THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Volume 02, Issue 2420, 2 August 1900, Page 37

THE WEEK.

" Xunauxm allud natura, aiiud sapieiuia dixit." — Joyimjil. "Good nature and good sense must ever joiu." — Popr.

It seems to us that Mr Seddon is making

altogether too much fuss On the over the fact that a considerlYrong Tack, able body of jowx men at the front have responded to the call for military police to preserve order in Orange River Colony until some form of civil government is established. The cablegram irom Sir Alfred Miiner to Mr Seddon only confirms what must have been in the mind of everyone as to the circumstances under which the, men accepted the new service. Lord Roberts required a number of men to act as military police in the newly-acquired and still disturbed territory, and called for volunteers for the duty. In doing so, he very naturally and properly appealed to all ranks serving in South Airica, to the regulars, irregulars, and colonial troops. The Commander-in-Chief could hardly have excluded the colonial troops from application without appearing in an ungracious light, and creating jealousy and discontent. The fact that a' comparatively large number of colonials volunteered for the work is intelligible enough, for they would naturally feel themselves the fittest for it, and if they were disposed to ultimately settle in South Africa, the position would b>ve feotae attraction, for them. On the qwher hand, the fact that ,so many were accepted shows that their fitness for the work was recognised. This also we can readily understand. The physical features of South Africa and the conditions of life there are in many respects similar to our own, so that where the ordinary Imperial soldier, the Tommy Atkins as he is now rathei objectionably called, would have a vast deal both to learn, and unlearn, the colonial soidier would drop easily and naturally into the work. It is absurd of Mr Seddon to emphasise- the fact that the men were sent as soldiers and not as police. The same might be said of General Pretyman, who governs ths Orange River Colony, or General Maxwell, who maintains order in Pretoria. Policing the new territory is at present every whit as much the work of soldiers as patrolling a railway or otherwise guarding the line of communications, — work at which our troops might have been put from the beginning of the campaign to the end. We should be sorry to se© any considerable number of our young men electing to remain in South Africa rather than, returning to New Zealand. But it waslnevitable from the beginning .that this should be so, and it is at least consoling to reflect that what is New Zealand's loss is the Empire's gain — an advantage just now of a speciaEy valuable kind. It wf.><d be a very invidioiis thing, too, of the Premier to stand in the way of these young men if they find the work in South Africa to be congenial to them ; while it would be pure pettishness to refuse them their discharge in South Africa if they intend to remain there. As for refusing them the New Zealand medal, we decline to believe that the Premier really meditates so paltry an action.

The position, in China is a very remarkable one, thexbare statement of it A Chinese being in itself the proof that rnzzle. the Allied Powers have to

deal with, probably the lowest civilisation on the face of the earth. Revolution and massacre may in times of great excitement be expected from almost any nation, although even then it is rare for the ambassadors of foreign nations to be seriously molested. Turkey, for instance, is a nation, by no means high in. the scale of civilisation, and one which aas to put up with a good deal of bullying from foreign ambassadors ; but the lives of these men are probably safer in. Constantinople than that of the Sultan, himself. A Turkish Government, however composed, is enlightened enough to understand and appreciate the consequences of killing or otherwise injuring the accredited representative of another Power. But in dealing with China alone, of all the considerable Powers, East or West, could there arise such a condition of trembling uncertainty as to whether the men are dead or alive ? If we had had a representative in the Soudan in the time of the barbarous Khalifa we should have known his fate after a period of turmoil. As for the Mahdi, he was a positive gentleman compared with the most enlightened viceroy now in China. The Emperor of Abysinnia could give the Tsung-Li-Yamen lessons in the elementary conventions of civilised Government. The position is surely a imique one in history, in which practically all the civilised nations of the world have to land an army of at least 100,000 men in China in order to find out (with the telegraph in every direction) whether their ambassadors are alive or dead.

