The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1899-11-10

furnish good harbors. Upola furnishes
very bad harbor. You will remember the
great hurricane when British man-of-War
escaped and when German and American
men-of-war were driven ashore. Well, IN
these circumstances we were glad to accept
a Remuneration of the treaty claims and
rights of Germany over another island,
Tonga, where there is an admirable harbor.
We took the harbor and Germany took the
territory in which for many reasons, the
Germans are interested.
II believe we have arrived at a very re-
markable phenomena, an agreement which
is agreeaby pleasant and advantageous to
both powers; but this is interesting partic-
ularly, because 1t indicates that at the pres
ent moment our relations with the German
people are all that We could desire.
The Transvaal War
'sThe great subject that interests all of
us undoubtedly is this South African war,
adorned with so many splendid feats of
heroism and skill, but saddened by SO many
losses. 1 have great difficulty in dealing
with the war, and if attempted to deal
with the future | should be undertaking a
task in prophecy, from which the hardest
would Shrink. If I speak at ALL it may
raUher be to depreciate criticism and state
ments which think unfounded than to pass
judgment on what still depends upon the
future for all of its fun determination.
Respecting the feeling expressed twice
or thrice, that the want of troops Is due 20
want of action on the part of the nome
government, | would point out that there
have been two or three voices. Two or
three months ago We were told by the most
authoritative voice outside the government
that there was no occasion for military
preparations. Since then we have been
blamed because there We're no military
preparations. But neither of these criu-
cisIns is alt all relevent to the events which
have been taking place. 1t has been often
said especially abroad, that we are strong
nation attacking a weak one, but so long
as the principal part of our forces is sep
arated by an interval of five or six weeks
from THE field of action, it would rather be
true TO say that we are a weak nation
lighting strong one. Elements of distance
are vital in this matter.
Procla lions of No Use
at would have been nothing to the pur-
pose to have issued proclamations for re-
serves some weeks earlier. For what was
the cause of the war, and what was the
cause of the ultimatum? 1t was not be-
cause of amy demand that we had made.
1t SO happens that at the moment the ulti-
matum was issued, we had Withdrawn our
demands, and There were no demands be-
fore the Transvaal government 1t was
because we had taken measures to increase
the amount of our forces in South Africa.
bul IL u1idt ndu oeeH uone a rev months
sooner, exactly the same result would have
taken place. The moment you had shown
signs of raising your force to an equality
with the force opposed to 1t, that moment
the ultimatum would have been issued and
war would nave begun. Cheers.
ut is not, therefore, right to say that
there was not adequate military prepara-
tons. The evil dates farther back 1t
dates to those unfortunate arrangements in
1881 and 1854 by which we deliberately per-
mitted a community obviously hostile to
enjoy the unbounded, unlimited right Of
accommodating munitions of war against us.
Year after year an accumulation of NUM-
lions was made which could be directed
against us. Hampered by these arrange.
ments it was impossible that we should
avoid the interval of trial and danger nee