MR. BARCLAY, M.H.R., PERFORMS. He Condemns the War.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 79, 4 January 1902, Page 8

MR. BARCLAY, M.H.R., PERFORMS. He Condemns the War.

THE views of plain Mi A R Barclay, of Dunedm, about the war are of not the slightest consequence But, a& he happens to be one of Dunedm s Ms H R what he has to say about the wai will probably attiact some attention. and will certainly be made the most of by the people who are inciting the Boers, by every means m thenpower, to keep up a hopeless struggle Mi Barclay was invited bv a Dunedm papei, anxious for "copy, to give his opinion about the proposal to deport a thousand Boers to this colony, and he forthwith seizes the occasion to let off a great deal of pentup steam, which sympathy with the Boers and wrath with his own country have generated in his cosmopolitan bosom In the first place, he gives fair notice that "I shall oppose by every possible means the proposal to bring any Boers to this country That settles the matter m a single act If King Dick ever seriously entertained such an idea, he will of course, abandon it nou Mr Barclay being dead against it • ♦ • Then. Mr Barclay proceeds to give his Mother-country what for The war is but "a continuation of the scandalous Jameson raid' , the honour of England has been deeply stained by it , it has excited the horroi of the civilised world ; the nation has been dragged into this unholy war , and the flag of Britain has been stained with a foul blot, etc, etc etc As nice a "derangement of epitaphs in fact as Mrs Partington could desire and quite in the style of the cheapest kind of sensational journalism • • • It is full ot strong language this diatribe but it is meie language and nothing more — not a scintilla of evidence in support of the wholesale charges, and no attempt at aigument Its jDaltry shallowness and absurd extravagance are sufficiently shown by tlie childish assertion that "this unholy war is responsible for the death of the late Queen "' A screed filled with stuff of that quality best answers itself • * • Mr Barclay i« entitled to hold whatever opinion he pleases about the war , that is his own concern But, it is a pity that men bke him cannot see the folly of giving publicity to such highly-intemperate language, which can subserve no good purpose, and may possibly tend to useless effusion of blood and to still further deepen the miseries of the

\eiy people whom they profess to compassionate We legard it as a righteous wai. which Britain could only have avoided at the pnce ot hoi national honoui Let that be as it may howexei the wai has too fai advanced now foi patriots of the Baicla} stamp to do any good bv abusing and cursing then own country No doubt Mi Barclay s constituents will call him to strict account foi his domgs in thi^ direction when he next solicits their suffrages, and in the meantime it need only be said that his voice on tins wai question is that of the pelican in the wildeinpss He I s - <=ole peifoimei of pro-Boei atic 5 - if we may com a phiase to suit the occasion