RIGHTS AND WRONGS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7201, 12 September 1901, Page 3

RIGHTS AND WRONGS.

■•j * Mr E. T. Cook, the capable journalist, whom, at one time, 'Mr W. T. Stead commsr.ded as the man above -ill others that was likely to deal fairly with the South African problem, has just published a volume on the " Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War," in which he expresses views which will be anything but acceptable to his former chief. He dismisses as utterly untenable the proBoer story about the war being a capitalists' job. He remindsi us how the war was the direct outcome of the Uitlanders' petition of 1839, that petition being the culmination of the reform movement. The movement, had three stages, in none of which wa« it a capitalists' jvb. Tha reform movement was long antecedent to the Raid. The National Union was formed ao Johannesburg in 1892, and not a singlo capitalist had anything to do with it. Indeed, the capitalists were severely condemned for holding aloof. The capitalists baid, it is true, only too much to do with Johannesburg politics at the time of the Eaid. " They converted an existing reform- movement into a lawless raid." But in the succeeding years, or the second stage, they disappeared from a movement which they had spoilt and not created. The professional class aga/in t_'-k the lead. In tho third stage the same class revived th_ movement, and it is worthy of notice that the President of it lost his post in the employment of tho "capitalists" for takingpart in politics. The working classes were also deeply interested in the agitation at this stage. That the movement wa^ artificially created, and that ihe struggle in ihe Tiansvaal was between foreigu capitalists on one side and "poor herdsmen" on the orlier, wa*, no doubt, a very convenient theory for Mr Kruger and his friends, but it stands none of the recognised tests of truth. The argument is also liable to an awkward '* tv quoque." Were tho motives of the Transvaal oligarchy in resisting reform free from all corrupt "capitalism"'/ What about the .Netherlands Eailway Company and its tremendous efforts to maintain Krugerism? What- about the dynamite monopoly as a fair specimen of capitalist, jobbery? And these "poor herdsmen," as Mr Cook tells us, were spending over £-10,000 a year in secret servioe. We wonder whafc proportion of Continental condemnation c-f Gieat Britain was purchased by Dr Leyds's press fund? But the whole fabric of pro-Boer inventions had broken down long bsfcre Mr Cook undertook th-;ir burial. The marvel is that anymiJ; can be found still believing that they ever ies ted on the slightest foundation of truth.