PRESIDENT KRUGER'S LAST STAND.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIII, Issue 12157, 22 March 1900, Page 4

PRESIDENT KRUGER'S LAST STAND.

President Kkugek's dramatic declaration that forty thousand Boers are ready to fight to the death rather than surrender their independence is evidently intended to imprests those good people who have persuaded themselves that the Transvaal has been forced into the present war, and that it. is now making a last desperate stand against the greed of the British oppressor. But those who know anything of the history of the struggle and of the Republic will not require to be told that the Boers commenced the hostilities by the invasion of British territory, and that their independence, as we understand the term in this country, was never in peril until they chose to show themselves unfitted for the enjoyment of the .privilege. The position was very well explained by an eminent Swiss statesman tho other day, who found it necessary to repudiate the suggestion that the Transvaal was entitled to the active sympathy of his countrymen. Writing to one of the Geneva, newspapers, he said; It is not for either independence (which England was ready to leave to her) or for liberty that the Transvaal had thrown itself into war, a war which will be fatal to her. It is to preserve a tyrannical domination over the Uitlanders, and the financial advantages which have resulted therefrom. We cannot accept the suggestion that, the case of the Transvaal may be paralleled by that of Switzerland, or, as some had said, Montenegro. The Transvaal seeks to opm'css the blacks as well as to exploit the foreigner. It revolts us to see that under pretence of vindicating the principles which are dear to us, Kruger sands his brave burghers to the slaughter in order to maintain in power a tyrannical and venal oligarchy, wlrase main object is to grasp and rlHribut3 at its own will the gold obtained by the labour and enterprise of others. Testimony of this kind from the representative of one of the most enlightened and

liberty-loving nations in the whole world ought to satisfy every honest enquirer that the sympathy which Mr W. T. Stead has attempted to arouse for the Boers is utterly undeserved. All that can be urged against Great Britain is that in the negotiations which preceded the war she displayed too much forbearance, and encouraged President Kruger and his advisers to believe that by persisting in their preposterous claims they would in the long run wear down the British; resistance. They may in their ignorance have had some excuse for that attitude. But if President Kruger should insist upon (sacrificing the remnant of his brave army to an insensate desire to delay by a few days the restitution of British supremacy in the Transvaal, he will suffer even a more bitter retribution than the one that 'has fallen upon his friend President Steyn.