The War Commission

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 42, 15 October 1903, Page 2

The War Commission

The findings of the South Afiican War Commission have come with the impact of an icy douche upon the colonial editors who, during the course of that long struggle, were (figuratnely, of course) decorating our city walls with the heads of the ' pro-Boers ' and ' traitors ' whom they were day by day discovering among the liege subjects of her late Britannic Majesty. Adverse

opinions as to the justification and conduct of the war found free and frank expression in the leading columns of British journals of repute. Yet nobody went on fire No such tolerance was, however, found in the great body of our colonial secular journals. The British Liberal and Radial parties were labelled by them with various fancy nick-names- Little-Englanders,' ' Pro-Boers,' ' traitors ' etc. Hints or charges of military inepitude on the part of British officers were resented as a sort of Macedonian atrocity. An unreasoning and intolerant spirit of suspicion was in the air, even in the days of rushing victory, as senseless in its way as the ' we-are-betrayed • mania that followed the great disaster of Sedan in 1870 and the ' Prussian spy • fury that marked the early days of the siege of Paris,

Tne War Commission performed its weary, unpleasant, and thankless task with searching thoroughness, splendid fearlessness, andj a, deep and ever-present sense of the highest patriotism. It has laid bare the muddling and incapacity that made the late war a repetition of the blundering campaign of the Crimea. 'If, however, its labors result in the speedy introduction oi needed reforms, a service of inestimable value will bo rendered by them to the Empire. One of the most remarkable witnesses that appeared before the Commission was the distinguished soldier and author, Sir William Butler. He was in command in South Africa just before the outbreak of the war. • Sir William Butler, 1 says the • Manchester Guardian,' 'was the only man in South Africa who understood both the art of war and the political situation.' ' The essence of the Boer position,' said Sir William in the course of his evidence, ' was this— suspicion, they suspected everything we did, and you will find that running through all my despatches. The essence of the difficulty of the position was suspicion on the part of the Boers that they were going to have repeated a raid or a series of raids, and they had not been prepared in 1895-P6 : as a matter of fact, they had hardly any ammunition at the time, and the first thing they did after the Raid was to begin to lay in rifles and ammunition, to build forts, and order guns. In that sense they were prepared for war, but, according to my belief, in that sense only. You will find all through this suspicion on the part of the Boers that they were to be raided. The idea that the Boers wanted to produce war is, to my mind, wrong , it is a wiong reading of the situation, and on that all my preparations were based, and I was right. As a matter of fact, the Boers never did move until the reinforcements had arrived and the Army Corps was mobilised.'

We are gradually getting at the facts of the origin of that long and melancholy struggle and stripping it of the iridescent romance in which it was enwrapped by imaginative journalists and interested politicians. The publication of Sir William Butler's quoted words three years ago would have been received by a large class of Australian and New Zealand newspapers with angry cries of ' pro-Boer ' and ' traitor.' But those were the days when an ice-bag would have been a useful adjunct to the editorial sanctums of a good many of our secular cantemporanes. Ila'ppily, they have had time to burn out and attend to that ancient and valuable precept of hygiene which enjoins journalists as well as other mortals to keep their feet warm and their heads cool. In those hysterical days of September, 1599, the party— political, military, and journalistic— were whooping for a fight to ' i\ipe out Majuba,' to ' knock spots oft ' the Transvaal — and to retain all such spots, especially if they formed part of the goldfields of the Rand. They proclaimed that a campaign agamst the two little Boer republics would be a brief military picnic, concluding with roast turkey, plum-pkidding, and bumpers of champagne at Pretoria on Christmas Day, 1899. People ' were being told,' said Sir William Butler, ' that it was a case of ten millions of money and the whole thing over at

Christmas, or, at farthest, at Easter. Every officer in the army knows that ; anyone who told them the opposite was called names, ridiculed, and laughed at— he was either a fool or a knave or (as they said of me) both ' But they speedily realised that the valiant and distinguished General was a true prophet when he foretoM that 4 the war would be of a nature which they had not the smallest idea of, 1