THE WAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11825, 30 November 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE WAR.

SPEECH BY MR. SHEPPARD ALLEN'S SON. TESTIMONY AS TO BOERTREACHERY.

"TRAITOROUS, DIRTY, VILE, AND FLAGRANT PRACTICES." [from our own correspondent.] London, October 18. Last week I sent you a short paragraph stating that the freedom of Newcastle-un-der-Lyne had been conferred upon Captain W. Allen, ex-M.P. for that borough, for which his father, Mr. Sheppard Allen, of Auckland, also sat for many years. Further information is now to hand, showing that Captain Allen is able to give the strongest testimony as to the Boers' real character. < Replying to the toast of his health at the public "luncheon Captain Allen said the present was not the time to criticise the conduct or management of the war. He and many others had strong opinions about the war in its inception, but we had now to face two things as they were, and after two years of fighting he was firmly convinced that it would be the absolute mill of England, the ruin of the Empire, it would cause- our colonies to break from us, and would cause England to fall to the level of a third or fourth, rate Power like Spain or Portugal if wc did not make a final end of the war now. It had not been a war of England only. On the battlefields of South Africa Englishmen and Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders had mingled \ their blood on those fields in one blood of ' brotherhood, and hod cemented the Empire together. If after that sacrifice and suffering England were to abate one jot or tittle of what he believed were her just pretensions she would be untrue to herself, untrue to her great colonies, untrue to every tradition ; and ,it would show that Englishmen had sunk low indeed from the great ancestry from which they had sprung. But he believed England would be true to herself and her colonies, and would crush the enemy in South Africacrush them till she made ■ herself a supreme Power there, that should last throughout the future. We must be firm, and not be led away by any of the proBoer ravings he read of. England had her destiny to fulfil in South Africa. She must be the paramount Power there. If she went back the people across the seas who had given of their best to fall in the common cause would rise up against her and | sav she had betrayed her trust. The men who would now give terms ,to the Boers I were not worthy the name of Englishmen, ! for he had seen comrades shot down under ! the white flag at his side,, and he had even i seen Boer women shoot braye men under ] the same treacherous practice. The Boers I had been guilty of every traitorous, dirty, I vile, and flagrant practice known to wari fare. People who had been guilty of such I dastardly and wicked conduct deserved no commiseration at the hands of England, i In acknowledging the presentation, on j Thursday, of an illuminated copy of a resoI lotion, passed by the Tunstall District I Council, welcoming him on his return from j South Africa, Captain William Allen, re--1 fpirinc to Mr Henry Broadhurst's strici tures on the concentration camps, said he had been through two of them, and cleaner and better managed camps than those it would be impossible to find anywhere. The pro-Boer agitation had done much to pro- : long the war, which was inevitable from the first. As to the shooting of unarmed natives by the Boers he himself had seen four boys shot dead at five yards, and yet people had complained because he had accused the . enemy of the vilest tricks known to modern j warfare. Referring to the second detach- ' ment of Yeomanry sent out to Lord Kitchener he said they had all the diseases under : the sun, and were only fit to provide the Boers with arms and ammunition. 31RS. CARLYLE AND HER HOUSEMAID.

There is an exceedingly interesting article by Reginald Blunt in the October Cornhill dealing with the Carlyle household. - It seems that some few months ago there arrived one afternoon at Carlyle's house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a bright, alert, middleaged, and intelligent Scotswoman. She entered her name in the visitor's book as Mrs. Broadfoot, of Thornhill, and went all over the house with keen interest and obvious familiarity. Before she left the mystery of this familiarity was solved. In a chat with' the custodian she informed her that she had been Mrs. Garlvle's housemaid from July, 1865, till the hitter's death in April, 1866, and had remained in Mr. Carlyle's service till her marriage, four or five months later. " Jessie," as she was called, had naturally many interesting and intimate little recollections of the household, besides possessing a number of letters of Mrs. Carlyle's, and some of these are given in Mr. Blunt's paper. The story of the sudden death of Mrs. Carlyle as told by Fronde is in several particulars incomplete, and in others inaccurate. Mr. Blunt has set down the recollections of his father, the rector of Chelsea, and of Jessie, the housemaid, probably the only two survivors of those who took actual part in the events referred to: "In the morning Mrs. Carlyle had made her arrangements for the party invited that evening to meet the Frondes, had written her letter to Carlyle. and had posted it herself. After lunch the brougham came round to take her for a drive. . . . About five

o'clock my father met the empty brougham returning from St. George's Hospital to Cheyne Row. Poor old Silvester, the coachman, pulled up on seeing him, and, terribly upset, told him what had happened ; the drive first to Mr. Forster's house at Palace Gate; then to the park; Mrs. Carlyle's getting out near Queen's Gate, and giving her little dog a run as far as the Serpentine; and again putting him out near the Victoria Gate, when he was almost run over by a carriage, and his paw slightly hurt; her jumping out almost before he could pull up, lifting the dog into the carriage, and getting in herself; then the drive twice round the park, and his growing alarm at receiving no order from her; finally, his appeal to a passing lady, who at once gave her verdict ' Dead? which was confirmed by another bystander; and the drive to St. George's Hospital, where the worst was confirmed, and where he had just left his mistress." The rector of Chelsea managed to get the body removed without an inquest, which he knew would be a cruel aggravation of Carlyle's sufferings. * There was to have been quite a considerable party at Cheyjte Row that evening, Mrs. Carlyle having invited Principal Tulloch and his wife and daughters to meet the Froudes, while Mrs. Olipliant. Mr. and Mrs. Spottiswoode, and two or three others had also been asked:

" Jessie remembers how, on her return from the hospital, she found Mrs. Carlyle's address-book, and an effort was made to inform the friends. Mrs. Olipbant arrived early, and she undertook to receive and tell the other guests as they came. Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, who had also been, with Ffcmde, to the hospital, came in later. About midnight or a little after the body— temporarily encorrined —was brought back from St. George's. Miss Jewsbury, who had lately become an intimate friend of Mrs. Carl vie, was there to receive it." When Jessie and Mrs. Warren, the housekeeper, had laid their mistress reverently at rest upon her bed in the little panelled firstfloor room behind her drawing-room two wax candles, which Mrs. Carlyle had kept wrapt in paper for many years for the purpose, were lighted in accordance with her own request.