THE SITUATION IN THE TRANSVAAL.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10882, 27 June 1899, Page 5

THE SITUATION IN THE TRANSVAAL.

• ' SO TBS) SDXTOB Off IHB PBES3,' " '- '> Sir, —I was very pleased to see "3C X/s"/ ;' first letter and reply to "One Who-Know*/' ' fliod a)sa pleased, to see jqu giving peo- -; plea free hand in. expressaig their opinions. h T; E. C." ha* thrown in his lot with the,' • weak, and eppladded the one Englishman.. '■-'' The correspondents coiuma has shown, its~', : . usefulness lor once, by proving his existence. '~ "T. R._C.,'' please do not imagine all" the .' English have a desire to be unjust to other . peoples. "Another Englishman" is not - proud of has na&oaaattty because it chooses - to murder others so thajt it" caa rob them of the gold their country possesses,' under the false plea that it wants for its people - fair representation. It is only making tools - of some poor dupes for the purpose of filling the pockets of Rhodes and other gold jobbers. As to being a traitor to the flag, why it's getting soaked in innocent human blood. Does the poor man ever quarrel with his poor foreign neighbour? Not a bit of it. Tien who. ds it that causes the wholesale murdering that's going on, He who hath, eyes to see let him spot the murderers, and by his'vote and voice gag the brutett in their insanity. If England wants to do the right, let her grant universal suffrage to the. people at Home. She then might have a just chum in asking something of the kind from others. —Yours, etc., GEO. BARTY» TO THE EDITOR OS , THE PBESS. Sir,—lf "XX." and "Cape" will refer,to "Haydn's Book of Dates" they will note that he puts down the Uitl&nders as 60,000, and of these considerably over 40,000 are British and a fair proportion of the remainder from British colonies and! America, the balance being German, Austrian, French, etc. He says it is ivaxd to say whether they have . raised the State from indigence to opulence, % as "most of the work in the mines is done by natives." Well, rather, somebody must do the manual l&bour, but most decidedly the Uitlanders {of whom, we have clearly proved those of British origin are in overwhelming majority) by their energy, eaterprise, brains and capital have made the Transvaal. Jameson's Raid was no doubt a mistake, and nobody, deplored it more than 'the writer, as before that Sehreiner, Hofmeyer, and most of the educated D.uteh in the western province of the Cape Colony strongly deprecated Kxuger's unreasonable stubbornness, broken promises, and insulting harshness to the, Uitlander population, but. the folly and iailure of the..tiling gave' cunning, hypocritical old Oom Paul a fresh lease of Ufa ! ' "X.X" also shirks" 4&e" • point that-Great Britain may soon, have to grapple, with; ft carefully-organised rebellion, . rising, and coalition otthe Transvaal, Fifce States, and a very formidable number of- Cape Cblony Dutchmen, by funnily saying that Kruger in, . his little republic has the rebellion already. Is it rebellion to state your grievances in a manful way, ask for fair parliamentary representation., proper police protection, etc. Kruger has for seven years or more been backing and filling, making no end of, promises of reforms that have never been carried out, over the dynamite monopoly, the franchise, etc. Recently, in accordance with the requirements of the law, a very representative deputation asked permission) of the Government to hold.a mass meeting to dascuss their grievances. Permission being ' given, the Britishers, acting on the advice, of their leaders, attended totally unarmed, even without their walking-sticks, determined to carry out their meeting hva quiet, orderly and peaceful mapner. . Kruger meamwnile tipped the wink to the Field Cornets in the vicinity of Johannesburg, and the meeting was savagely attacked and viciously dispersed by vastly numerically superior gangs of Boers, armed with bars of iron,' pickhandles, etc, and it was distinctly proved afterwards that a number of the .Johannesburg police in disguise assisted in the onslaught. Having granted permission for the meeting to be held, the Uitlanders looked for, and naturally had a right to. expect, police protection. The police station was within a stones-throw of the meeting hall, the police on duty a hundred strong or more were massed there apparently with some object, ' but on being appealed to they refused to do anything, and stood idly by. Can X.A., a Britisher, defend this as Mr play.' Jβ was such acts as this and. numerous other* that forced the Uitlanders to petition for the intervention and protection, of thtffflizerain Power. Then, also, it is difficult to, see how the Uitlanders can be said to be m rebellion, when they have merely stated their case in a fair outspoken way, as it must be clearly borne in mind that they are totally unarmed. As to Gladstone, the writer does not wish to cast a stone, as he respects hifl memory for many things: His Homo policy was doubtless good, but his foreign policy weak, paltry a,nd vacillating, and the defeat; of the British in the last Transvaal war; was ■ due to his Government only allowing 2000 troops, whereas the Boers at Lainge Nek numbered 6000 (vide report of Sir Evelyn Wood). Seeing, therefore, that he was certainly to blame in the first instance, it was a pity after being beaten that he should ' suddenly find out that "it was arTunrightwuß war." Hβ might have left that sort of . hypocritical snivel to old Kruger. Tben, as to bullying, seeing the Intlandera are totally unarmed and helpless, and merely asking for . fair representation, they are hardly in a position to bully a foe armed to tho teeth, and far from Great Britain bullyins, her patience and forbearance for many years past have been remarkable. - >o, the ! biillying, arrogant tone has been adopted entirely by the Transvaalers, so as, if pos- ■ s'ble, to force on a rupture, as they are • fully armed!, think the time is ripe, and ■ imocine the British are not. ■ As evidencing ' that the writer was not far out in stating s that the Dutch; in the Transvaal, Free State, • and a considerable number m the Cape > Colony had made their plans, and thorough^ ■ understood each other, he would refer *. A. to this morning's telegrams, showinc that the Orange Free State bad voted £76 000 for warlike purposes. As to the glanders beins? as a class a desperate lot of men (as "T R C " intimates), it is a cowardly untrutn, as thousands and thousands are respectable, law-abiding, craiet men; hundreds arfc the quietest of chapel-going Cormebinen, and "TRC." has no more right to call them mere marionettes than the writer has (without knowing Mm) to cull him onprobnoM names, such as p. fool or a "Little Englandcr." Of course there are thieves, cutthroats ar.d bad characters there, as has been the case with every gold-mininff centre, biifc what arc the police doing that they don t look after those gentry. *o, they prefer shooting unarmed Englishmen, each as Edgar, without cause, to get kudos for their zeal in terrorising and the Government showed their appreciation by acquitting the murdering coward oven of man Brighter. "T R C " makes a slicht mistake in classing Rhodes as an UitTonder, but of course that does not mutter to him. # The Transvaal agreed m the amended Convention to «ive political liberty toi Uitlanders : therefore sfco has not kept faith. If the Transvaal hod treated the Uitlanders with some little degree of fairness,, they would have been .satisfied, and they could nave reserved to ' themselves the. right to prevent the voice of the Boer community from being swa-mped. I think we may all Teijoice that "T.R.0." is not a representative patriot. If there were many like him it would mean the downfall of the British Empire. . t . As to your correspondent "Cape, ifc would be utterly impossible to rtoswer him in full. Twenty years ago the Cape Dutch - were friendly to English rule, but the Afrikaander BoDd has to a jrreat extent changed all that. What does their cry* "Africa for 1 the Afrifcaandtfre" lraean? ■ Theron, a Dutch member of the Cape Legislature, at one of the Bond meetings lately, was cheered to the echo,, when he used threatening and ,H\rasive language in speaking of British Capo colonists, talking in the strain, that if they behaved themselves they might, per- , haps, be allowed to live on there; but they must look out. or they would drive them to the sea.' . Then the Rev. D. P. Faure, who acted as interpreter (during Sir Hercules Robinson's regime) when Kruger and others went Home to interview Lord Derby, ..-, then Colonial Secretary, wrote recently to the "Cape Times," that if Great Britain ; forced the hands of the Transvaal, they . • wou*- have rebellion in the Cape Colony, : , which would result in a racial war, and the , 10,000 British troops would fill be required ,to keep them in order. No, the weakness and indeourion of the British Government . Ist nofe carrying out o> firm policy, ha£ alien-

