The Portland daily press., 1896-09-07
WHY IT FAILED.
Richard Harding Davis on the jane
son Raid.

hlCnaTu HHrU1US Oatic VA
son Raid.
The Doctor Rushed Ahead to Win AL the
c,arv-A Defense of the American,
John Hays Hammond.
New York, September 5.-Richard |
Harding Davis, the novelist, has written |
long account of an interview he had with |
John Hays Hammond, the American en-
stneer concerned in the Transyaal
troubles, denying the charges that Ham
mond and his friends failed to support
Jameson as they had agreed to do. In
his account, Mr.. Davis says:
On the day that DIR. Jameson and his
officers were found guilty of infringing
the Foreign Enlistment act, and sent to
Holloway Prison. MIR. John Hays Ham.
mond, the American engineer, who was
most active member. of the Reform
Committee in Johannesburg at the time
OF the raid, was staying in London at
the Savoy hotel. I happened to hear
this. and remem herring that Mr.. Ham,
mond had been one Of those who invited
Jameson to enter johannesburg, and who
had then left him to fight his way there
unsupported. said that If had to choose,
would rather be in Holloway with
Jameson than in the Savoy with Ham
mond.
This remark was carried to Mr.. Ham
mond by a mutual friend, classlnate
of Hammond's at Yale, who asked me
to keep my opinion in obeyance until
had heard Hammond's side of the story.
The same mutual friend then invited
me to dine with Hammond and himself.
and for the first time heard the story OF
the Jameson raid told in manner which
convinced me that the charges OF oowar-
dics laid against the Reform Com mittee
wsrs unmerited. The story has never
been made public, but it is full of inter
est, putting many things in new light,
adjusting the blame more evenly, and,
in my mind at least removing che
charge of lack Of faith under Which the
members of the Reform Committee and
tho people of Johannesburg have been
resting In silence. That they have been
silent for so long is because they do not
DR.. Jameson was waiting trial which
might deprive him OF tho popular sym
pathy he enjoyed during that period, and
which, they hoped, might kept to Lesson
the severity of his sentence. That SEN
tence has now been passed. without
much regard having been shown for the
point of view of the populace, and DR..
t. 81 For 40 duov tr1r n Ho
q man. And in time, having paid for
It in full, he will come out again, as pic.
turesque figure and, with great mass
of the British public, as popular hero
as he was when he won Matabeleland
and administered that troublous terri
tory in the interests of the Chartered
company, and later made his ill-oon-
sidered and ill-starred invasion of the
Transvaal.
AS he has had his turn. it seems only
right now that he should give place in
the public eye to those who have suffered
as we'll as himself and through his ac-
tion, whose plans he spoiled and whose
purposes his conduct entirely sInisrepre-
sented to the world. For these other
men of the Reform Committee have
lain, owing to him, 10 q far worse jail
than Holloway, and some still lie there,
some have been
SENTENCED TO DEATH.
while others have been insd fortunes.
and, more than all elss besides, they
have had to bear the odium Of having
bssn believed, both in the United States
and in England, to have shown the
white feather in DESERVING oomrade,
and of failing to keep the promises OF
hsip they had held out to him.
Ths Reform Committee of Johannes
burg was organized with the object OF
obtaining certain reforms for abuses
whsoh had grown 30 serious that the po-
siston Of the Uitlanders.in the Transyaa
had become unbeara BILE. There is ar
objection which is instantly raised when
ever the condition Of the Uitlanders is
described as have just stated 1T, and it
Is .uhis: "If the Uitlanders did not like
not leave it and 60 somewhere else the
world is large enough for every body
Why did they instead plot to upset the
government of the Boers who had
sheltered them, and who only asked to b.
left to breed their cattle and to farm
their ranches, in peace" The answsl
laws to which the Reform Committee
ob3ected did not exist when the majority
of Its mombers had entered the Trans
vaa1 eight years before.
Six weeks before the Jameson raid TIN
Reform Committee had mapped ou
their plan of action. They hat
spe1s a7O. Ooo) $3.50. ooo) in provisions
which they expected would ouslast
two months seige; they had arranged
that the water supply COT Johannesburg
could not be out off from the outside
aud they had ordered rifles and Maxim
guns and were smuggling them across
the border. This was the most Difficult
part of their work, for guns are as strict
" prohibited to Uitlanders in Johannes
burg as are public meetings, and ever.
mau in consequence. 1t is well to re
member this, for it is not as thong
Johannesburg in that respect resem ble'
some of our own mining towns, wher
weapons are sometimes as plentiful a
pickaxes and where call &c arms weul,
merely mean the reading of the pay
rolls at the shafts Of the different mines
1t was while these guns for defeps
were slowly coming in that DR.. jaime