Are they alive, or have they been massacred? The testimony of no Chinaman is worth anything on the point, favourable or otherwise, and up to the present we have nothing but Chinese- testimony to go upon. But if the foreign consuls are dead, it doesseem rery extraordinary that Li Hung Chang, who hag pretensions to statesmanship, and who knows the -peoples and the Courts of the West, should, keep on positively asserting .hat they are alive, and offering to conduct them to Tientsin provided the Allied army should not advance to Pekin. If tho fact does not stagger one, ifc ought to do so. If Li Hung Chang were only not a Chinaman, it would be very staggering indeed. *

There are two alternatives to choose from. The first is that while there has been a most terrible massacre of" Europeans generally, the actual representatives of foreign nations (except the German representative, whom we know is gone), with possibly some members of legation, are still alive arid kept as hostages in close confinement.. If that

be so, the silence of the captives, otherwise of such deadly significance, is explained, and the conduct of the Chinese Government is intelligible, after the manner of the Chinese. It enables thsm to say, "Stop the advance to Pekin, and we'll hand you over the men." Meanwhile China wculd have practically exteiminated the foreigners and secured herself agains: farther intrusion of them. The other alternative is that they are all alike massacred with their families and following. If that be so, we must assume that some alarm exists among Chinese authorities for tha consequences of the crime ; that they miks stipulations with the Allies in the full knowledge that nothing can stop the advance to Pekin ; and thaj they may Jien be able to say, " You have brought the massacre of your people on yourselves ; we warned yau we could not protect them if you advanced into "our country." The whole business is a Chinese puzzle, but a terribly sad one. Emperor William, of Germany, has struck the right note in his pithy address to his departing soldiers. China must be taught such a lesson of civilisation as will last her for all time to come.

[Since the above was in type the cablegrams seem to confirm the probability of our speculation that some at lenst of the ambassadors arc alive, and are being kept as hostages. This places the Allies in a distressingly difficult position ; but the massacres have otherwise been so terribly comnlete that no circumstances can now be allowed to interfere with an advance' on Pekin.]

"We suppose that no one in the whole community is' so dense as not to Collaring understand the real meaning the jHouey. of Mr Seddon's proposal to

pool the patriotic funds and place them by Statute under the control of a public officer. It meant that the necessities of invalided soldiers and their families were to be defrayed not by the colony, but by the generous contributions of private individuals. Let us illustrate the position : The public, we Avill suppose, had been generously subscribing funds for cases of want and hardship among the people during a severe winrer. Mr Seddon then brings in an Old Age Pensions Bill, and gets all the credit of being among the first to provide for the aged poor. Then he proposes to pool the subscribed funds and place them under Government control, on the specious plea that they should be distributed on a large colonial system and not after a petty provincial fashion. To this proposal there is but one answer — namely, that the coveted funds were not raised in order to relieve the colony of its just obligations. Let the colony do what it is bound to do, and we may then supplement the work in such a way as to turn an act of bare justice into one of reasonable and discriminate generosity. Or we may even give where a contribution might not, according to strict or literal understanding, be demanded. That is the answer of the local committees in the present case. The. colony has revelled in the- novel sensation of sending troops to the war. The plain, matter-of-fact business part has 'now to be undertaken. Let us not shrink from it. In his latest communication on the subject Mr Seddon professed to be quite satisfied with the determination of the local committees: to place the money in local trusts, and desired only to bring in a bill to enable them, to do so. His -anxiety for the safety of the funds is praiseworthy. But let the bill be carefully scrutinised and thoroughly- understood^ before it becomes law. And it may be just as well to call the attention of Mr Seddon to the fact that if people are unwilling to' trust privatelysubscribed moneys to the cars of the Government, he has himself to blame for it. The fear that political influence- would affect the distribution of the money is at the bottom of it all.

We are in receipt of a couple of pamphlets on the South African war

The which have been sent to us by Art of tying, the " Stop the War " Com-

mittee in London, and which are doubtless but two out of many hundreds of thousands of copies scattered broadcast over the world by that most industrious of wrong-headed associations. We have conscientiously read the pamphlets, and having done so, can conscientiously express the astonishment we feel that reputable persons, pronouncedly moral even in their proclivities, should on this particular subject devote sc* much, time and industry in tricking oufc falsehood to make it look like truth. The curious mental condition of this fraternity may be gauged by the fact that one of the leaders of them, no less a man than Mr Leonard Courtney, M.P., delivered a speech the other day (to ticket-holders only) in which he advocated that we should not only re-invest the two Republics with complete independence, but also pay them a substantial indemnity 'for declaring war upon us! But we are wandering from our pamphlets. The first seeks to show that British soldiers are infamously cruel and vengeful, and the Boers generally are a humane and chivalrous race, to wage war against whom is a positive crime. The indictment against our own soldier 3is based upon scraps from foolish letters sent Home by soldiers at the front, and as foolishly published in English papers. For instance, one poor fellow, writing from Ladysmith, and doubtless irritable from long endurance of cruel siege conditions, writes a letter to his father and mother in which he says, "We captured 250 prisoners. They should be all bayoneted." Another writes : "One Dutchman had his horse killed under him, and jumped up behind hia pal, so that made two on one horse. Well, along comes a Lancer in the charge, and sticks the pair of them. You should have seen the Gordons chopping into them with the bayonet." The man who would frame an indictment against an army on the strength of a few such silly effusions would accuse Mr Boythorne of inflammatory violence of language. The second pamphlet is intended to "show up" Mr Cecil Rhodes. Everybody knows how manfully and how humanely Mr Rhodes behaved during the siege of Kimhei'ley ; how he protected the women and children in his mines ; how he employed thousands of native, miners ,at protective work