«ted and weakened tie taytftf of numbers of tho Cape Dutch, although, of coarse, there are ctunbeca etill yrho *re tenable enough to know, «*>preriate, and prefer w> freedom aad fairnee of BritJah rule to'the chaos that would follow if it -we** unset. No doubt for a while the greater part of tne Cape Dutch would bo to all appearancee neuttal, bat let there be one or two Boer sucoene*. and .their lip loyalty will wo be turned into active hostility. Aβ to the present Cape Ministry, can "C*s»" (who pretends to know ell about it) honestly state that he believes such men as Merranan, Saver and Hofmeyer, are loyal to the core. Schreiner, no doubt, ie a finer man, and would prefer, if he poaribly could, tosnduce Kroger to be fair and reasonable. No, sir, there are some good and true men in the Cape Cabinet, but unfortonately a part of the core is rotten. The writer eaid the Western Province Dutch fanner* were all armed and mounted, and your correspondent really admits that, as if a man is a good ehot, has a weapon and horse that he knows thoroughly, he is just the right man for the lurking, skulking tactics of guerilla warfare. In contrast to this, unfortunately, if trouble does come, the British colonists are very few of them armed. If the preeent Cape Bond Cabinet are so loyal, why ie it that they have not served out the new arms to the volunteers! Then "Cape" defies mc to quote a single sentence of any of the present Cabinet which would denote -hostility or disloyalty to the British rule. It would not be difficult to pick out several. But Merriman (the aon of an English bishop) not so long ago intimated that he hated all Englishmen and their ways, and Saver lately, after a special train for lie north had been properly paid and contracted for by the Railway Department, stopped it, because the volunteers of the Laagberg campaign who had votes there would have turned the scale, and probably won one, if not; two seate, for the Progressives, whereas by this scandalous manoeuvre and breach of faith, the Afrikaandnr Bond secured, the two seats. The writer could give you plenty more information and proofs, but feels he has already trespassed too far on your space. In conclusion, the writer would just remark that it is extremely easy to make trenchant remarks and innuendoes, but it 4ak«a up too much time and epace to confute these with sufficient especially when one has to answer three, and for this reason, the writer being a busy man, has determined not to continue a futile newspaper controversy. Hope Mr "Cape" will pardon my temerity and malignant imagination for endeavouring to enlighten the Ohristahuxch public oil the true state of affaii*. From very many years' residence, end (having kept in touch with" South African events by continually reading the South 'African papers, and from correspondence with Cape rceddenta, the writer has a right to ctafe ibinueif.—Yours, etc., " ,■■ One who knows.