THE PREMIER'S DEPARTURE. Trials and Perils by the Way.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 94, 19 April 1902, Page 8

THE PREMIER'S DEPARTURE. Trials and Perils by the Way.

AT last King Dick is safely embaiked and on his way Home for the Coronation. Part of his programme is to drop in at Durban, have a run up to Pretoria — in order most likely to communicate his Mews to Kitchener— and then to make Capetown his final port of departure for London. Exactly what the Premier means to do in South Africa, no one seems to know, but it is e\idently something novel, striking and sensational. * * * In fact, we are just a bit afraid that King Dick is spoiling for a fight and that it he gets anywhere within cooey of a force of Boers there will be no holding him back His recent speeches shew how strongly the old Adam is stirring in his blood. Has he not been telling all and sundry from the War Office downward that there has been too much of the "kid glove business" in this war ? Did he not tell the Maoris up in the Wairarapa that when they went to war in the old days they went about it m the proper businesslike way and gave no quarter 9 And did he not wax eloquent and indignant at the citizens' banquet last week when he taxed the Imperial authorities with being afraid lest they should hurt the Boers ? * * * When Richard goes away in this frame of mind is it not rather dangerous — -for the Boers we mean — to let him land m South Africa at the head of a New Zealand regiment ? Remember, they will be keeping him in his best fighting vein all the way across by their martial exercises and their patriotic songs. Obsene, too, that King Dick has had an entire suit of military khaki made for himself to take away. Reflect upon those hints of his about learning his drill on board the troopship. What does it all portend ? * * # Well, make a guess. Is Richard sporting a khaki suit at his time of life, and going to the bother of learning the goose-step, and getting Colonel Messenger to coach him up in his drill all for nothing ? Not a bit of it. It's an even chance that if peace is not patched up by the time he gets to South Africa and De Wet and De la Rey are still at large, New Zealand's Premier may start on a trek with his regiment to capture the ringleaders and end the war by one of those splendid master-strokes with which he has turned the tables upon his adversaries so often in the political arena. In short, the pugnacious spirit is strong in Richard of Kumara, and as the Opposition of late years have not ventured into Donnybrook Fair at all, he is simply blue mouldy for a fight. Now, that would not alarm 01 distress us m the least if the Boers would only come out into the open and meet King Dick fairly and squarely. But they won't do that. It is their " dimness " that we are afraid of on Dick's account. Knowing what a teiroi tor his size he is, and what a large hand he has put into this Boer war by keeping the Empire up to the contract and giving all the colonies an example to imitate, are they not likely to set some crafty trap to take our Richard prisoner ? Think what a feather in their cap it would be Just imagine how it would upset the whole Coronation programme. The \ery idea is appalling. Before it is too late let King

Dick be implored not to pin on his war-paint, and his khaki uniform, and, above all, to take no risks by leading his army into the field. We can't .spare him.