THE J. G. WOOLLEY INCIDENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2524, 30 July 1902, Page 27

THE J. G. WOOLLEY INCIDENT.

]k REPLY TO MR STEWART, OF

TORONTO

3IR WOOLLEY IN EXPLANATION.

It will be remembered that early in May tome sensation was cau&ed by the publication by ns and other newspapers of an attack on Mr J. G. Woolley, the American prohibition lecture/, who it was then thought was about to pay another visit to New Zealand, under engagement to the •New Zealand Alliance, to take part in the "no-license" campaign prior lo the general election and local option poll in December next. In fairness to Mr Woolley we sent ihim 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 Hew Zealanders in profound esteem, and has by no means forgotten the kindness of the press during hn recent tour of the colony : — » I write to acknowledge the- courtesy of vcur letter of the 14th ulr.. and to accept your offer oi a. clay in court as to the matters referred to. It seems to me a waste of time lo make a serious defence to a charge .That was originally a trifle and which ha« now grown stale, but since it has appeared •to you to have some measure of importance, dt would seem churlish in me to keep silent. Besides, I am sincerely anxious not to lose -the goodwill of the New Zealand people, •and to do so by means of the Canadian license inspector would be ac inglorious as ibeing kicked to death by a cheep. It is necessary to speak of him, although I should like to avoid doing so; but thie is fame to him, and we who can differ and argue, and strike a man's blow and call it equare, ought not, perhaps, to grudffe a lowly an•tagonist his hour of mephitic peituaner.ee. It is an important consideration, too, that I have only myself to blame for being found an this unsavoury company.

On entering- Mtwsie Hall, Toronto, November 11, 1900, I was admonished to be prepared for trouble, because this license anspector was present with the avowed purpose of interrupting. I had spoken there on any times to great audiences. Probably do public cpeakeT was better known or more cordially received there than myself. That T «hould be held ud and submitted to outasage in the land of British fairnlay for fche opinions expressed in a newspaper of which I was one of a large staff of writers, about fenatters not germane to the address, when I was and had bpen time and again for ypars the guest of the Canadian Tomperanco iieagne, a society nliose personnel includes "the most distinguished names in the Dominion, angered me. This is what I said : — j " 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 since I

reached the city that there would be those

present this afternoon who inte-nd to di.-- . turb the meeting because of some antiBritish sentiments of mine. " Let me simply remind such that I did not invite myself to Toronto. I am Hie guest of the Canadian Temperance League, the greatest society of the kind iv any country. Its officers know me well, and, I presume, read The New Voice ; if not, they ought to. Whatever insult shall be offered to these mon in their own city is your own concern and theirs. " Some time since I received a threat-

•ning letter fVom a man named Stewart,

claiming residence here, and threatening ) to expoce mo if I should come. I have come, and on arriving find that the fearful blow has fallen. I am exposed. But in the interests of clearness and friendliness I offer, at first hand, a supplementary exposition. "I believo that British law and British valour have been tho two greatest agencies in the eivili-sation of the world and the uplift of humanity, but I any to . you ttia-t the subserviency of British 1-aw . and British valour to the liquor traffic is the most infamous tiling in history, except the same subserviency of my own countrj to the same thing . " When I read from day to day of the heroism of the men of Canada in the i Boer ivar I lifted my hafc to Ih^m, aj= in kith and honour bound, and wherever on this planet a brave man fights fair for hia opinion or his home or bis flag, in Cuba, or the 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 x>f Toronto, let this Mr Stewart or any other creature of the Dominion gin mill get up now and howl." ' It is perfectly true that the Toronto papers lampooned me, but that fact would not eCen raise a presumption against me in Canada or in my own country, for prohibition agitators are not popular with a pros 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 upon 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 •lest 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- trarel _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 Bend you some copies, is devoted to the outlawry of the liquor traffic throughcut the world. lam its editor-in chief, and •» responsible for it« polusr »s to Hit

