The Transvaal WAR.

Evening Star, Issue 11251, 26 May 1900, Page 3

The Transvaal WAR.

KRUGER’S HAUGHTY SPIRIT HUMBLED. BOERS ON THE RUN. ?wb« Association—By Telegraph—Oopyrlgh*. LONDON, May 25. The Boers report that out of the 71 which comprised Goffs force 27 were killed, 25 wounded, and 11 captured. Two Maxims were abandoned. * The Times’ correspoi dent at Delagoa Bay says that President Kruger favors surrender, alleging that tho continuance of the war will imperil property and inflict great hardship on the burghers. Ho throws on the commandants the onus of % final decision. Thirty trains to and from Pretoria to Pietersburg, the northern terminus cf the Transvaal Railway, arc running daily. The Boers are in headlong flight northwards. WANDERING AIMLESSLY. LONDON, May 25. Two thousand Boers, near Ficksburg, arc advancing on Clooolan. The British report a large commando at Buffalo. MOVEMENTS OF OUR GENERALS. LONDON. May 25. Boers report that General Methuen is at Grayling's Drift, on tho Vaal, while General French, with 3,000 men and tou guns, has reached Vredefort, forty-one miles north-west of Heilbron. No official communication has reached the War Office as to Lord Roberts’s movements. WHAT ELSE COULD THEY DO 1 NEW YORK. May 25. ; American pro-Boer newspapers acquiesce in President M'Kinley’s pronouncement of strict neutality. BIOK NEW ZEALANDERS. The Hon. J. G. Ward has received a cable from Sir A. Milner that tho Paparoa, which left the Cape on May 19, has on board the following New Zealand invalids ; —Captain Hayhurat (of Tunuka), Sergeant Bond, and Corporal Symes. Sergeanr, Bond belorgi to the Auckland Mounted Rifles, and Corporal Symes to the Christ College Rdl ■■«. Both are members of the First Coatingeo « Trooper Taylor, who arrived in M u ,- bourne by the Moravian, suffering from rheumatism, has been sent to the hospital there. THE LESSONS OF THE WAR. Speaking in the House of Lords lately, Lord Rosebery said The lost great war of our time was fought under conditions which are already almost obsolete. This war has been fought by an invisible enemy with smokeless powder in such a fashion that men have fought great battles without for the moment seeing a single unit of their enemy of any kind or description, and that in itself will give all the great military nations of the world something to think about. They will have much to reconsider and much to revise. We, at any rate, I think, may derive this comfort and this strength in regard to our vast and dispersed Empire; th&t it is detvr that under ordinary conditions the forces of defence are far greater than the forces of attack. That is a consolation not merely to those who have watched with anxiety the attack on an Empire with a frontier which extends in every ■one and in every degree of the world, but it is also a consolation to those who hove at heart the true and permat ent and the humane interests of peace at large. But all nations will learn from this war lessons of strategy, lessons of caution, lessees cf peace. lam not sure that we have not also other lessons to learn. I think we have to learn from this war many lessons of the administration, and possibly of the organisation, of our Empire all through, and on many lines. I feel that so strongly that I confess this: that if we do not learn the lessons which the war has taught us, or have taught us, that even if it should terminate—as it must terminate—in the flag of the Empire waving over a vast region where it has not waved before—even if It should so terminate, I should feel that the war had not loft its lull value among 08 I should feel that the sacrifices we have made, great as they are, would have been, to some extent, in vain ; for I solemnly say this : that if we do not learn our lessons, if we—swoollen by tho triumph of victory—forget the lessons of November, December, and January, and do not determine in time of peace to revise by the light of war whet ,we learned in those dreary and dismal months, I should say ; “ If we have not done this the sacrifices, great as they are, that we have made, will have been in vain.”— (Loud cheers.) THE 8 ANN A POST AND BETHANY DISASTERS. Trooper Arnold, of the (Jlutha section of the First Contingent, writing from Bloemfontein under date April 5, makes this reference to the above:—”We have had seventeen of our men taken prisoners. It was an unfortunate affair, as most of the men were sick, either in the ambulance or the transport waggons. The Boers shelled the waggons across a plain, where there was a river •spruit,' which is the dry bed of a river that has been washed out by tho heavy rains in the rainy season. Some of these are wide, with sides as steep as the side of a house, and you would not see them until vou came within fifty yards of them. It was one of these that onr waggons were driven to, which was swarming with Boers, who look all those who were on the waggons prisoners. At that fight three were killed, seventy-eight wounded. 150 prisoners ; total’, 231. That was rather a severe reverse. That is only a part of it. as a place that rejoices in the uamc of Bethany was the scene of a butchery. ’There was a loss of about 400 men. Three companies of the 19th Royal Irish and one company of the Northumberland Fusilecrs held a position ?ix miles south-east of Bethany on top of a hill, which was surrounded bv Boers, and before reinforcements could be brought up the Boers killed or took the lot.”