The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Tuesday, June 12, 1900. A FRENCH OPINION ON THE WAR.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIV, Issue 136, 12 June 1900, Page 2

The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. Tuesday, June 12, 1900. A FRENCH OPINION ON THE WAR.

All Frenchmen are not imbued with j an unreasoning Anglophobia. There are honorable exceptions, notably M. Yves Guyot, editor of the influential Parisian journal, the Siecle. A certain Dr. Kuypers — there is a significant Dutch sound about the name — having declared m the Revue des Deux Mondes that Great Britain's aim has been to gain possession of the gold mines of the Transvaal, M. Guyot denies that that is the case. Dr. Kuypers, he Bays, knows very well that Great Britain will derive no more profit from these gold mines than she has from the gold mines of Australia. They are private property. He then proceeds to correct the antiBritish accounts of the annexation of the Transvaal. It was not,. he truthfully points out, "the fate of the natives which afforded the pretext; it was the fate of the Boers,who, having engaged m a war with certain native tribes, had been beaten. Not being able to secure any order m the government of the Transvaal, Great Britain annexed the country on April 12, 1877. She annexed it m order to save it." Had Great Britain left the Boers to their fate their country would have been occupied by.the Zulus and the Basutos, and tbe Boers, as a nation, would have disapp^aied. The article concludes as follows : — " The fact of the British Government finding themselves powerless to enforce respect for the Convention of 1881 explains why they consented to its modification m 1884. As the Government were anxious not to have to find any casus belli m tbe conduct of the Boers, they completed the weakness they had displayed after Majuba Hill by a further act of weakness, and thus assured Eruger that the best way to obtain all he wanted was to violate the Convention. The British Government are indeed responsible for the present war, for they inspired Kruger with tbe conviction that he could continue m 1899 the policy which he had found succeed so well from 1881 onward." M. Guyot might have added that the very fact that tbe outbreak of war found the British Government so lamentably behind hand m tbe r preparations is, m itself, as we have more than once impressed it upon readers of this journal, the most convincing proof of their desire to avoid war. As to the war being a " capitalists' war," the assertion is a stupid and wicked lie. On the other hand, it has now been proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, that there has existed for years past a vast Dutch conspiracy throughout South Africa, having for its object the destruction of British rule.