Botha

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 21, 23 May 1907, Page 9

Botha

Political enmities, happily, die with a shorter agony th/an Woes the rabbit plague. Five years ago Botha was in the field with his trusty burghers, perforating numerous subjects, of King Edward VII. with Mauser bullets a nd chipping slices oH others of them with." flying chunks of pom-pom shells. War correspondents painted the General and his armed farmers in the darkest colors of their palette — hanged, drew, and quartered them, so to speak, with pen and pencil. But even Satan may (it is said) be drawn in shadow. At the Conference of Colonial Premiers, the sturdy enemy, the hated guerillero, of yesterdlay sits as the Prime Minister of a selfgoverning Boer colony, ruled by a, parliamentary majority of the Boer race and faith. And the streets that in 1902 echoed to shouts of execration for the burgher leader now resound to vivas in his praise. Carlyle wrote bKLous sarcasm about this sort of thing on one of his ' livery ' days. There is no call for it here. We, at least, see nothing in this happy change of feeling beyond this : It is good for Great Britain that even her mobs are generous enough to recognise a hero in a former foe .; it is better still that her statesmen have sufficient of the old Roman colonising wisdom to repose much, trust in some at least of the peoples that they Lave conquered but not subdued ; and it is probably no bad thing for the Tiber ties of the Transvaal that so many o!f its burghers have a reputation for shooting straight.