The San Francisco call., 1896-05-03
He May Be Compelled to Cease
Shielding the Acts of
Cecil Rhodes.
OTHER TROUBLES ARE AHEAD
Russia and Great Britain May Be at
Deadlock Before the Year
Is Out.
Ioopyreht. 1896, by the New York rimes.i

copyright. 1896, by the New York Times.l
: L ONDON, ENG, May 2.-The popular
impression is that President Kruger has
knocked Mr.. Secretary Chamberlain
literally over the ropes. l choose this
o image because in the public imagination
here the whole South African business has
come down to personal contest of nerve
and science between these two champions.
1t is not very intelligent way of regard
ing the thing. perhaps, but you cannot
long keep people interested in distractions
of principle and statecraft. They want to
see men or watch them fighting, and their
funny press for months back has summed
UP the Transvasl affair in a mental picture
of the Boer heavyweight and the Blrming-
ham lightning artist stripped in the
ring. AS has been said, there are no two
opinions that Dom Paul has scored a gen:
uine knockout. Chamberlain seems to
have no illusions on that point, for he dis
appeared from London yesterday leaving
no one to answer the questions which the
House of Commons is bursting with i'm
patience to put on the subject. The ex-
PLANTATION is that he had speech to de-
liver on the education bill in Birmingham,
but this is too thin, because he could have
met Parliament and reached Birmingham
in plenty OF time afterward.
That he should want time for rejecting
is only natural, though, for on Monday he
has TO meet crisis of the first magnitude
1t viii be put to him squarely whether he
intends further to shield the Chartered
Company from the consequence of its
crimes or not, and on his answer depends
his career and perhaps that of the Minis
try he represents.
understand that these disclosures of
the completely of Cecil Rhodes and other
Chartered officials at the Cape in the plot
against the Transvaal form only part of
what is to come. What for the moment is
more interesting, however, is that these
revelations are novel only to the general
spublic. Chamberlain and others in author
.*ity have known these facts and more for
months. Chamberlain.'s s original impulse
was TO act on them, but the pressure of in
terested influence stretching all the wav
from the royal palaces down to the city
bucket-shops was too powerful for him to
; withstand, and he yielded to the temp
tation to try to pull the Chartered Com
pany. out of the pit that it had dug for
Another. If he does not make q stand
now on the very brink he will tumble
himself.
.. Kruger's plan was to deal most leniently
with all his prisoners at Pretoria Those
who were sentenced to death he intended
to make an example of to the extent of
heavy fines and banisliment; others were
to get off with almost nominal fines, with
perhaps here and there the penalty of
Punishment as well. He had no idea of
crippling the business of the Rand or of
destroying the vast interests built up on
its gold fields. This / know at second
hand from his lips, but it is very possible
that Chamberiain's insolent publication
OF practically threatening telegram in
Parliament before it could have reached
Pretoria, together with the surrounding
incidents I'D London, may have altered the
boer residents plans. It will be neces-
sary 70 show. him now at once that Eng
land means to play fair, or he will pass the
word around South Africa that the Dutch
are being insulted and defrauded. and the
English will find themselves immediately
face to face with hostile combination OF
all four Parliaments of those of their own
Natal and Cape colonies, as well as those
of the Orange and Transvaal REPUBLICS.
This is what the situation suddenly has
come TO, and 1t is not nice one.
Soopreoccupied with it and its dan,ers \
are Englishmen in general that the muTdar
OF the Shah gets treated like commo,;.
place event. 1t is remarked, indeed thai
this will inevitably throw Persia into
Russia's arms and thus double England's
difficulties and perils in Asia, which are
already sufficiently great. At another
Si1r
islands to excitement, but now there ,s
such a surfeit of apprehensions in other
quarters that there is no room for new
fears. Men of affairs agree that few things
arg more probable than that Russia and
England will be at deadlock before the
year is out.
Meline is certain Of his premiership for
four weeks at least, but only because the
Chamber mas adjourned till May %. Mean
while the municipal elections throughout
France begin tomorrow, and their results
will throw good deal of fight on what is
likely to happen in June. The Radicals
are entering the contest on a scale never
attempted before, placarding the whole
coHntry with denunciations of the present
Ministry as creature of reactionary
combinations, which could not survive
day without the votes and support of the
right, and Bourgeois, Goblet, Lockroy and
the rest of the Radical leaders are to make |
speaking tours of the provinces as if a |
Parliamentary canvass were on hand. The |
socialists, though allied with them in the
Chamber, will conduct campaign of their |
own on imilar lines.
Only few years ago the approach of |
May was viewed with terror by every big
city on the Continent, and there seemed |
to be a danger that England was des- |