THE J. G. WOOLLEY INCIDENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12414, 25 July 1902, Page 3

THE J. G. WOOLLEY INCIDENT.

'A-REPLY TO MR STEWART, OP TORONTO. MR.WOOLLEY IN EXPLANATION*.

It will he remembered that early hi May tome- sensation was caused by the publication by us and other newspapers of an attack on Mr J. G. Woolley, the American prohibition lecture;, who it was then thought was about to pay anotiier visit to New Zealand, under engagement to the New' Zealand Alliance, to take part in the " no-license" campaign prior to the general election and local option poll in December Jie,xt. In fairness to Mr Woolley we sent him a copy of the letter and our comments thereon to enable him to reply if he desired to do so. Mr Woolley has forwarded the reply given below, remarking in his covering letter that he holds New Zealand and New Zeala-nders in profound esteem, and lias by no 'means forgotten the kindness of the press during hh recent tour of the colony: —

I write to acknowledge tho courtesy of your letter of the 14th nit., and to accept your offer of a day in court as to the matters referred to, It seems to mo a waste of time to make a serious defence to a charge ■that was originally a trifle and which has now grown Jt-alo, but since it has appeared ■to you to have some measure of importance, at would seem churlish in mo to keep silent. ■Besides, I am sincerely anxious not to lose the goodwill of the Now Zealand people, and to do so by means 'of tho Canadian Jicensc inspector would be as inglorious as being lucked to death by a sheen. It is necessary to speak of him, although" I should 'like to avoid doing so; but this is fame to mm, and we who can differ and argue, and strike a man's blow and call it square, ought not, perhaps, to grudge a lowly, antagonist bis hom of mephitis pemianeiice. It is an important consideration, too, that ■I have only myself to blame for being found an this unsavoury company. On entering Mnssie Hal], Toronto, November 11. 1900, I was admonished to be •prepared for trouble, because this license inspector was present with the avowed purpose of interrupting. I bad snoken there many times to great audiences. Probably aio public speaker was better known or more cordially received there than myself. That I 6hould be held up and submitted to outrage in the land of British fairnlay for the opinions expressed in a pewsparier of which I was one of a large staff of writers, about matters not germane to tho address, I when I- was and had been time and again for .yean the guest of the Canadian Temperance League, a society whose personnel includes the most distinguished names in the Dominion, angered me. This is what I said: —

~"I am inclined to introduce my own part in this meeting with a personal word. I do this in view of certain information that has come to me sines I reached the city that there would be those present this afternoon who intend to disturb' the meeting because of eome antiBritish sentiments of mine. "Let me simply remind such that I did not invite myself to Toronto. I am the Kue3t of the Canadian Temperance League, the greatest society of the kind m any country. Its officers know me well, and, I presume, read The New Voice; if not, they ought to. Whatever insult Miall bo offered to these men in their own city is your own concern and theirs. ' Some time since I received a threatening letter from a man named Stewart, claiming residence here, and threatening to expose mo if I should come. I have come, and on arriving find that tho fearful blow has fallen. I am exposed. But in the interests of clearness and friendliness I offer, at first hand, a supplementary exposition. " I believe that British law and British valour have been the two greatest agencies in the civilisation of the world and the uplift of humanity, but I say to you that the subserviency of British law and British valour to the liquor traffic is the most infamous thing in history, except the same subserviency of my own counfrj to the same thing.. " When I read from day to day of the heroism of the men of Canada in the Boer war I lifted my hat to them, as in kith and honour bound, and wherever on this planet a brave man lights fair for his opinion or his home or his flag, in Cuba, or tho Philippines, or South Africa, I raise my hat to him without apologies, to any man or any crowd; and if that puts me in for public insult in the city of Toronto, let this Mr Stewart or any other creature of the Dominion gin miil set up now and howl."

It is perfectly true ■that the Toronto papers lampooned me, but that fact would not ex en raise a presumption against ine in Canada or in my own country, for prohilrition agitators are not popular with a press whose columns reach the summit of earning power in their use by the liquor traffic. And the incident passed out of my mind almost immediately, and did not return until the receipt of your letter. Meanwhile, without any intimation of the inspector's reappearance, I had been compelled to cancel my engagement to return to New Zealand, which appears to me fortunate, because a, fight upon me, however unimportant intrinsically, might in some measure diminish the emphasis tmon the merits of the campaign. The enemies of prohibition are very clever: the subterfuge crop is always large, and "a sucker is born every minute." At the time I was invited to take part in this campaign, the Alliance Executive will recollect, I expressed a fear lesl my presence might turn out to be ill-advised. .My fear was based simply on the fact that I was a. citizen of another country, and that in view of the long travel I should have to receive compensation quite out of proportion to my merits as compared to the local speakers. This danger is happily averted, and I sincerely hope that no prejudice against me will delay in any measure the progress of the greatest of reforms. The New "Voice, of which herewith I send you some conies, is devoted to the outlawry of the liquor traffic throughout tho world. I am its editor-in-chief, and am responsible for its policy as to the purpose for which it exists, and, indeed, technically as to all purposes; but the general news, comments in it take their complexion in large measure from the personal bias .of tho staff writer in the given case. To ba exactly frank, I ought to say that at the time of the Toronto incident this staff was ardently pvo-Boer, all except myself, and I was ardently British. I believed that for the Transvaal to come under British law would, in the upshot, be good for that country, aud, by so much, for the world. The march of Kruger's army into Natal seemed to me to force Great Britain to go to war or yield tho Empire, and I had some views as to the Boors which I have since abandoned as untenable. From first to last of that unhappy war I have not said in public or private, nor written for publication, one syllable that was unfriendly to tho Mother Country. Nevertheless, the desperate and magnificent fight nut up by the Boers against the overwhelming odds in time swamped my political philosophy, and won my sympathy almost without reserve, so that at last I ]*ld the. identical opinions expressed in Parliament in 1881 by the present Colonial Secretary:

'I The Boers arc animated by a deep and oven stem religious sentiment, ami they inherit, from their ancestors—the men who won the independence of Holland from the oppressive rule of Philip II 0 f Spain—they inherit from them their unconquerable love of freedom and liberty. Are they not qualities which commend themselves to men of the English race? Is is against such a nation tint we are called upon to exercise the dread arbitrament of arms? These men settled in (he Transvaal in order to escape foreign ruie. They had had many qmurc-Is with the British. They left their homes in Natal as the English Puritans left England for the United States, and they founded a little Republic of their ov.-n in the heart of Africa. In 1552 we made a treaty with them, and we agreed to respect and guarantee their independence; and I say, under the circumstances, is it possible wc could maintain a forcible annexation of the country without incurrine the accusation of having been guilty. I will not say of national folly, but I say of national crime?"— The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., at Birmingham, June 7, 1801.

And I ought to add, too, that there arc some £0,000,000 of fellow-citizens of mine who think the same way. Tet a great majority of ■:.-. iovrd the old lion mother through it ail, and still love her. The loyalty of the American people to the British people during the last three years- in view of Ui« practically unanimous proBoer sympathy prevailing here a::d "the cc.nstant ehmoar of Knghsh-haters amongst us, is (he finest example of national selfrestraint on record. 1 am not sure that tho British would have done s>o well in like case. Win-never :i British subject thinks of America he ovjht to thank God for a nation

whoso friendship litis been put to the test and proved to bo as sound as seasoned English oak. 4 Returning now to the statement of the inspector, 1 have only in (he interest ot simple truth to show that it is a tissue of falsehoods in spirit and in fact, in proof of which I submit, as above intimated, that the department of the paper- where the obnoxious matter has appeared is devoted merely to a review of matters of general interest, and not intended for the expression of the views entertained in the editorial oflicD of the New Voice. (In. this way both praise and blame appear to which the editor would not agree); and tliat the instances cited by him are ignorantly and wilfully misinterpreted. I take them up seriatim. He says: —

(1) "For instance, on January 25 the New Voice published and endorsed editorially the statement that ' tho Boers have given the lie to the English arraignment -of their virtue and their manhood. They have won the admiration of all who love human liberty and honour human courage, They are entitled to our sympathy, our encouragement, our help.'" An examination of the files shows that the passage referred to was a quotation from the Washington Post, and was introduced with simply the statement that it prohal.y represented the feeling of a great ma-'iy Americans. (2) ,; As late as September 26 last the New Voice complained that the Republican newspapers, of the United States had not assisted to procure the interference of the United States Government in favour of tho Boers. In other words, Mr Woolley, then a candidate for the Presidency, was willing to make war upon Great Britain in the interest of the Boers." This can refer to no other date than September 26, 1900, on which date no number of the New Voice was issued, nor does a careful examination of the file show such sentiment anywhere expressed. If "hewriter had before him any sentence which lias appeared in the New Voice, he has so thoroughly disguised it in his interpretation that it is perhaps not unjust to suppose that he gives it a wrong date, lie says: — (3) " On May 5 it stated that tho Boers were fighting in the open, without natural or artificial dofences, and were possessed with no advantage over the British except that of greater valour and mobility." Perhaps the best answer to that is to give the full quotation, which is as follows: "It is to be noted that tho Boers are not now fighting behind defences, cither natural or artificial, but are practically in the open, and are frequently the aggressors, having in this no advantage over the British except tho remarkable valour of their soldiers and the extreme mobility of their commands." It is to bo doubted if any British soldier who served in South Africa will dispute that the Boers exhibited remarkable valour, and it is to be questioned if any competent military critic jn the world will deny tho statement that- their forces were extremely mobile.

He says: (4) "On April 5 it endorsed Webster Davis, the violent incendiary and paid agent of the Boers, as a man of honest and sincere purpose." There has never been a line of evidence submitted anywhere to charge Mr Davis with being the paid agent of the Boers. He resigned an important governmental position to champion the cause of the Boers before the American people, and the New Voice said concerning it: "Mr Davis's action can hardly be attributed to any other motive than sincerity and an absolute conviction of the justice of the war that the South African Dutchmen arc waging for their indc-' pendence."

