THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8140, 15 May 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1906.

Tbe situation in South Africa is far from being reassuring. Tbe rebel ohief Bambaata bas gathered round him a sufficiently large number of followers to enable bim to attack, with some prospect of success, a British force, and though the attack was beaten off it is ver 7 plain that the rising bas a greater ambition than the occasional killing of out-numbered police officers.' Bambaata now leads a small army. Bis attack upon Colonel Mansell's foroe was repulsed with heavy native loss, but the oable messages inter that the issue was at lone moment in doubt, and the information that the British "regained Port Yolland" oertaioly does not imply a victory j The danger in South Africa is that the longer the fighting goes on and the more tha rebels display strength the more danger there is of entire native tribes throwing in their lots with those of

their kindred who have already declared themselves against the Government. We still speak of the Natal trouble as rebellion, bat it is already a native war, for which Natal will be very fortunate if it has to pay no more than the half-million sterling it is raising for expenses. One of the bright spoti in the cloudy horizon is that the Zulus do not appear to be generally well armed, a number of Bambaata's men using the obsolete and worthless native spear, and when badly armed savages oppose themselves to modern weapons the ultimate result 1 ) oannot be called in question, But in spite of the military superiority of the British, a widespread native rising must inevitably work terrible navoo before it can be quelled. The Zulus are the most eminent branch of that | great Kaffir raoe which has so repeatedly attempted to resist the European invasion and to throw off the European domination. They are memorable in our British colonial annals for their aunihilation, at Isandhlwana, in 1879, of two battalions of the 24th Regiment, with other Europeans, and a large body of ' friendly ' natives. Only the heroic defenOH of Rorke's Drift barred against the victorious host the road into, Natal, which defence against apparently hopeless odds ranks with the greatest deeds in Britioh annals. Later in the sime year the Zulus were crushingly defeated before Ulundi, their capital, which was taken and burnt, their King, Cetewayo, being captured and deposed. The old Zulu kingdom, a oonstant menace to the European occupation of Natal and the Transvaal, was broken up. The military system under which every Zulu was trained to arms, making of the nation the finest native military force on the African continent, was destroyed. Arms were confiscated and the importation of arms prohibited—a precaution of which the wisdom is now being made manifest. And the whole country was divided into thirteen districts, each under a separate chief. The Natal Government is now endeavouring to play these districts one against the other, but although all the thirteen chiefs are nominally equal, the native mind attaohes preeminence to Dinizulu, to whom the sceptre of the ancient kings is supposed to have desoended. There can be no great reason to doubt that as years have gone by the Zulu nation has forgotten the oppressions of the old regime, and has grown restive under every official act which by any stretoh of imagination could. be oritioised as tyrannical.

The April number of the National Review publishes an exceptionally interesting article upon the South • African situation by Lord Milner. Lord Milner deals mainly with the general underlying moral situation, as the following extracts indicate:—We are, I take it, all agreed that in the long run South Africa can, only remain within the' British family of States if the majority of her white inhabitants desire, or at least acquiesce in, that position. It is not necessary that they should all be fervently attached to Great Britain, or even to the British conneotion. But it ia necessary that there should be a nucleus in whom that attachment is really strong, add. that this nucleus should be powerful enough to counterbalance any actively hostile elements, and to leaven the more or less indifferent mass. My plea is for a policy on the part of this country which Will fend to strengthen that nucleus. A great deal will depend upon the aotion of the British Government during the next two or three critioal years. But even more, far more, depends, not only during these years, but in the future, upon the attitude of the British people, upon the amount of sympathy which they extend to those of their fellow countrymen in South Africa, who have in the past clung, through infinite discouragement and under manifold temptations to let go, to the ideal of a united Empire, and who will, 1 believe, continue to cling to it unless the thing becomes utterly hopeless. Can we expect them to continue to feel attachment to us if we seem to set no store by, that attachment? It has often cost them dear. What sacrifices have been entailed in hundreds of cases by nothing more that open sympathy with the Old Country and the Union Jack? The boycott, whiob. has ruinel many a man, aye, and driven out many a man, in the up-country districts of Cape Colony, is only a case in point. And, again, have we forgotten all that was entailed upon the British of the Transvaal by their participation in the political struggle which preceded the war, and in the war itself? , Many of them faced death, all of them faoed exile, tbe certainty oC immediate impoverishment and the prospect of total rum—for what? For the maintenance of their self-reapeot as Britons, and for the honour of the British name. . . . The attachment of

these people is a nreoious national possession, and they at least deserve the sympathy aud respect of all their fellow countrymen, even of those who tbink that our South African policy has been mismanaged, and that British statesmen were to blame for tbe war.