AMERICAN SYMPATHY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8761, 27 February 1900, Page 4

AMERICAN SYMPATHY.

Tho following sympathetic reference in the Christmas number of the San Francisco News Letter to the position of Great Britain will be read with interest and pleasure : — Upon England has come an hour of sore affliction, but it is only for an hour. She will ultimately rise superior to all her troubles, increase her prestige, and extort once again, as she has often douo before, the respect of mankind. She knows how to meet defeat as well as to win victories. Cool and calm whilst the storm rages aiound her, whilst many of her best homes are houses of mourning, and whilst her neighbors on the Continent are snarling at her heels, joalous of the progress and l>rosperity in which she has distanced them, she will emerge from the fire purified, strengthened, and ennobled by the process. In the words of the hackneyed jingo song, she " has tho ships, she has the men, and, by jingo, she has the money too." Better than all, aho has the moral fibre that exalts n nation, and knows no such word as fail. Temporarily outwitted she may be, but permanently defeated she cannot be. Engaged in a war that was not of her own seeking, as is demonstrated by the f.ict that she was not making tho slightest preparations for it, she has suffered losses that must be hard to bear, and by the shallow journalism of to-day these are heralded as defeats. But they are nothing of the kind. When and where have the B.itish abandoned their positions and lost ground ? The small contingent that was i:i Natal when President Kmger suddenly l>:'gan the war promptly hastened to the flintier, confronted tho Boers, and there they are yet. They have not yielded an inch of ground, though many of them have f i lien in badly-planned 6orties against the eiu-my. . . . The British soldier has

lost no prestige. He has marched into tho jaws of death without blanching. When closely piessed by heavy artillery tiring ho resumed the use of his old weapon, the bayonet, rushed to the onslaught, and left the Boers dead in their trenches. There may be further trials in store for England, but the end is not in doubt. British civilisation is not to come to an end on the plains of South Africa.