Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1899-11-24
|PIRIT OF THE PRESS
ACTS AND OPINIONS GATHERED
FROM CONTEMPORARIES.

A BATHTUB AND BARBER CRUSADE.
We met an estimable, lovable gentle
IAN, the representative of noble an
stry, man born with gold, spoon
his mouth, an eminently gifted and
ghly educated citizen of birth, culture.
ealth and responsibility, who said:
ain this South African matter my SYM
.thies are entirely with the British"
"What's the matter with the Boers?"
e asked. "Aren't they intelligent?
rent they pious and God-fearing?
rent they honest, industrious and
Eithful to the right, as they see 1t?
rent they fighting to defend their
ONES and their right to rule them
slves?'
"Oh, yes" re replied, "but they are
trty. They don't wash themselves once
month. There Isn't bathtub in any
Il their houses and they have no use for
arbers."
| Here, we submit, is better excuse for
he British crusade against the farmers
f the Transvaal than any Chamberlain
as offered in parliament. Ills solemn
halter about defending the rights of the
|ubiects of Great Britain deceives nobody
Tor the world knows that these subjects
Ire adventures, thieves and robbers,
BENT upon Selling gold and diamonds
That belong to others and ruling for their
bwn advantage country that can be
heirs only by conquest, and that all the
|o-called wrongs they suffer would be
lighted if they would stay where they
belong and keep their hands from what
undeniably the property of those they
Intend to enslave and rob, and If need be
butcher. In other terms, all the world
knows that the little HANDFUL of Beers
bre fighting as herocially as ever a people
bid in defense of their homes, their
liberty and their lives.
But we read that cleanliness is akin to
b GOODNESS and we know that bathtubs
BARRIERS are the emblems of cleanll-
ness, the utensils of modern civilization
and the agencies of our latter-day
Christianity. So it may be that the in
vasion of the Transvaal may be justified
on the ground that 1t is necessary to
teach the inhabitants to wash and shave
themselves. History does not teach us
that the sturdy Mortimer who laid the
foundation of the British empire were
very liberal patrons of tonsorial artists,
and we haze no records showing that
our revolutionary fathers were greatly
to bathtubs or spent much time
their hair or cutting their toe
nails. Indeed, all the evidence that we
can recall is to the effect that very
W orthy, very pious and very .fOrceful
peoples have lived and died as unkempt
a nd as dirty as the Beers, and we are
not aware that this neglect to soap and
shears has ever been held to be good
cause for theil subugation and despoil
ment.
But we Anglo-Saxons have reached
higher plane than that on which our an
cestors dwelt; plane on which dirt and
hair are offensive to our delicate sensibil-
tiles and must be removed whenever they
stand in the way of our progress, and es-
pecially when they are found between us
and the yellow gold and glistenlng gems
we covet; plane on which we are in
duty bound to rob our neighbor and cut
his throat if he does not cut his hair and
wash himself as often as our sense of
requires. At least that is the
doctrine in England, and Chamberlain
and Rhodes had better proclaim it than
to continue their gable about protecting
the manifestation and Farmer.
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER: WHY.
To the Editor of The Springfield Republican:
The thing to be done now is to enforce au-
thority in the Philippines; to convince the
people of those islands that it is useless to
resist the United States. The FIlipinos should
n. tl,ga