THE CRUSADE AGAINST MR CHAMBERLAIN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7373, 27 January 1902, Page 2

THE CRUSADE AGAINST MR CHAMBERLAIN.

OPINIONS OF A PARIS JOURNAL.

WHAT LE TEMPS SAYS.

Mr Chamberlain has not the gift of tact. A Minister should observe a certain reserve in his language. He cannot forget that he speaks in the name of his country, and even when he addresses his electors he cannot rid himself of his official character.

Until now it was an elementary principle of political prudence and international courtesy to avoid direct or indirect allusions to the affairs of other nations. Mr Chamberlain has changed 13 tlr

all this. ... In a speech which he made some weeks ago at Edinburgh for the purpose of justifying tho policy of the Ministry, in particular as regards the war, he made use of words which look as if they have been penned on the model of that statesman of whom it was said that any of his sentences might have been preceded with the formula : " This is meant to be disagreeable to you." Mr Chamberlain, with a superb disdain of public opinion on the Continent, took care to include all the great Powers of Europe in his condemnation : Russia in Poland and the Caucasus, Franco in Algeria and Tonquin, Austria-Hungary in Bosnia, Germany in the 1870 war. This is not the place to examine up to what point these accusations are probable or likely. No honest man has ever denied that war inevitably causes a certain amount of the most deplorable excesses. It is evident that Mr Chamberlain either do6s not know what he is talking about, or deliberately mistakes facts when he compares in any degree the worst scandals of the wars he has mentioned to the systematic inhumanity of the South African war. In putting aside the "vague charges against France by the speaker at Edinburgh, we have no desire to deny or excuse abuses which marked the invasion of 1870. These history will judge. But, none the less, justice demands there should be no comparison between two seta of absolutely different facts. German armies pillaged some places, shot some Francs-tireurs, and put some hostages on to locomotives. But there was no universal, uniform, or methodical system. In Africa farms have been burned en masse, fields laid waste, non-combatants forced into concentration camps, and proclamations issued inflicting punishment on belligerents. This is the scandal against which the conscience of the human race protests, and when Mr Chamberlain compares the action of any nation whatsoever with those of England, he little knows that ho is outraging the feelings of an entire nation. He knows it so little that he has said disdainfully through one of his secretaries that he will not concern himself with an artificial agitation, and that, far from insulting Germany, he had perhaps done her too much honor by comparing her conduct in 1870 to the irreproachable campaign in South Africa. Such blindness is amazing. Germany still vibrates with indignation. The press has set the example. The universities have organised great indignation meetings. In these meetings there haß been much exaggeration. It would, no doubt, be morally better for each nation to mourn in sackcloth and ashes for her own sins and to abstain from all hypocritical Pharisaism at other people's expense, leaving each country to work out its own salvation. None the less, this explosion of anger must be noted, Mr Chamberlain may boast of having united the German people from the agrarian country squire to the social democrat in a common and unanimous feeling of indignation. Sis success is complete and almost unprecedented. He has bound together lawful discontent, bad feeling, moral indignation, and selfish jealousy.

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