MAJOR BARTTELOT'S TRADUCERS.

Press, Volume XLV, Issue 7215, 28 November 1888, Page 6

MAJOR BARTTELOT'S TRADUCERS.

It is by a happy coincidence (says the Saturday Review) that, along -with the justly indignant letter of the late Major Barttelot's brother, The Times has been able to publish a communication from Mr Burdett-Coutts which disposes at once and finally of the infamons slanders with which the memory of an English officer, slain in what was virtually his country's service, has been assailed. These "cowardly lies," as Mr "Walter Barttelot Is fully justified in styling them were traceable from the very first, and were, in fact, traced to a source which would have made any man with only a grain more of justice and charity than goes to the equipment of a modern " philanthropist" suspend judgment upon them. They were known to rest on the authority of a dismissed interpreter of the expedition—or in other words, of a personal enemy of its leader—and upon no other evidence whatever. This man, Assad Farran, is now in London, and has had an interview with Mr Burdett-Coutts at the office of the Emm Pasha Relief Committee. There and then be admitted that at the time he told the stories on the Congo he was animated by feelings of intense Hostility both to Major Bartteiot and toMr Jameson, and in the presence of Mr Bordett-Coutts and another member of the Committee he made a formal declaration of withdrawal of his charges. In this document he states that "the alleged severities towards his men, of 'which Major Barttelot was accused, were an exercise of discipline which was rendered absolutely necessary ia the interests of the expedition by the circumstances in which Major Barttelot was placed at the camp at Yambaja, and by the mutinous conduct of his men." \ Concurrently with this retraction of the slander by its African propagator, it has been repudiated by the only European who had been vouched in its support. Mr Troup, the officer of the expedition who ■was invalided borne in June last, and who, it was mendaciously alleged or suggested, would confirm Assad Parran's story, will have none of it. Though too ill to take any active part in the controversy* he has authorised Sir Francis De Wioton to say he is not responsible for the statements imputed to him.