FOR THE WEEK ENDING THE 13TH oF oct.
Tax Daily Mail, the London halfpenny paper which has now reached a daily cireula-Yien of nearly 620,000, has the following lending article in' its issue of the 11th ultimo, when the Transvaal ultimatum had just been received The Boers have thrown off the mask and have declared that war on Wednesday which their deluded supporters in England considered so impossible. The great question as to whether the British or the Datch shall rule in South Africa will, at ten minutes past three to-day by English time, be committed to the arbitrament of battle.
Things may go badly with the Anglo-Saxon at the commencement of the fight, but in the end he will beat the Dutchman in South Africa ashe has beaten him in many other parts of the world since the days when Holland was a great Power and Britain a comparatively small one.
The superb expansion of the British Empire and the dwindling of the Dutch through-Sut the world have proved that, thrain for brain, body for body, the English-speaking Butchimany despite the superior trickery and ople are much more than a match for the cunning of the men of the Low Countries.
Some one has said that, after all, a Boer is only a cunning kind of Englishman. But in the fight which we have before us the Englishman has this vast advantage: he is fighting for the freedom of his people, for the right to speak his own language, to have his say in the ruling of his affairs, to carry a weapon if he chooses, to protect his women from insult, to hold himself at least the equal of any man la any country in which he lives.
In the fight, the English.spesking man has opposed to him in South Africa and elsewhere all there who hold shares in. mines and who fear that the Boer oppressors may destroy their machinery; all the corruption that comes from the placing of unlit power in the hands of one dishonest man AIL the machinery of a huge secret, service fund, of a system which even in the heart of the Empire, even in London itself, employs bribed agents, bribed meetings und speakers, and a bribed Pres Agninst this kind of thing in different forms and in different ages we men of the British Isles have often fought, and, because we have had justice on our side, have won, And 0, though numbers are against us, though our troops are men newly landed in a strange climate, though westall be hampered by Datch traitors in Cape Colony and Natal who will secretly wound if they do not dare openly attack, we shall win.
The fight is no longer for the mere question of ative-year or a two-year or even a onoyear franchise, but for equal rights for all Thite men in' South Africa. Doubiless at fist we may suffer, but we have suffered before, and la the end the Boers, their shareholders, company promoters, German and Fs Celtic-Trish hirelings will receive the punishment which their insane attempt to perpetuate an almost barbaric system" of government in the nineteenth century most thoroughly deserves.
It is impossible to find room for many quotations from the papers in reference to this ultimatum, The Times of the 11th ultimo says An ultimatum addressed by Mr. Reitz and his colleagues to the Government of the British Empire was received at the Colonial Office yesterday. The intelligence that the rulers of the Transvaal have taken the infatuated step of dispatching such a document will be received with profound. regret by the great majority of the British people, To the last' we have clung to the hope that our differences with the Republic might be terminated without bloodshed.
Not even the most ardent champions of the Boers and the most _hostil critics at home or abroad of British policy can misconstrue the despatch of Mr. Reitz or hesitate as to what the reply of England must be to such a challenge, Addressed to us by the mightiest of sovereign international States, it must have led immediately to war. Ie is fusg down to us by a petty Republic to which, as all Englishmen hold, we stand in the relation of a paramount Power. In tone and in substance alike the document is one of studied and insolent defiance. The men who drafted it and sanctioned it were bent upon deciding their controversy with us by the sword, and by the sword it must now be decided.
The Daily News, the recognised Liberal organ, says on the same date It is said that the Boers are fighting for their independence, and that the aim of Great Britain has been to force them into war. How can these statements be reconciled with the facts? President Kriiger has declared war because he preferred so to do rather than to accept a peaceful settlement. There isno getting away from this plain, simple issue, In the argumentative preface to his ultimatum President Kriiger complains of the British resolve to defend its subjects from oppression as a violation of the Convention of 1884, and denies the right of Her Majesty's Goveroment to make even diplomatic representations on their behalf, except in regard to matters specifically reserved in the Convention. What a Hood of light this throws, we may remark in passing, on the sprit in which the Transvaal Government received that Couvention and other marks of the magnanimity of the British Government!. "The paramounted of Great Britain is unassailable." But how could it be more directly assailed than by President Kriger's present denial of the rights claimed by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and by his edict ordering British troops out of the Continent? ' What are we going to fight about" If we are driven to fight, it will be to protect Britistr subjects from oppression, to establish the equality of the two white races, and. to maintain our position in South Africa, The Daily Chronicle thinks the ultimatum to be most unhappily worded, comparing in this respect with Mr. Chamberlain's dispatches, but which ho fair-minded man can shut his eyes." The French Press is careful not to prophesy smooth things for England, The German Press is not generally friendly but it congratulates England on being again on good terms with the German Government. The Allgemeine Zeitung says, without parallel for a tiny State like the South African Republic to speak in such a manner tothe Government of one of the mightiest nations in the world, and is, of course, calculated to excite the anger and pride of the British to the extreme. 'The war Will bs conducted as one might expect it to be bya people so' warlike, tenacious, and jealous of their position in the world as the english; that is, with the utmost energy till the annihilation of the enemy. And it must.
