An Italian View of the War.

Manawatu Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 7275, 27 August 1901, Page 4

An Italian View of the War.

At Perugia some weeks since a pro-Boer lecture was given, and the audience was being worked up to a high pitch of enthusiasm, when Dr Euata, an Italian physician and a professor at the University of Perugia, rose and shouted " Long live Britain ! " There was some outcry (says the Rome correspondent of the Morning Post), but numbers of others gained courage and shouted with him. The spell was broken, and the public was reminded that there were two sides to the question of which they hud heard so one-sided a view. A few weeks later another attempt was made to capture Perugia for the pro-Boers, when the president of the " Peace and Arbitration Society " presided over a lecture in which a Professor Pisenti belauded the _ Boers and decried Great Britain, while a colleague read an ode in honor of Kruger. Professor Ruata has again taken up the cudgels in favour of the British, and the same number of the Unione Liberale of Perugia, which contains an account of the lecture contains also a statement by the professor of the relations between Great Biitain and the Transvaal, the character of Boer civilisation, and the origin of the war. "It would seem," ha says, " that after all this nation (Great Britain) cannot be so very tyrannical, since it is a nation which has always been the home of the fullest liberty, sheltering our refugees when no one else offered them an asylum, which honoured Garibaldi in a way which no other nation ever dreamed of honouring him, and which has always been our sincere friend. France, to whom Garibaldi gave the only victory against the Prussians of which she can boast, paid our great hero with the most atrocious insults ; but today, it_ seems, we ought to forget everything on account of France I

. . . Above all, people should not make comparisons between this war and the ■ Italian Wars of Independence. All who have watched events in the Transvaal during the last 15 years know that Great Britain could not possibly have avoided the war. Besides, from 1886 to 1901 the Boers have always been the same, and, when, three months ago, the British formulated their conditions of peace, one of the conditions which the Boers most strongly objected to, and which had a great influence in the failure of the negotiations, was tbat which would have obliged the Boers to recognise the race of Ham as equal to the race of Japhetl"