A Defiant English Boer.

Feilding Star, Volume XXI, Issue 126, 27 November 1899, Page 2

A Defiant English Boer.

JOHN BULL TAUNTED TO HIS FACE, EXTEAOEDINARY LETTERS. I_FB,OM POST'S LONDON CORRESPONDENT.]! That the Boers fully anticipate rescue from the clntches of Britain by a coalition of European Powers is absolutely certain. A Boer who (in the words of the Times) "bears a well known Dutch name," and used to live in a Dutch a district of Gape Colony, but who now resides in London, has addressed to the Times two most extraordinary letters, signed '• P.S., " repudiating the charges that the Boers are ignorant of England's strength. He says : — ' "We are not so ignorant as the British statesmen and newspaper writers say, uor are we such fools as you British aarte t We know our policy, and we do not I change it. We have no Opposition party to fear, nor to truckle with. Your boasted Conservative majority has been the obedient tool of the Radical minority, and the Radical minority has been the blind tool of our far-seamg and intelligent President. We have desired delay, and we have had it, and we are now practically masters of Africa from the Zambesi to the Cape. All the Africanders iv Cape Colony have been working for years .for this end. and we know the facts. 11 We know that you dare not take any precautions in advance to prevent the onslaught of the Great Powers, as the Opposition, the great peace pacty, will raise the question of expense, and this will win over your lazy, dirty, drunken working classes, who will never again permit themselves to be taxed to support your Empire,- or even to preserve your existanee as a nation. We know frotn."all the military authorities of the European, and American Continents that you exist as an independent Power merely on sufferance, and that at any moment the great Emperor Wiiliam can arrange with France or Russia to wipe you off the face of the earth. You must yeild in all things to the United States also, or your supply of corn will be so reduced by the Americans that your working classes would be compelled to pay high prices for their food, and rather than do that they would have civil war and invite any foreign Power « to assist them by invasion, and there is ho patriotism in the working classes of England, Wales, or Ireland. N 11 We know that your country has been more prosperous than any other country duriDg the last 50 years (you have had no civil wars like the Ambricans and French to tone up your nerves and strengthen your manliness), -and consequently your able-bodied men wilL not enlist in your so-called voluntary army. Therefore you have to hire the dregs of your population to do your fighting, and they are, deficient in physique, in moral and mental ability, and in all the qualities that make good fighting men. 11 We know that the entire British race is rapidly decaying, your birth.rate is rapidly falling, your children are born weak, diseased, and deformed, and that the major part of your population, consists of females, cripples, epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of all kinds, whom you carefully nourish and preserve." " We know that your navy is big, bat we know that it is not powerful, and that it is honeycombed with disloyalty — as witness the theft of the • signal-books, the assaults on officers, the desertions, the wilful injury of the boilers and machinery, all the vigilaDco of the officers is powerless to prevent. : .v . ' 11 We know that the Conservative Government is a mere sham, and that' it largely reduced the strength of^he British artillery in 1888-89. And Jfcve know that it does not dare to call put' the militia for training, nor to mobilise the fleet, nor to give sufficient grants to the Line and Volunteers for ammunition to enable them to become good marksmen and efficient soldiers. We know that the British soldiers and sailors are immensely infsrior as marksmen, not only to Germans, French, and Americans, but also to Japanese, Afridis, Chilians, Peruvians, Belgians, and Russians. We know that no British Government dares to propose any . form of compulsory military or naval training, for the British people would rather be invaded, conquered, and governed by Germans, Russians, or Frenchmen than be compel* led to serve their own Government. 1 ' 11 We Boers know that we will not h,e goyerned by a set of British curs, but that we will drive you out of Africa altogether, and the other manly nations which have compulsory military service —the armed of Europe— will very quickly . divide all your other possessions between them. Talk no. more of the ignorance of the Boers or the Cape Dutch ; a few days more will prove your ignorance of the. British position, and in a short space of time you and your Queen will be imploring the good offices of the great German Emperor to deliver you from your disasters, for your humiliations ara not yet complete, " For thirty years the Cape Dutch have been waiting their chance, and now their day has come ; they will throw off the iv mask and your yoke at the same instant, and 300,000 Dutch heroes will trample you under foot. We can afford to tell you the truth now, and in this letter you have got it." " P.S." begins his second letter thus : — "I was surprised to see that you had ventured to publish my letter of the 12th in youc issue of the 14th, but as you have done so, and stated in your leading article that the writer is grossly ignorant and prejudiced , I trust you will permit me to produce proofs of at least some of the statements contained in that letter. But we Boers are not so ignorant, or such fools as you British are, I would adduce the fact we Boers never refused to buy Delagoa Bay at the cost of a very few thousands of pounds, as your British statesman did — we had not the chance." "We have the support of the great majority of the Nonconformists, although they are just now too prudent to proclaim it publicly ; but after the first or second reverse that you will have they will come forward witU those noble humanitarians, Mr W. T. Stead, Harcourt, " Nunquam," of the Clarion, Morley, Clark, and Courtney, and sweep away the accursed Chamberlain and aU his crew, including the scientific Salisbury and that bicycle-riding bookworm Balfour." 11 Before you have finished shouting and we Boers have finished shooting, I will say nothing of the future, but I may remind you that in our little skirmishes on former occasions twenty Englishmen fell for every Boer, although we neither; drilled nor prepared for action. Now we have had years of drill and organisation, and without undue boasting we may reasonably expect to maintain superiority. We, the Cape Dutch, the Free Staters, and the Transvaal Boers, have the most perfect faith in our own cause (whether other nations think it "just or unjust is a matter of total indifference to us) and in our noble President * whom we all venerate. Whilst you have no confidence in your cause, but I beg with snuffling cant for the moraj support and conscientious approval of other States and other races. A few I short weeks and you will be regulated to your proper position -considerably below Spain in the estimation of the world."