so conducted, because the prestige of the British throughout the world would immense. ly lose by another Laing's Nek or Majuba Hill, Nor must it be overlooked that France waits for the moment to revenge herself for oda, and that Russia would also find in 'a British defeat an encouragement to action somewhere. It follows that England in this war must exert her utmost strength, and that she must be victorious.
The Globe of the 12th ultimo has the following note on the Consular Service in China:—
Jamieson, already a member of our Consular So far os_it goes the appointment of Mr. service in China, to be Commercial Attache in that_country. isa step in the right direction. He will have no other work, it is to be presumed, than to collect personally such information as seems to be of value for the promotion of British trade, especially in the interior. In the discharge of this highly important duty Mr. Jamieson will necessarily have to be constantly on the move, to obtain accurate knowledge, at first kand, about local commercial requirements. The claims of office work are too onerous to admit of Consuls and their assistants being frequently absent from their post. This is the weakest point in the system, and it unquestionably operates greatly to the disadvantage of British interests, political as well as commercial, in the Far East. In order, then, to give more freedom of mobility to these officials itis essential that their routine work at office should be largely reduced. If that were done, it could be performed by a smaller number, thus setting free the others for employment as collectors of useful information. " Very little, if any, increase of exponse would bs involved in this change of system; most of the routine work is of a dispensed with or be done by intelligent Serv simple character, and could either be subordinates, Another point of large consequence is that Consuls and their assistants should, when on tour, avail themselves of every opportunity to cultivate friendly relations with Chinese officials and merchants. To carry out this reform in an efficient manner it is absolutely necessary that steps should be taken to supply our Consuls in China with a proper stall. Under the present system the re of little practical good what-fever to their country, though the fault is not. theirs.
This note, however, is very far from giving the real reasons why our Consular Service in China does not achieve more than it now does.
In an article on the situation produced by the ultimatum the Pall Mall Gazette of the 11th ultimo says There is every reason to believe with Lord James, that the war will be shorts it week: the end of this year or the the same time, be measured by mont! beginning of. next, we shall possibly have to remain on the defensive; the counter-attack may not be delivered until January is with us, It will inevitably be a tiino of and heavy will be the responsibility the Press, and the public which is its master. Accusations of unreadiness may be slung recklessly about by independent journalism against the Government, and by the partisans of one Department against those of another. In reply, it should be sufficient, to point out that the question of preparations resolves itself, after all, into a question of finance; and that no Ministry is justified in saddling the country with millions of debt,, unless it can prove that those millions are absolutely necessary down to the uttermost farthing. Then again, the country will be hungering for news of all kinds, of military movements and military intentions especially. Yet, if that appetite is satisfied by disclosures of Government secrets, the purveyors of those revelations will be guilty of something dangerously near treachery, and it is most emphatically to be desired that the editorial departments of newspapers should examine every item of that kind of information with of intelligence, too, that will have to keep their eyes skinned, There are other soureas on their guard—we mean the Boor agents in this country, both avowed and unofficial, The Times of the 13th ultimo has a leading article on the crisis, in which it is ro-marked that Mr. Courtney would like our dispute with the Transvaal to be referred to dispassionate arbitrators. The Times says One naturally looks round to see where the dispassionate arbitrators are to be found in a case like the present, There are certainly no signs of them on the Continent of Europe, and we are not sure that even Mr. Courtney could secure election as arbiter-general, The Russian Sviet has just been warning its readers against magnanimous and philan-tropic Englisknen us being worse than the plague. It informs its readers that we habitually put up a few just men made perfect, such as Mr, Morley, Sir William Harcourt, and horrible dictu—Mr. Stead, to. protest against the iniquity of our policy. The simple and charitable foreigner at once says that England cannot be so black as she is painted since she includes these noble-minded men, and, as soon as this effect is produced and time has been gained by producing it, this perfidious country puts the puppets away, io, their box and goes to mussiness. Evidently the impartial arbitrator is not to be sought in a country capable of thinking that our noblest philanthropists thus play the part of bonnets for the wily Chamberlain or the domineering Sslisbury. The urbane ard always charming German Press does not hold out any better hope. It
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.