A BOER OFFICER'S VIEWS ON THE WAR.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10762, 15 September 1900, Page 8

A BOER OFFICER'S VIEWS ON THE WAR.

The "Daily News" quotes the following interesting account of a conversation with a Boer prisoner in Bloemlfontein, from a private letter (dated! June 4th) sent Home by a medical officer in South Africa. This particular prisoner was on officer in the Transvaal Artillery: —

"He spoke English fluently. Many things which he said interested mc. They say that the hope of the ultimate success of the Republican forces depended from the first entirely upon their President's reiterated promises of foreign intervention, without which .they never for a moment thought they could win in the long run. First it was Germany who was to -help them, then Russia, and lastly America. They declared that they had eighty thousand men in the field from the first, which was more than I thought; that there were still some forty "to fortyfive thousand; that at least two hundred and fifty were killed and wounded at Mageratontein, which I take it is more than most of us thought; that they do dread lyddite more than anything else. It was great news to them that their shells often tailed to explode, and they say that frequently ours also failed,. -specially when they struck soft ground. They have practically no waggons left now, nearly aU of them being worn out, or broken, or captured, or blown to pieces, and their horses were rapidly dying from the scarciy of grass in this winter season. Their stock of remounts is exhausted. They are hopeless now to do anything except increase the bill that their land will have to pay, and the consequence is that every intelligent burgher is hoping frcm day to day that their President will surrender and save further bloodshed and destruction of property. They say that there is another battle, which they very much doubt, it would be not at the Vaal-(and so far they have predicted truly), Ibut between Johannesburg and Pretoria. They know all about our new heavy guns, and realise that their artillery could not have any chance. They criticise the tactics of their generals every bit as scathingly as the most discontented do ours, with the exception of Joubert and Grobbelaar, and they say that if our infantry and mounted infantry had pursued from the first their present tactics of advancing in extended order, and creeping on the ground, and taking advantage of all cover, we should have had a walk over even in the early days of the campaign. But those disastrous frontal attacks of the early stages, at least, had the good result of revealing to them the extraordinary pluck of our men, which they declared was past their comprehension until they saw it. Although they knew nothing of Lord Roberts's despatches, they were emphatic that Spion Kop ought to have been held by us, saying that their artillery was firing its parting shots by wav of a rearguard action, while everything was being prepared for a retirement of their forces, which must have let us into Ladysmith straight away. LeycSs, they say, will never dare show his face in Africa again; he would be shot. His pay is seventy-five thousand pounds a year, but out of that he has to pay all the foreign agents of the Transvaal. Sir Evelyn Wood is the Englishman they state they "fear most. They declaired that they had very little sickness, which it is difficult to understand, or even to believe, when one thinks of the fearful amount of enteric we have had, in spite of our infinitely better sanitation, and of the fact that they took both enteric and measles down to Simon's Town among their prisoners. They speak very highly of our magnanimity in the treatment of wounded and prisoner-, and in the respect we have shown to conquered property, e.g., the farms, but they said that the commandeering of cattle by the conquerors*, readily admitted to be necessary for the feeding of the army, will ruin many burghers, for they possess no other means of livelihood. If Joubert were alive the war would end, now that the other side is obviously without hope. They recognise that the independence of the Republics is bound to go; but, in spite of impressions to the contrary, they say the Boer appreciates kindness, and that it won't take long for the two nations to fuse, and settle down amicably under British free trade, which, -while it will lessen the pay of the labourer, will lessen still more the price he has to pay for the necessaries of life. The only obstacle to such fusion that they can

foresee is what they call the 'company system, as practised at Kimberley,' explaining that there thr. Workman is paid good wages, but is forced, on pain of dismissal, to buy his necessaries from stores run by the company or its agents, at prices so higluts to take away all chance of saving money."