1! 26th Feb. Tne New York Life represents, we suppose, the opinions of a rather well-educated section of American Society, a section to some extent above common prejudices and common cant, and yet it continues to publish pictures and letterpress taking the side of the Boers in the present war, with occasional lapses into judicial fairness. In its issue of the 18th ult. it has an articlette headed "The Arrogant Boer and the Humble Briton," in which it says:
"We all know the British to be a down-trodden people, just at present fighting for their liberty against. the arrogant farmers of the "Transvaal. These farmers from the Transvaal, as jwe understand from the English people, are trying to capture London and enslave the British nation.
"This is undoubtedly an impartial statement of the case, for the English themselves admit it.
"However, many pig-headed Amcricans persist in believing that even an Englishinan—when he is hot for treasure—may lose the fine edge of his British tact and gentleness.
"And these same Americans go so far as to believe that even a Dutch farmer is not wholly bad."
This is a comparatively mild example of the anti-Englishness of which specimens appear every week in Live. And yet in the issue from which we have just quoted appears a notice, headed " More English School man Boy, in which " Droch," the well-known critic, makes some very observant and true remarks on English schoolboys as pictured by Mr. Philpotts, who " Droch" confesses has been drawing from the reality. In his criticism the writer in Life says:
"To be strong, to be cunning, and to know when to keep quiet seem to be the English schoolboy's tests of merit. All these boys are governed by what they believe to be a sense of justice. Their idea of justice may be 'a little crude, but it generally does them credit.
"They all learn how to take punishment like a man, If you play the game and get caught, you must expect to be flogged, and make no fuss about it. A sense of justice and the endurance of adversity are pretty good qualities to pick up at school—which accounts for a good many English successes."
Now this writer acknowledges that the child is father of the man, and that the proverb is right which' says that as the twig is bent the tree inclines. Is it reason that boys brought up as this writer in Life confesses they are, should turn out tyrants and oppressors—monsters of injustice, crushing and slaughtering a small and pious people for the sake of gold? Rather we are, like the Americans our cousins, a long-suffering people, and it takes a great deal of provocation to stimulate us to action even. in our own defence. If we are beaten, we own up to it and try not to be beaten again the same way, and itis a point of honour with us not to hit a man smaller shan ourselves unless he attacks us. These may not seem noble qualities to some of our rivals, but they have successfully stood the test of time. We have exhibited them again in this Boer war, in which the London Press has consistently made the most of the checks we have sustained; and the continued practice of these qualities will bring us out of the war on top, nor shall we allow our settlement, when the time comes, to be interfered with by outsiders as was Japan's settlement with China, notwithstanding all the predictions and menaces of subsidised journalists on the Continent, No doubt there are many people at home, as there are some here, who are disturbed in their minds by the accounts of the present situation at Koodoosrand Drift. It is painful to our ordinary feelings of humanity to picture a brave General and eight thousand men entrapped in the dry bed of a river, and fired at night and day by fifty guns, without any good opportunity from one cause and another of returning the fire. If a large number of these men are slaughtered before they realise the utter hopelessness of farther resist tance, will not a wave of indignation
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.