Lord Roberts a Pro-Boer.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 49, 5 December 1901, Page 18

Lord Roberts a Pro -Boer.

Last January the Edinburgh Herald was adventurous enough to express in its leading colums the conviction that the death of the late Queen was hastened by the long-drawn struggle with the Boer farmers in South Africa. The statement was regarded at the time aa rank and outrageous profanity, and the editor was denounc d a a pro-Boer, and (metaphorically) Hubbpd and pounded to jelly for his pains. A few weeks ago, however, the Herald's surmibe found justification in a very unexpected quarter. It was at the unveiling of a statue to the late Queen at Manchester. Lord Roberts was performing the ceremony, and in the course of his remarks he said 1 he could not help thinking that but for the intense anxiety caused by the war in South Africa, and by the deep sorrow which the Queen felt for the loss of so many devoted soldiers and sailors, she might still have been with us ' Now here ia confirmation, strong as proof of Holy Writ, that the Commander-in-Chief of the British army ia a pro-Boer. He might even — horrible thought ! — be a Jesuit in disguise. If this paragraph should meet the wild and rolling eye of some of our whooping literary acrobats, Lord Roberta will shortly hang (in effigy) upon a sour apple tree. This pro-Boer declaration will, in their eyes, wipe out all the past services of the Commander-in-Chief ; for their favor is as fickle as that of Harun-er-Rayhid, whose register contains the following entry : — ' Four hundred thousand pieces of gold, the price of a drees of honor for Jaafar, the son of Yahjtt, the Wizir.' A few days later the same register had the following ■ — ' Ten k^erat-*, the price of naptha and reede, for burning the body of Jaafar. the son of Yahy.V So we read in Lane's Arabian Society tn the Middle A;/'S. As tho lordly eye of the Skibberren JJar/le was upon the Czar of Russia, so is the rolling optic of our hysterical little quill-drivers upon Lord Robert*. And it behoves him to walk — and talk — cautiously if the f&te of Jaafar, the son of Yahya, is not to overtake him.