MR ASQUITH ON THE WAR:

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 11661, 21 January 1902, Page 3

MR ASQUITH ON THE WAR:

APPEAL FOR A MINISTERIAL STATEMENT OF POLICY. ANNEXATION IRREVOCABLE. Mr H. H. Asquitli, M.P., chief spokesman of one of the larger divisions of the Liberal Party in England, was the principal speaker on November 23rd at a Liberal meeting held in the Empire Theatre, Oldham. There was a large and enthusiastic audience. Mr Asquith, 'wlio was heartily applauded, said that in his opinion there was no ground for the exaggerated pessimism about the war which seemed to prevail in some quarters. In not inconsiderable parts of the field substantial progress had been made and was being made towards the establishment of peace and the restoration of order. But after two years we had an army of no less than 200,000 men in the field, an army of which Englishmen might say with pride—and he was bound to say with more emphasis at a moment when the whole of Europe was ringing with the vilest calumnies against our troops —tlHff" in courage, in endurance, and in humanity it had never been surpassed in the annals of warfare. Against us we had not less than 10,000 men in. arms; the Constitution was suspended; and over the greater part of South Africa there was very nearly a complete paralysis of normal machinery of social and industrial ife. Those were the grim and terrible realities of war —not more grim nor more terrible than they had>. had in the 'wars of the past, but brought home more closely to our consciences by the greater facilities for communication, and by the jntenser interest which every part of the world now took in every other part. The people of this country had displayed during the varying fluctuations of the campaign a patience and. a tenacity which were worthy of their best traditions. And that patience and tenacity snowed no signs cf exhaustion. But, without distinction of party, we all longed to see the war brought to an end. No one, io far as he knew, wisned for a polished-up and illusory truce, which would render futile all the sacrifices of the last two rears, and leave us after it- face to face with the old problem. No one, on the other hand, if an effectual and honourable peace could be obtained, desired to pursue this conflict in a spirit of revenge, or to humiliate or exterminate our gallant enemies. If there were such a person his head was even more to be pitied than his heart. It was with the, Boers that we hoped and intended to build up the fabric -of a free South Africa. Everyone desired to put a speedy, honourable, and effectual end to this conflict. The question of paramount urgency was how can that best be done? The mam thing to ascertain in answering that question was, Why dees the struggle continue; what are the* Boers in the field fighting for. it we might trust the authorised declarations j of their recognised leaders, they were fightin"- for the thing which by universal consent they could not have —independence. Only this week, the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons with perfect consistencv declared in the most emphatic and solemn way that annexation was an irrevocable fact. Lord Spencer said precisely the same thing. And yet the despatches of Mr Steyn, tne apparently inspired declarations of who were in the most confidence of Mi . himself, and the Continental Press, ' ao-reed that that for which the Boers were fighting, and without which they would not be content, was the undoing of that very warp of annexation which every rei sponsible politician in this country agreed to be an irrevocable fact. It was irrevocable, not for any lust of territory on our part, but because the knowledge of the experience we had gained had shown that the experiment, set up in perfect go faith and in a spirit of magnanimity as well as of prudence by Mr Gladstone, the experiment of establishing in South Africa a semi-sovereign Dutch community, limited and fettered bv conventional stipulations with this country, had failed to sec^ r ® either liberty in any true sense for the subjects of the Republic itself or and good faith as regarded the British Empire, to which it was attached. W dare not repeat the experiment which had proved so disastrous, and which had cost independence,lliough they might be insensate, were not pursuing an unworthy or ignoble cause. Those who had the least favourable opinion ot the use to which in the South African Republic the privileged , minority put nower which this country placed in then liands could not withhold their tnbute of admiration and every sympatby j ith the brave men who, pursuing a worthy ideal, were still maintaining against hopeless odd. a disastrous struggle. But we had t consider the matter from the point of the permanent interest of the Britis Empire and South Africa, and he did not hesitate to declare that there was absolutly no difference of-opinion whatever among the responsible statesmen of tins country that independence- could not be re S™ and that incorporation with the independence, and nothing short of ma pendente, upon which the Boers insisted it was neither more nor less than tir-e tc say that the end of .the ,war could b found only in supplying without stint- oi pause freshness and mobility to ou fi a ht iU force in the field. But that .did no exhaust the matter. The fart t.iat. th Boers were'fighting for independence tendered it all the more necessary to m..kt clear, not only to them, but to the whole world, what was the alternative to mdelieOuTobject. was to establish throughout South Africa, under the British flag, free institutions, equal laws, responsible government. It was to the application o that principle in South Africa that we looked for the ultimate, and we hoped not distant, solution of the difficult problems that presented themselves. jSio one imagined that that could bs done m a moment. We had to bring back the prisoners and refugees; we had to resettle the land; and we had to restore the whole ma chinery of industrial and agricultural life. That would be not only an expensive process—a process for which he did not think this country would grudge the money—but one that- could not be got- through in a day. That that intermediate stage should lie as short as the necessities oi the case would allow was the desire, he believed of every Englishman, certainly'oi every English Liberal. It ought to be possible, even in the earlier stages, to organise in various parts of the country some form of municipal government, m which should be associated both Dutchmen and Englishman.. ; It j.was in that

should dissipate once and for all the false idea that it was our object to replace the ascendency of the privileged race by the ascendency of another —to use a vulgar phrase, that South Africa was to be run in the interests of the capitalists of the Rand. If these were points on which we were substantially agreed, was there any reason why they should not be set forth in the clearest with the fullest assurance, and by the most authoritative voice?

The present position was not one which Englishmen could survey with complacency. A torrent of invective and animosity against this country was sweeping over the whole of Germany. The storm, which appeared to be free" from marks of -artificial agitation, was let loose by that ill-considered phrase of a particular Minister. But it was something more—and herein lay the gravity of the situation —than a mere passing illustration of the price we had to pay for the new diplomacy. Although it was possible to be over-sensitive of the opinion of other nations, depend upon it the goodwill of the world was, after all, not a- negligeable asset in the national bal-ance-sheet. He was not one of those who thought it was the duty of this country at this moment to assume the language of contrition or the garb of penitence. He was one of those who believed in the essential righteousness of our cause as he did in the humanity of those to whom it had been entrusted to uphold it in the field. All the more reason why they should regret that the case had been presented to the world with such a. singular want of persuasiveness by its official advocates. " I venture, then," Mr Asquith continued—" and this is a very serious matter, in which one ought to speak with a grave sense of responsibility—to make an appeal to the Government. I see that in the course of next week one of its mostrespected and prominent members, the Leader of the House of Commons, is to take part in some public demonstration. He has a great opportunity. Let him state the policy of this country as regards the future of South Africa in terms of unmistakable clearness and in tones of unquestionable authority, and he, I believe, will do the greatest service which it is in the p.wer at tlis in. ■y..--'. of fuy pol lician to render in the interests of the Empire."