LONDON CHAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11538, 24 November 1900, Page 5 (Supplement)

LONDON CHAT.

[PBOK Otm OWN .COBBESPONDENT.] London, October 20. The cable has told you that the Salisbury Government has obtained a majority of 132, which will be increased to 133 in the event of Mr. Wason being returned for the sturdily Radical Scottish electorate which he has so gallantly wooed. [Mr. Wason was successful.] In other words, taking the figures at 132, Ministers are four votes to the good as compared with their position at the dissolution. They have won two votes from the other side and the other side has lost them. This, I believe, is the first instance on record in England of a Ministry which has been in office throughout the entire life of a Parliament winning, on a voluntary appeal to the country, a majority as large as that which it had when the previous Parliament was dissolved. In this case the majority is larger by four than before. Yet I understand that Ministers generally, and Mr. Chamberlain is particular, are greatly disappointed. Certainly they did not expect a larger majority than they had' in the general election of 1895, viz., 152. They counted almost confidently on a majority of fully 200. They could hardly be brought to believe that the unpopular and discredited Liberal party would be able to win from them a single seat previously held by a Ministerialist. Nevertheless, the Opposition did manage to win over from the Government side no fewer than thirty-four seats. It is true that the Government, on the other hand, won over from the Opposition thirty-six seats, and thus increased its dissolution majority by four. Still that was less—much lessof a victory than had been counted upon, and so the result of the election is not taken as an unqualified triumph. But surely it very well might be. A safe working majority of 132 has not fallen to the lot of many British Premiers, and to come back with such strength after a voluntary appeal to the country is an experience as rare as it should be gratifying. War Office reform is one question on which the country feels very strongly, a fact which Ministers so far do not seem to have fully grasped. The disastrous effects in loss of valuable lives and in many inexcusable reverses which the South African War has shown to be the outcome of entrusting important military commands and operations to society women's pets and Piccadilly pups, grossly ignorant of their professional duties and superciliously negligent in the performance of those duties, have fairly roused public feeling among the thoughtful classes. If the Government do not realise this and act upon the realisation, there will be a marked and formidable reaction to the Ministerial disadvantage. What the public would like is to see Lord Kitchener supersede Lord Lansdowne.

Lord Salisbury has at last filled up the long-vacant post of Lord Chief Justice of England. Lord Russell's successor is to be Lord Alverstone, new Master of the Rolls, but better known as Sir Richard Webster, for twelve years Attorney-General of England. It may be remarked that Sir Richard was one of the leading counsel in the great libel case of Bryco v. Rusden, in which Lord Stanmorethen Sir Arthur Gordon—-and Bishop Hadfield were mixed up in so regrettable a way.

It is an open secret that Sir Richard has long had the eye of expectation fixed steadily on the Woolsack, to whose reversion, when vacant, his claim is unquestionable. But Lord Halsbury, who has sat upon it for so many years, simply declines to move off so comfortable a seat, and Lord Salisbury, being his old friend, cannot bring himself to ask the quaint-looking little Lord Chancellor to "take a back seat." So Sir Richard Webster judiciously secured the first very high judicial appointment available, and obtained his peerage and the Mastership of the Rolls only to see the still higher position of Lord Chief Justice fall almost immediately to his share. The Chief Justice-. ship does not disqualify him from the Wool-, sack. One of his predecessors, Lord Chief Justice Campbell, after completing his monumental " Lives of the Chancellors," became in his turn a Lord Chancellor himself. So will Lord Alverstone, if he live to see Lord Halsbury pensioned or deceased. The new "Lord Chief Justice possesses an excellent physique, and was in his time a noted athlete. He still keeps up the habits of early rising and abstemious living and abundant exercise, together with that of indomitable industry, and he keeps his chest and throat in good order by singing briskly as a surpliced chorister in his parish church. Public feeling has not been greatly gratified by the announcement that colonial troops who have returned to England wounded or invalided are being sent to their distant home in the steerage of the steamers. This is an eccentric way of recognising colonial valour and loyalty! But it thoroughly is characteristic of War Office and Admiralty methods. One commentor forcibly remarked: These colonial troopers have nearly all been the victims of enteric fever. Shattered in health, they require special dieting, such as cannot be obtained in the third-class accommodation of a liner. Much of the ill-effect of this blundering on the part of the Admiralty has been removed by the generous action of the Committee of the Temporary Loan Fund for Wounded and Invalided Soldiers in England, which has arranged by cable 'to Gibraltar that the troopers shall have the comforts of the second saloon and be supplied with whatever diet is necessary in their debilitated condition. Fortunately the committee learned by accident that the men had been sent in the steerage by the Admiralty, in spite of the fact that the men had been assured that they would be sent second-class."