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 the staff writer in the given case. To be exactly frank, I ought to say that at tho time of the Toronto incident this staff was ardently pro-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, and, by so much, for the world. The march of Kruger's army into Natal seemed to me to force Great Britain tc go to war or yield the. Empire, and I had some \iews as to the Boers which I ha\e 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 the Mother Country. Nevertheless, tho desperate aud magnificent fight put up by the Boers against the overwhelming odds in time swamped my political philosophy, and won my sympathy almost without re serve, so that at last I held the identical opinions expressed in Parliament in 1881 by the present Colonial Secretary : " The Boers are animated by a deep and even stern religious sentiment, and they inherit from their ancestors — the m»n who won the independence of Holland from tho oppressive rule- of Philip II of Spain — they inherit from them their unconquerable love of freedom and liberty. Are they not qualities which commend themselves to men of the Engh=h race? Is is against such a nation that we- are colled upon to exercise the dread arbitrament of arms? The=e men settled in Ihe Transvaal in order to escape foreign rui<\ They had had many quarrels with the British. They left liicir linmp-- m N.iwl as the English Puritan.-- Mt Kughnul for the United State.-,, and they founded a little Republic of their own in the heart of Africa. In 1852 we made a treaty with them, and we agreed to respect aiid guarantee their independence : and I say, under the circumstances, is it possible we could maintain a forcible annexation of the country without incurring the accu cation 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, 1881

And I ought to ndd. too. that there are eomc 80,000,000 of fellow citizens of mine who think the same way. Yet a gre.it majority of us loved the old lion mother through it all, and still love her. Th*» loyalty of tho American people to the Britiih people during the last three yearp in view of rhe practically unanimous proBoer sympathy prevailing here and the constant clamour of Enghbh- haters amongst us, is the finest example of national selfrestraint on record. I am not sure that the British would have done so well in 'ike case. Whenever a Britifeh subject thinks of America, he ought to thank God for a nation whose friendship has been put to the test and proved to be as sound as seasoned English oak.

Returning now to the statement of the inspector, I have only in the interest of simple truth to show that it is a tis«ue 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 iei c devoted merely to a review of matters of general interest, and not intended for the expression of the views entertained in the editorial office of tha New Voice. (In this way both praiso and blame appear to ivhieh the editor would not agree) : and that tho instances cited by him are lgnorantly and wilfully misinterpreted. I take them up seriatim. He tays : — (1) "For instance, on January 25 the New Voice published and endorsed editorially the siatcinent that ' the Boers have given the he to the English arraignment of their \ivtue and their manhood. Th"y have won tho admiration of all who lo\e human liberty and honour human courage. They are entitled to our (sympathy, <ur 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 probably representccl the feeling of a great ma'iy Americana.

(2) "As late as September 26 last the New Voice complained that tho Republican newspapers of the United States had not a«bisted to procure rhe interference

of the United States Goa eminent

favour of the Boers. In other words, Mr "Woolley, then a candidate for ihc Presidency, was willing to make war upon Great Britain in the interest of the Boers."

This can refer to no oilier date than September 26, 1900, ou which date no number of tlic New Voice was !r--,ti <*<•!. nor does a careful examination of the tile >h»r»v such sentiment anywhere e\pre:--ed If 'ho writer had l>efore him any sentence which has appeared in the New Voice, he ha 3to thoroughly disguised it in his interpretation that it is porhap, not unjust to «up pose that he gives it a wrong date. He laj-s: —

(5) "On May 3 it stated that the Booi>, were fighting in the open, without natural or artificial defences, and were possessed with no advantage o\er the Bntibh except that of greater \alour and mobility."

l'erhaps tho beet an>wer to that is to give the full quotation, which ii as follow-,: " It is to be noted tluit the Boers are not now fighting behind defences, either natural or artificial, but are practically in the open, and are frequently the aggressors, liaving >n this no advantage over the British exeopt the remarkable valour of their i>oldier3 and the extreme mobility of their commands." It is to b© doubted if any British holdier who .«erv«d in South Africa will dispute that the Boers exhibited remarkable valour, and it is to be questioned if any competent military critic in the world will deny tho statf ment that their forces v,cre extremely mobile. He says: (4) "On April 5 it endorsed Webster Davis, the \iolent incendiary aixl paid agent of the Boers, as i< man of honebt and sincere purpose." There has never been a line of e^idenoe submitted anywhere to charge Mr Davis •with being the paid agent of the Boers. He resigned an important governmental position to champion the caube of the Boers before the American people-, and the New Voice said concerning it: "Mr Davis's action ran 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 independence " Uoqji the supposition that it is criminal

to attribute honesty to a man -with whose ■\iews the inspector disagrees, the New Voics committed an offence, But not otherwise. He says : (5) "Two weeks after Mr "Woolley's to Toronto his paper published as follows:

'Although in India, Englishmen have got-

Jen somewhat used to the sight of star\ing people, it is propable that AngloSaxon conscience will hardly tolerate the wor=t features of the reconcentrado policy, pr.d that the poor Boers will not be starved to death after hawng been forced to abandon their homep. England has very little reason to bo proud over the history that s-he has made in South Africa during the past year. Driven into war by intriguers, defeated o\er and over again in fair fight by inferior lores, unable eien, with an enormous army, to crush the spirit of independence of o little mountain people, forced to adopt inhuman methods of warfare iv a despora'e effort to overcome n reristance in e\ery way creditable and p ra i -e worthy, tli" English Government is engaged in business that, whatever may be the opinion of the English people of it under the stress of war. Englishmen two generations hence will dcs-pise and condemn."