at. his own cost ; how he gave large sums to ameliorate the sufferings of the civilians, and at the earliest moment sent all the sufferers, who could not themselves afford it, to the Cape to recruit al his own cost. But Mr Rhodes, civilian-like, was a little impatient with military methods in Kimbeiiey, and of the slow operations of the war outside. Our pamphleteers would have it that his ill-humour aru&e from baulked greed of dividends and annoyance that the annual meeting of tho De Beers Consolidated had to be postponed on several occasions on account of the shells ! It is really no wonder the "Stop the War"' people have made such a miserable fiasco of their propaganda. It would be a libel upon sanity to suppose that a campaign of ridiculous distortion and falsehood could convert a, whole nation from a notoriously good to an absurdly weak cause.

Professor Gilray is so very good-natured in answering demands made Froude upon him for literary adas Carlyle's dresses of a popular characliiographer. . ter that we feel it rather an

ungracious task to criticise that which he recently delivered to the Burns Club on the subject of Cartyle. But Professor Gilray's remarks upon Froude as Carlyle's biographer seem to" call for some comment. Professor Gilray is altogether 100 sweeping, and deals far too much in superlatives in his condemnation of Froude as biographer. It is quite a mistake to say that Froude's biography is "swarming with blunders" ; and it is little short of a libel to quote with commendation someone (name not given) who declared that " there is scarcely one cardinal fact about Carlyle's life which is rightly given in Froude's biography." So with Professor Norton's remark that " almost every letter in the life which I have collated with the original is incorrectly printed, some of them grossly so." Professor Gilray is evidently taking a great deal upon trust, and is travelling in very well-worn and conventional ruts. Professor Norton appears to have been specially instructed by Carlyle's niece to- edit a selection of letters, and he evidently set about his task with the fixed idea of altering the effect produced by Froude's biography — a fatal idea with which to start biography. The reason Froude was in -the first instance dubbed so inaccurate was because he was so very brilliant. Ponderous historians like the late Professor Freeman coiild not believe that a- man could be brilliant and painstaking at the same time ; just as ordinary mortals find it, difficult to believe that a man with the saving sense of humour predominant can be very "solid." There is in this world an inevitable tendency to associate dulness with care and accuracy, i Professor Gilray quotes Professor Norton , (whose book we have not seen) as saying that almost every letter of Carlyle's in Froude's life is "incorrectly printed." The expression is significant. We undertake to say that the great bulk of the errors would be found to be of the order of those which consist in undotted i's and uncrossed t's. When. Professor Gilray says (quoting some on© else) that hard,ly a cardinal fact in Carlyle's life is rightly given by Froude, it is just as well for him that ha cannot h» called upon to substantiate the statement. He would, we feel asstired, find it difficult to. give a ''cardinal fact" in the life of Carlyle..which Froude had seriously distorted. The hue and cry raised against Froude, as we propose to show in the next note, was not that he distorted the facts_of Carlyle's- i life, but that he revealed too much of the man to satisfy the preconceived notions of ; Carlvle. There is, of cotirse, a- limit be- \ yond which the biographer ought not to step in revealing the private life of a great man. Whether Froude overstepped the limit is a auestion which has been long in \ dispute.- We do not think he did. Carlyle ! has now been dead for 18 years, and if . Froude were but now launching his bio- ' graphy we question whether a word of objection would be raised to his manner of performing his work. But the truth is that Froude revealed Carlvle to be a human behi2. when the heated imagination of the public was inclined to place the philosopher on a pedestal beyond human reach. -That was the whole trouble.

