HATRED OF BOERS FOR ENGLISH.

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

HATRED OF BOERS FOR ENGLISH.

Chicago, Jan. 7. . Dan. J. Wessels, a brother of General Cornelius Wessels, the commander of the Boer forces besieging Kimberley, and cou9in of President Steyn, of the Orange Free State, said in an interview in Chicago to-day : — "I expect to get back in time to have plenty of fighting. I am convinced that the war will last at least another year, and while the Boers will probably be crushed, provided there is no foreign intervention, there is certain to be .1 protracted period of guerilla warfare, for the Boers will fight to the last extremity. "I think the present war might have been avoided but for England's aggressivo demands ; yet it would have been merely a postponement of an inevitable conflict, for the time would have come when the Boers and the English would have battled for the supremacy of South Africa. The leading men of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State have understood this for a loug time, but hoped that somehow events would shape themselves so that the conflict would be postponed. The Jameson raid, however, proved it was near at hand, and they have been straining every nerve to prepare for it. " One who has no personal knowledge of the fact cannot understand the bitter, undying hatred the Boers have for the English. After the Jameson raid I met numbers of old men who prayed they may not die until they had first killed an Englishman in battle, and their children have become imbued with the same sentiment."

An amusing incident occurred recently at Arundel. The Boer Adjutant at Arundel had gone out for a couple of days' hunting, and, returning highly elated with a fine buck slung across his saddle, rode straight into the town, ouly to find our troops there and himself a prisoner. He says that the Free Staters are anxious to withdraw from the war, and that numbers of them have deserted, but were captured, fined heavily, and sent to a laager.