PRO-BOER LITERATURE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CV, Issue 12536, 25 June 1901, Page 4

PRO-BOER LITERATURE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In an article on “ Pro-Boer Literature,” you speak angrily of an officer who publicly protests against methods of warwaging. His eyes are opened, .he sees ; his cars are unstopped, he hears; consequently, he cannot refrain his tongue from speaking. Now, we know.that the protest ants have never had an easy time of it. Since, doubtless, long before records were kept, there have always been those who saw the wrong, the cruelty, the njustice, andl lifted up their voices in protest, the vanguard men of all progress towards a timer humanity. But as there has always been the protestant, so there has always been the group of the rich and the powerful, who doge to preach the perfection of “things as they are.” Now, this officer is considered traitorous because be speaks unfavourably of the things he knows about, of the things that come under his eyes. Where else are we to look for information that shall rouse in us a better spirit than the war spirit, than from men who know all about it from being on the scene. Doubtless, in the days when Lord Shaftesbury did his work for the afflicted poor, there were plenty to call him traitor .to his own class, that is to say. the wealthy and the powerful class. Luther, the first Freethinker, as he is called, were there none to call, him traitor to the church whose evils he opposed.' Christ, Paul,' Stephen, were all traitors to the cause of “ things as they were.” John Howard, Elizabeth Fry, coudn’t stand things as they wei’e. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wilberforce, there were plenty to curse their interference in the theory of let things remain as they -are, and leave the slave-owner to do as he will with his own. There were those who protested against the people being left in ignorance, and demanded schools for the children. But the bishops and the lords, and the wealthy, screamed out against those, who would give tho top stone to the enfranchisement. of the people, namely, their enlightenment. Now, as a matter of fact, people, would not be half so eager to get hold of “The Truth About the Wars,” “Hell Let Loose/' etc., if it were not that they know, that the war news is strictly censorised. 'And why this censorship? Simply because the people are expected to fight, to pay, to cheer “ things as they are,” and make no remarks unless they be of a. nature favourable to Empire extension, military paradings and. prancings.—l am, LOUISA BLAKE.