The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 25, 1900. ALIENATED SYMPATHIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 98, 25 May 1900, Page 2

The Daily News. FRIDAY, MAY 25, 1900. ALIENATED SYMPATHIES.

That very much of the sympathy felt for the Boers at the commencement of the present war has steadily dwindled j down to an almost insignificant quantity is evident on all hands. It is indicated in the marked change that has come over the Continental press; not so much by what is said as by what is left unsaid—the absence both of bitter taunts and calumnies against England, and psens of praise and bombastic enencouragements for the Boers. In America the coldly courteous reception accorded the Boer peace embassage, and the utter failure of its mission, shows that American public feeling is now very different to what prevailed at the opening of the war. In England the noisy W. T. Stead is the only one that remains from amongst the number who erstwhile enlarged upon the innocence and virtue of the Boers. This same change of feeling is also traceable in all the colonies, not excepting Cape Colony and Natal, and the the same thing applies in the various other parts of the world where interest is taken in the whole question. Now that the war is entered on what to all appearance is its final stage, the time seems opportune for a brief review of the circumstances that have brought about this change. In the first place, by one means or another, it has been revealed that the Boers instead of being altogether averse to a war with England had been for years preparing to test by appeal to arms which people should have the sovereignty of South Africa. To what extent the rank and file of tho Dutch as distinguished from their political " bosses" was imbued with this am-

bition it is hard to say ; there are many reasons for thinking that only a small proportion of these ever troubled themselves with the empire-dreams of their leaders, being well content if they could enjoy their own lands in peace and security. Be this as it may a nation must be held responsible for the actions done in its name by those whom it has placed in the high seats of power, though as it oftens turns out these are inimical to the best interests i of the people concerned, In the present, case there is no doubt that the Trans- ' vaal has been the secret centre of a great plot for the overturning of British rule at the Cape—a plot the ramifications of which threaded their devious ways throughout the whole of South Africa, and the agents of which were busy on the Continent and in England ai.d America, to say 'nothing of other parts of the world. It was only to be expected that once this became known a lot of the sympathy previously extended to the Boars would be withdrawn and be succeeded by feelings of bitter disapl pointment and resentment. It is this hypocritical plotting on the part of the Boers rather than any conviction that England is clean-handed in tbe matter that has reconciled so many people to the war, for it lias yet. to be proved that the machinal ioiis • f capitalists and their army of intriguers had notbingto , .do with tho starting of the strife. Before tlv war started one of the strongest partisans on the Boer side was the llev. J. T. Lloyd, a well-known and highly-respected Presbyterian minister of Johannesburg, who was allowed to remain in that city when ' most of the Uitlanders had been ex- , pelled, and who before and after the war had strong-y condemned the methods of British diplomacy, and written and spoken in terms of high praise of the Boors and their leaders, whom he had styled an " innocent, peaceful, pious, and friendly people," He has, however, seen reason to entirely change his viev, s; and in a lengthy i communication to the British Weekly explains that lie had to give up his Iro-Boer advocacy because of the discovery he made that the Dutch had i Leen plotting against British supremacy in South Afrii for years past. Mr. Lloyd concludes his letter as follows It has given me keenest; pain to be 1 obliged to come to this conclusion. Personally I have never experienced anything but kindness at the hands of tne Dutch people. I have known them r foi the space of sixteen year--, and • Jearned to love scores of them. , r s';itl confidence in then) ?s n people, though I have lost faith in their holers, I believe t'icv are a brave, iu'.p, of sreat t.'iresp if' loci.. >. isato* this statement

- -..w- iii j tmmtmm i ~&ur.<-%-xx now so that my friends may u,, •..uiit the motives which led to my eliuuyo of front, and which dictated silence on the Transvaal problem during my present sojourn in Great Britain." The ichange that has taken place in Mr. Lloyd's views is similar to that undergone by many others who have had their eyes opened to Boer duplicity and cunning.

There are, however, many people who, while not blaming the Transvaal Dutch for their territorial ambitions or their political intrigues (these being faults which may be laid to the common charge of all nations), yet have this against them that they have been proved to abominably maltreat the natives—not only holding them in a state of slavery, but subjecting them to cruelties and hardships that are intolerable. Had the Boers proved themselves just and merciful in their relations with the subject races they would not have lost the support and sympathy of those whose chief concern is to uphold the rights of the weak and oppressed. Yet again, the war has brought to light some most inhuman proclivities on the part of the Boers, such as the firing under cover of the White Mag, and cannonading hospitals and the quarters of defenceless women and children. The ministers of the Nonconformist churches at Kimberley in a manifesto on the conduct of the Boers say: "We must condemn the conduct of the Dutch commandos in their method of shelling the town of Kimberley at intervals from November 7 until February 15, when the seige was raised. Three or four thousand shells, some of them hundred pounders, were poured into the town, and even into a suburb consisting of working men's cottages, both town and suburb being crowded almost exclusively with women snd children, as the enemy well knew, while the forts occupied by the citizen soldier's were for the most part left unmolested. When we saw homes destroyed, a mother and three children , stricken down here, a mother and the babe at her breast killed there, and other similar heartrending occurrences caused by shelling; and we saw it stated in their owu papers that this bombardment of dofenceless women and children was done deliberately and with intent, we naturally felt indignant, and desired that the true character of these men should be known." The writers proceed to give extracts from the Bloemfontein Express and the Diggers' News, containing official accounts, and admitting the deliberate shelling of the town, and glorifying in the lives lost and the damage done to private property. It is little to be wondered at that when doings of this sort are proved those responsible for them at once forfeit every claim to the respect of rightthinking people, and earn for themselves the well-deserved loathing and opprobium of every humane and chivalroas person. Of course it may yet turn out that much of the villainous and inhuman conduct that has characterised some of the Boer fighting has beenj chiefly due to the large element of foreign desperadoes attached to the! enemy's forces. Some of these are men lost to all sense of shame and feeling —men of the Greener stamp, or the Newmarket stable hand, who are capable of anything from horse poisoning to firing on a hospital. These others of like kidney from the scum of English, American and Continental adventurers are, no doubt, responsible for much that has been laid to tbe charge of the Boers. No doubt the latter have their own artists in this line, but the initiative and . example of their foreign mercenaries and adventurers has in all probability incited the enemy to thesß outrages of the canons of civilised warfare. But in that the Boers have permitted such barbarities and allowed the perpetrators thereof to romain at large, they have utterly alienated the sympathies of those who upheld their cause, and have at the same time played into the hands of their bitterest enemies.