The Policy of Leniency.

Hastings Standard, Volume V, Issue 1424, 15 January 1901, Page 3

The Policy of Leniency.

The special coruuiisdorjer of the London Daily Telegraph, writing from Capetown on '• South Africa and its Problems," says : —" If, however, the conduct of tho Doers is indefensible, it is impossible to acquit the Commander in-Chief of all blame. To put it briefly and bluntly, the clemency policy of Lord Kobert3 has been a complete failure, as anyone who knew the Boer character might have predicted. It was the policy which a man of extreme softness of heart, on whom the war had inflicted the most poignantsorrow ia the Io?s of his son, might have been expected to pursue, and chnt' to. It is hard to realise iu practice that the sharpest knife and the deepest probe are generally the quickest healers. It is so, and the grim truth is being illustrated every day. lam certain as I can be of anything unproved that the summary execution of half a dozen Boers who were caught with arms in their hands after taking the oath of allegiance would at the outset have saved not only the lives of many Tommies —though I am aware that in sentimental circles at Home this is a minorconsideration —but those of scores of farmers on the veldt. I listen, I admit, with impatience to the tearful laments not infrequently poured into my ear about the sufferings of the poor women and children turned out because it i 3 necessary to burn farms which have sheltered the wreckers of trains or the foreswora marauders who snipe an old soldier from behind a kopje. These things are sad, as almost every incident of war is sad. It is not a game played for trifling forfeits. My sympathies, however, are for the widows and orphans of the British and colonial soldiers whose live 3 have been wantonly sacrificed by these men who have gone back on their path.