in point of colonial conquest, but not parallel in time. Comparatively, the Boer AVar is but a thing of yesterday. In the circumstances, it would not be astonishing if there were many men of the General Beyers type—men who have promised to forgive but not to forget, and who remember so vividly that they fail at tho critical moment. It does not require a great deal of imagination to occupy the mental position of General Beyers, mistaken though he be; and if, as the cablegrams indicate, it is found that the Beyers type is comparatively scarce, and tho Botha type predominant, the fact will be, considering the recency of the war, a high tribute to Boer loyalty and to the spirit of justice that prevails within tha British Empire. In Germany, it appears, there is "intense annoyance" at the loyalty bf the Boers. But what do the Boers—freed within a decade of their conquest—owe to tho nation that has attacked the Belgians (whose neutrality guarantee bears German's signature) and has left over their country** trail of dead soldiers and civilians and. , smoking ruins? Do cither the Boers or the Germans forget the Kaiser's naive admission in his interview with the London Daily Telegraph's correspondent in 1908, in which he declared that, prior to the trapping of Cronje at Paardeburg, he (the Kaiser) sent to the British Government a German-made war-plan with his own august endorsement? In that interview the Kaiser further boasted that Lord "Roberts' subsequent strategy —culminating at raardeburg—was in ac- ! cord with the war-plan sent from»Potsdam to London. On his own showing, therefore, the war lord created the strategy which smashed the main Boer defence. His claim is, no doubt, nonsense, and the outcome of an incurable egotism; but it is sufficient to show how ridiculous is the German claim upon Boer "gratitude." Considering that Germany was not at war with the Boers, but was supposed to be their backer, the Kaiser's admitted action has no parallel in history as a piece of caTm, unblushing treachery.