When Professor Gilray tells us that the " whole tone of Froude's Travelling work is wrong and misleadin Kuts. in," he is merely echoing

the cry that was raised at the time of publication. And the only illustration of this he can give is the mere statement that the book is written in "most sombre fashion.'"' This idea, which is really refuted on every page of the book in question, has been picked from Professor Masson, though it is safe to say there is more life in any one chapter of Froude's Carlyle than there is in all Masson ever published. The real offence Froude committed was in laying bare almost the very soul of the man, and although in all essentials it was a remarkably sturdy and even noble soul, it was not exactly the sorb of soul the worshiiDpers expected to be revealed. Carlyle's old mother said of him that he was "gay ill to live wi\" and so he continued to the end of his days. Professor Gilray is quite right in saying that Carlyle was a kind-hearted man, but he had not a spark of that fine generosity of soul towards men whose intellects were cast a different mould from his own which distinguished Sir Walter Scott. Carlyie rather despised his fellow men, and was anything but chary in expressing his opinion of them. John Stuart Mill was "sawdusty" and "stunted," and a variety of other things. Leigh Hunt was " dwarfed and dislocated into the merest imbecility." Colelidge was "a weak, diffusive, weltering, ineffectual man." An article of Gladstone's in the Edinburgh Review Carlyle found to be "empty as a blown goose egg — a ridiculous, solemn, addlepated Joseph Surface of a thing." Even Emerson, who had nobly laboured for Carlyle in his struggling years, was regarded by the philosopher with a sort of good-natured contempt. There was no ignoble jealousy in all this, not a spark of it. His criticisms were almost as free of women. There was sincerity in it all, with a certain grim exaggeration which at times becomes very humorous. It was the man himself who was speaking. Why eliould not the biographer rereal him as lie

was? Wliy should lie dress him out to 6k other than the real Carlyle? Th& world' wauled the living man and" not th« hollow, ghost, and they got him from Froude. i Froude is also much condemned for r*. • vealing what is absurdly called Carlyle'^ neglect- of his wife. There was no such neglect. If all the most reputable and mosfe domestic married men in Dunedin had nothing / more to reproach themselves .with/ than Carlyle had. they would do very well.. Men of genius are often as intense as they are dramatic in their methods of self reproach and self-abasement. Dr Johnson chose a rainy day to go and stand bare*headed in the spot where~his father's book-? stall had stood, and where he had disobeyed^ him in the days of his youth. Carlyle was most tenderly attached to his wife. But she Aras delicately nurtured, and he 'kept his peasant's nature to the last, so that he; really couldn't understand the small attend tions that go so far to sweeten the condi-. tions of life. After her death he had a sudden flash of insight, and he beat hia breast in profound sorrow for his neglect. His literary work used fairly to prostrate him. He could tolerate no noise, and ha used to shut himself up for days at a time, while her life was solitary enough. But §he was a trying woman at times, and had a sharp as well as a brilliant tongue of ■her own. -That is the whole story .which Froude has revealed on the one side, while on the other the grim figure." massive intellect, and truth-loying nature of the philosopher stand out from his pages, not- a mere , shadow of a man, but a living human being I of a unique type. "•

The annual meeting of the Gore A. and P. Association shows that the year just concluded has been a very successful one. The association have a credit balance of £119 Is Id, as against £78 19s Id at the .end of the previous year, while improvements were efiected to the grounds at a cost of £94- 2a. The principal event during the year was tho summer show, which extended over two clays, the result being highly satisfactory. The amount taken at the gates on' the two days was £194 14s 6d — a record for the association. The horse parade, was also very satisfactory, but the emvies at the rani fair showed a considerable falling off

The Balelutha Free Press states that Mi? Wm, Hairay, who died at Balelutha on Thursday last, was a rative of Harray, Orkney, but emigrated to the colonies at an early age. He spent five or six years in Queensland,- and- then came to New Zealand. He took up land at Wartepeka 36 years ago, bub for tbe ]ast 22 years has lived at Balclufcha. Mr Harray took a prominent part in Salvation Army work. He leaves » widow, hut no family, his only son having died at Waitepeka.

Before the Buteshire leffc tho Bluff for London on 6th May c, quantity of jewellery belonging to Messrs A. E. Hare and H. M. Spencer was stolen, from the vessel. Tha Western Star now states that the valuable's have been found hidden under some iron on the wharf. This would indicate that the thief was employed on board, and that ha "planted" the jewellery ashore lest tha theft should be discovered at the porb, and a. search made of tho vessel. He probably did not get the opportunity- he expected to slip ashore for it. >

A man named John. Bailey, an old-age pensioner, generally known &3 Curly. Jack, was killed through falling out of the chair across the Molyneux a.t the. Half-way House last Sunday night. It is surmised that Bailey fell when, attempting to get on the chair. At the inquest a verdict of accidental death wa3 returned.