THREATENED TRANSVAAL WAR.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXX, Issue 3784, 5 July 1899, Page 6

THREATENED TRANSVAAL WAR.

A BELLICOSE LETTER. “GOD AND MAUSER RIFLES.” INDEPENDENCE QUESTION. BURGHERS FIRM AS ROCK. WHAT EARL GREY WOULD LIKE. LATEST VOLKSRAAD MOVE. (Received July 5, 0.00 a.m.) LONDON, Tuesday. Mr Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, replying to a question in ihe House of Commons, said that the Bill recently passed by the Transvaal Volksraad did not diffcl - substantially from the proposals made by President Kruger at the Conference with Sir Alfred Milner, British High Commissioner for South Africa, at Bloemfontein. Earl Grey, of the British South Africa Company, in a speech delivered at Nowcastle-on-Tyne, said that President Kruger would only yield to force. The dispatch of 10,000 troops to South Africa, added his Lordship, would relieve the present tension. PRETORIA. Tuesday. Commandant VclJocn, in a letter to the burghers thanking them for his election to the Volksraad, says that in the event of war, God and Mauser rifles will safeguard the independence of the Republic. President Kruger, addressing the Volksraad, said that the Executive had found the burghers to bo as firm as rock on the independence question. The goldfields had hitherto been inedaquatoly represented in tbo Raad. Johannesburg was entitled to one additional representative. A general redistribution scheme would, however, be resisted by the people. The Volksraad, by fourteen votes against thirteen, has favoured the doubling of representation in single-member constituencies, thus swamping the Witwatersrand representation.