1 confers that this paragraph lias an unpleasant ring, hu' as nearly as ] can make out about half tho people in England would ha\e said Avnm to it at the time, imd the American pre e s was very r-'roiig in dMnuiuiation of similar tatties on tlis part oi our own forces in the Philippine*. He fuither declaims against the quotation in the New Voice ot the language used by Congressman Sulzer in welcoming the Bopi- d)irta<.«ador=. He mv« thot this occurred in vi two-column. ed.Umiu.l which ho rrpnspnts as being of tip same character a« Mr Sulzer's rrmnrk«. T'pnn the contrary, neaily two-thirds of tha f ethtotia! was occupied with the statement of tli9 official position of the. Government :>t Wellington and with quotations from >fr Hay, the Foreign Secretary, the toiie of which was hostile to Hi" Boers and in fn\our of tli -> British.

Finally you quote editorially some v-ords of mine written to the Ne>v Voice from Australia :- (6) "The loyalty of the-so States and colonies to the British crown is imaginary in the main, and it is eeitamly a mistake to ouppose that the war in South Afiica

has increased it, or that the Duke'.s has secured it. The war has left a bad tasto in the mouth here. It has ruined many of the finest youth and .sent many others back not ruined morally, but re'-t-Icss and unfitted to take up life where they left it when they went away. The Dukc'h on the whole has weakened the Imperial sentiment. The bills arc being paid now, and they look bad at tln= distance from the excitement and the pageantry. There is a splendid loyalty, however, better far than that which is represented by the formal bond that holds the Empire. It is loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon blood that puts these countries at the service of the crown, and it would send them to our help also in case of need. (7) '" These people, almost irr.eonscioiT'ly, bpgin to long 1 for independence, and it i? not very far away. It will mean no break with England when it comes, but nobler union on a higher, better basis —

kindred, language, laws, and religion."

To whatever of offence tha f , is, I mu«t simply plead guilty. But I cannot imagine a hra\o and thoughtful modern man being offVnded at it unless he misunderstands. As I read it over now, it seems to me to uxpress precisely what I think, and to express it without any sign of iinfricmHine". ! oinrerely believe that the loyalty of the polonies is not to tho crown, but to the blood. 1 believe the war has left a bad taste it your mouths, as our war in the East 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 of your homes into everlasting mourning. I believe the Prince of Wales's visit weakened the Imperial sentiment. A little boy and girl, brother and sister, in New Zealand, told me they shook hands with him, and that ho was "'just like other people." I believe that every British colony advances towards independence, and that an un.spoken. unwritten union like that which now exists and will, I believe, evist forever between Great Britain and America will he far rtrongor than any technical suzerainty, and that the Anglo-Saxon Empire of character so resulting will bo far more worth fighting for than that which now obtains.

Finally, I enclose two clippings from Hie New Voice which explain themselves, and fairly represent the feeling of that journal as to the matters contained in them. My own people are English. T am proud of it. Great Britain holds a legion of my dearest friends, but tlie pooplo of Nen Zealand ;ind Australia, nhoin I h.i\<* met, vmn '/if completely. Take tln-ni. a«> they go, tlioy are tho picked men of the ))lanet. in my judgment. I cannot <-co that I have over douc them wrong in word or thought or deed, and e\en if after this they hold :no liable 1o censure, I export to be forgiwn. If the court please, tins is the <ii-><- for the defendant

(iovl bluFi our M'iilk r Country and iiei callant Boers!

John* (!. AYoolley.

[The clippings fnun the New Voice, which Mr Woolley i-endf refer in the one rase to the death of Queen Vutoiia. and in the othrt to tho .tcees,ion of Edwurd VII. They .lie both wntten in a «-pint of friendship to the Kn^hsh nation, and in a reference to the hall-ma -ting of the Whit* Hou-e flag ■when the Queen died, the sentiment is expressed that "the Amencan people and the English people are one people, in blood, in faith, in pride of history, and please God. in destiny " The extracts *T*> Icngthv. ;md it <-cc-nis h.udly neces^aiv that we 1 it publish them — Kd. O D T ]