Notes and Comments.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 300, 27 December 1902, Page 3

Notes and Comments.

War matter is ancient reading now, but the following exthe kew tracts from a letter by Africa. Captain Phillippa, of Rimington’s Hone, bear on the question of the settlement of the country acquired, and will therefore be of interest“ A united South .Africa will, in my opinion, justify the war. The Boers are genuinely patriotic, I haven’t a doubt. They had every right *to fight to the last for their fi oedom and independence. But in this free and and undivided country, to hedge a State round with artificial barriers in order that it may enjoy a kind of obsolete, old-' fashioned independence of its own, soon becomes intolerable. As for the Uitlanders and their grievances, I would not ride a yard to right all the grievances that, were ever invented. The mass of the Uitlanders (i.e., the miners and working men of the Rand) had no grievances. The Uitlanders the world has heard of were not these, but the Stock Exchange operators, manipulators of the money markets, company floaters and gamblers generally, a large percentage of them Jews. Not a finger would I raise for these fellows. And another war-cry which I profoundly 1 disbelieve in, and which will probably torn out in the long run to be a hpax, is the * Dutch South Africa ’ cry; I fancy such theories are mostly manufac*. tured for the English market. If the plot existed, why didn’t the plot work 1 It had every chance. I come back to the only argument that will really wash, that has no clap-trap in it. v And that is South Africa under our Government, and under a strong., and progressive Government. Human nature is pretty much the same all the world over, and if the Boers have been to blame in the past, no doubt the Britons have been just as much to blame. And one thing {hat I very much like this plain reason for is, that it makes it easy for one to do full justice to one’s adversaries. I admire their courage and patriotism very much. I don’t know since when it has become a British fashion

to slander a brave adversary, and I must say it seems tones singularly disgusting one, the more so when it is coupled with a gross and indiscriminating praiseof our valour-and performances.” This is how he apeak*-of the Boers:—“Day byday they fight, and one by one they fall. Comrades and friends drop at each other’s sides; sons drop by fathers, and brothers by brothers. The smoke rises in the valley; and the home is blotted out. All that makes, life worth the living goes, then life itself. What sterner this 1 It the agony and bloody sweat I know well that if my own country were invaded I should, or hope I should, behave exactly as these men are doing, and as I should call it patriotism in my own case, I cannot refuse to call it the same in theirs.”