To what extent the disloyal Africander class actively assisted the enemy during the war may be gathered from the extraordinary revelations made before the Transvaal Concessions Commission now sitting at Pretoria. To take one instance alone. Mr. Van Kretschmar, managing director of the Netherlands Railway after his counsel had protested against his being examined, was called, and extracts from his diary and correspondence were put in, showing that the company had taken the initiative in blowing up bridges with the object of stopping the advance of the British; that a "Destruction Commando" had been organised and acted as the rearguard of the Boer Army; that the company had paid £1000 toward the expenses of Mr. Hargrove's " conciliation tour" in Cape Colony ; and that it had also provided a substantial annual salary to Mr. Reginald Statham, a pro-Boer journalist and author and member of the National Liberal Club. In a letter addressed in April last to his directors in Holland, the witness had admitted that the company had compromised themselves by deed and word and writing. They had made cannon and ammunition, destroyed bridges on British territory, paid their staff on commando, and assisted the Free State with person and material. In other letters the witness suggested a combination of Germany, Holland, and the Transvaal against Great Britain. In December lie wrote that he considered the Boers ought to be content with annexing Kimberley, Northern Natal, and Amatongaland, with Delagoa guaranteed as an international free port.

It is hardly surprising that the committee of the National Liberal Club should have invited Mr. Statham to explain his conduct. In a letter to yesterday's papers he attempts this difficult task. This is how he tries to explain the fact that he was paid by the Boers for the professedly spontaneous letters he wrote to various newspapers: "When visiting England early in 1896, I was, as a result of the Jameson Raid, asked by the Netherlands Railway Company to remain in this country in order to assist in giving 'accurate information about the South African Republic, its inhabitants, and its Government, and to correct erroneous reports and false statements, either in papers or in meetings.' The Netherlands Railway Company had a perfect right.to make the proposal, and I had a perfect right to accept it. the more so as remaining in England involved me in serious financial sacrifices. Anyone who is curious is quite at liberty to see the letter making the arrangement, as well as the letter by which, now nearly twelve months ago, it was terminated. Having regard to the organised efforts mad© to mislead public opinion in the direction of war, I am glad to have been able to do something, however little, on behalf of that policy of justice and conciliation in bouth Africa which I hav. consistently advocated tor more than twenty ears past, often with'

no small risk and loss to myself. My concern, I may add, has been not,less for the highest interests of Great Britain than for the peace and prosperity of South Africa. This Pecksniffian twaddle has not, I need scarcely say, been received with remarkable favour. Even some of the most stronglyRadical journals utterly repudiate this precious scribe. The Daily News, after showing how consistently Mr. Statham wrote and acted against British interests, put his case thus: " One of the chief abuses in the Transvaal was the status of the Netherlands Railway Company. Was it consistent, on the part of a diffuser of ' accurate information' to withhold the information that he was in receipt of a salary from that company? That is the real question." That is the question. And most honest people will have little difficulty in answering it ! But I doubt if the response will be agreeable or complimentary to Mr. Reginald Statham. I may say that in spite of the most strenuous efforts on the part of the Empress Frederick herself and of her relatives to "keep it out of the papers," a rumour has oozed out that the Empress is in reality a victim to the same terrible and incurable disease that slew her noble husbandcancer! I am informed, on what ought to be good authority, that while it is true that Her Majesty is troubled with all the complaints mentioned, all are mere effect* of the one fatal cause which is beginning to affect her whole system. Cancer is, indeed, making fearfully marked strides in its prevalence throughout. Europe. Medical and surgical science seems quite powerless to check its ravages. The subject is being constantly discussed by medical practitioners in medical societies, but so far no practical result has ensued or seems to be even distantly in sight. Yet the growing prevalence of cancer and insanity constitutes one of the gravest facts of modern life. The other fell disease, consumption, really does seem, however, in a fair way to be materially mitigated as to its ravages through the more general recognition of its essentially infectious character, and through the adoption of more rational curative measures, notably that by pure air. The latest method, which is still in the experimental stage, is a surgical one. A Spanish lady, whose lungs were unmistakably affected with tuberculosis, submitted to the frightful operation of excising the diseased portion of the lungs. It is declared that this was actually done, and that the patient is making good progress toward recovery. If this be really true, Spain has for once given the world a " friendly lead" of a most important character.