Upon the supposition that it is criminal to attribute honesty to a man with whose views the inspector disagrees, the- New Yoico committed an offence, but not otherwise. He says: (5) " Two weeks after Mr Wooiley's visit to Toronto his paper published as follows: 'Although in India, Englishmen have'gotten somewhat used to the sight of starving people, it is propable that AmtloSaxon conscience will hardly tolerate "tho worst features of the reeoncentrado policy, and that the poor Boers will not be starved to death after having been forced to abandon their homes. England has very little reason to be proud over the history that ■ she fas made in South Africa during the past year. Driven into war by intriguers, defeated over and over again in fair fight by inferior forces, unable even, with an enormous army, to crush the spirit of independence of a little mountain people forced to adopt inhuman methods ot" warfaro in a desperate effort io overcome a resistance m every way creditable and praiseworthy, the English Government is engaged m business that, whatever may he the opinion of the English people of it under the stress of war, Englishmen two generations hence will despise and condemn."

I confess iliat this' paragraph has an unpleasant ring but as nearly as I can make out about half the. people in England would have said Amen To it at the time, and the American press was very strong in denunciation of similar tactics on the part of our own forces in the Philippines. He further declaims against the quotation m the New Voice of the language used by Congressman Sulzer in welcoming the Boer embassadors. He says that (his occurred in a hvo-oolumn editorial which h« represents as being of flm same character as Mr Sukers .remarks. Upon the contrary, nearly two-thirds of that editorial was occupied with the statement, of the official position of the. Government, at Washington and with quotations'from Mr Hay, the Foreign Secretary, the tone of which was hostile to the Boers and m favour of the British Jfmally you quote editorially some words Austr'X:- 11 '" i 0 the Nfiff Voico from

6) _ The loyalty of these States and colonies to the British crown is imaginary m the main, and it is certainly a mistake to suppose that the war in Smith Africa has increased it, or that the Duke's visit has secured it: The war has 'left a bad taste in the mouth here. It has ruined many of the finest youth and sent many others hack not ruined morally, but restess and unfitted to take up life where they left it when they went awav Tho ■ Dukes visit on the whole has weakened the Imperial sentiment. The bills are being paid now, and they look bad at this distance from the excitement and the pageantry. There is a splendid loyalty, however, hotter far than that which is represented by (he formal bond that holds tho Emnirc. It is loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon blood that puts tW© countries at the service of the crown and it would send them to our help al=o Hi case of need. (7);/'These people, almost unconsciously, begin to long for independence, and 'it is not very far away. It will mean no break with Lngland when it comes, hut nobler union on a higher, better, basis— kindred, language, laws, and religion." _To whatever of offence that is, I mu=t simply pload guilty. But I cannot imagine a brave and thoughtful modern man being ottentlcd at it unless he misunderstands. As 1 read it over now, it seems to me to impress precisely what I think, and to express it without any sign of unfriendliness 1 sincerely believe that the loyalty of the colonies is not to the crown,'but to tho •Wood. I believe the war has left a bad taste in your mouths, as our war in' the i'-ast has left a taste of gall and wormwood in ours. I believe the war has ruined many of your finest youth, and put a lot ot your homes into everlasting mourning I believe the Prince of Wales's visit weakened tun Imperial sentiment. A little hov and girl, brother and sister, in New Z;-i land, told me they shook hand? with him and that he was "just like other people.' 1 I believe that every British colony advances toward? independence, and that an unppo.cen, unwritten union like that which now exists and will, I believe, exist forever between Great Britain and America will ho far stronger than any technical suzerainty and that, tho Anglo-Saxon Umpire of character so resulting will be far more worth fighting for than that which now obtains. Finally. I enclose two clippings from tho iNcw \oico which explain themselves and fairly represent the feeling of that journal as to tho matters contained in them. My own people are English. I am proud of it treat Britain holds a legion of my dearest friends, but the people of New Zealand and Australia, whom I have met, won me completely. Take them as they go, thev are the picked men of tho planet, in my judgment. I cannot fee that I have ever done them wrong in word or thought or deed, and even if after this they hold m<liablc to censure, I expect to be forgiven'. If the court please, this is the case for the defendant. .

Rod bless our. Mother Country and iier gallant Boers! John- CJ. Wooilet. [The clippings from the New Voice, which Mr Woollcy .sends refer in the one case to fte death of Queen Victoria, and in the other to the accession of Edward VII. They are botli written in a spirit of friendship to the English nation, and in a reference to the iwlf-maHing of the White House flag when the Queen died, the

I sentiment is expressed that " the American people and the English people are one people, in blood, in faith, in wide of history, and, please God, in destiny."' The extracts are lengthy, and it seenis hardly necessary that we should republish them.— Ed. O.D.T.]