A PERSISTENT ERROR.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXIX, Issue 133, 8 June 1906, Page 2

A PERSISTENT ERROR.

The colonial press, ,as a whole, has made a sympathetic response to the remarkable speech delivered by the Uuder-Secretary for the Colonies at the West Australian dinner, but nearly every journal goes out of its way to remark that Mr Churchill's words were prompted, apparently, by a wish to retrieve the "false position" that he is alleged to have taken up in connection with Imperial affairs in South Africa. The Christchurch Press' comments may be cited as a fair and average type of the kind of thing alluded to This is how our contemporary puts it:—"Mr Churchill has been Under-Secretary for the Colonies for siv months. During that time South Africa has been the only part of the Empire to require his attention in matters of great importance, and he has succeeded in irritating loyalist opinion in that country as it has not been irritated for years. At the same time, he has made himself still more unpopular with the Conservatives in England than he was before the elections, which is. saying a good deal." Now, this presentment of the case simply begs the whole question. The implication is that Mr Churchill " irritated " a class of people in South Africa whose principles and aspirations could be described as identical with our. own, and who are characteristically British -and loyal. But such is not the fact; it is very far from the fact. "Loyalist opinion" in South Africa, as expressed in violent resentment at the policy of Mr Churchill, ■ means, primarily, the opinion of the Randlords, and quite secondarily and incidentally that of the " clients," dependants, and hangers-on of the Mining magnates.

It does not appear to be known in these colonies that less than half the alleged " British" population of the Transvaal—in other words, the whites who are not Dutch—are of British blood. The balance consists of members of nearly every nationality on the face of the earth, with, a large preponderance of Russian and Polish Jews t oi the worst class. These latter are known by the generic name* of "Peruvians," and though they have been specially eulpgised by Lord Milner and Mr Chamberlain, they are objects of peculiar detestation, not only to the really "loyal" British "whom they have starved out, and the Boers (whose dislike is. almost Slavic in its intensity) but to those members of the Israelitish nation who claim- to be English by long domicile and assimilation. The "Peruvian" has captured nearly all the retail trade of Johannesburg, and 'is as ..profoundly interested in maintaining the present "British" ascendancy as are certain members, and those not the least influential, of the Conservative party at Home. The only people whose "loyalty" ought to count, that is, the really British section of the Transvaal population, exercise no political influences whatever. They dare not express their honest opinions openly, and they are mostly silent; all that is open to them, under the present regime, is a life of extreme hardship, their only consolation being that it is not quite so hard as the "bosses" might make it ii' they wore so minded. There is hardly a loyal Britisher on the Rand who would not leave it if he had the money to pay his passage, nor one who is not ready to become a soldier of for-

tune in the Natal-war. Moreover, there are very-few who would not vote for a return of Krugerism. Mr Winston Churchill knows his Africa,- but even he has found that it is dangerous for a loyal Britisher to open his mouth too widely.