The age-herald., 1899-09-24
THE DELAY IS FAVORABLE
HOStilitieS Mill Either Begin Soon OF
 Not 1t All.
APPEAL TO BRITISH CONSCIENCE
w. T. Stead, .STevS ,erlains Bitter Op. ponent, = 2 .ging Out Pam phltS $ tied Shall slay
 zS .Y Brother Boer."

l. September 23-Never at any stag>C the Transvaal crisis has peace or war rested so entirely within the hands of President Kruger. The longer he delays Irecipitating definite issue the better are the chances for peace. He now knows to what extent he can rely on sections of South Africa to uphold him. he realizes that the British will, if possible, avoid a conflict until the last transport lands her men, and he is too willy a leader not to know the military advantage that comes to the aggressor.
 His appeals to the foreign powers to in- tervene have apparently been hopeless, but his efforts to drag in the Orange Free State have been successful. and if he honestly intends to defy Great Britain he will never have a better opportunity.
 May Cross the Frontier
 It is such reasoning which is uppermost in the minds of the thinking British, and which prompts them to fear that before next weeks cabinet meeting the Boers will have passed over Natal's frontier. If they have not, there will be much ground for believing that President Kruger intends an ultimate back down, though whether ne is strong enough to carry his people with him in such course is open to great doubt. The cabinet council merely verified the logical supposition that Great Britain will iss le no hostile ultimatum until she is in a position to back 1t up.
 The impression that war is inevitable, which is now fairly general, is based al- most solely upon the belief that the Boers will not submit, while It Is impossible for Great Britain to recede from the position which the secretary of state for the colo nies, Joseph Chamberlain, brought about. The recent negotiations upon the part of the colonial secretary have not tended to appease the peace party in England
 Chamber aims Hard Terms
 The Speaker declares that "to fight over a question of etymology is, naturally, im- possible" by which the paper refers to suzerainty being the whole base of the dis pute. The Speaker and some of the other liberal papers take the view that MT. Cham berlain. has made it as hard as possible for President Kruger to accept his terms.
 Sir Edward Clarke, queens counsel, the former solicitor general, writes to the Times that he sees no casus belli, and hopes parliament will be summoned so that the whole affair may be explained to him and other conservatives.
 w. T. Stead, Mr. Chamberlain's bitter opponent is bringing out a pamphlet Shall l Slay My Brother Boer?" and ap- peals to the conscience of Great Britain, in which he reiterates his accusations of Mir. Chamberlains c-nplicity in the Rhodesian conspiracy of 1897, and declares that war would be a stain upon Great Britain's escutcheon foul as that by which the Dreyfus case has sullied the fair name of France"
 th .moerIaii Compared to MercIer He compares MT. Chamberlain to Gen eral Mercier and the South African com pany which tried the Jameson raiders to the Rennes courtmartial. But such dia- tribes do not represent the popular feeling. If President Kruger decides to hold his ground with the only means at his dis posal almost immediate hostilites, he will | find that he has but small sympathy from any class of British.
 | The Transvaal negotiations are now so long drawn out that though the papers devote great space to them, popular inter- est seems Tagging. The government or- gans while regretting the attitude of the Orange Free State, point out that It's open hostility will eventually prove advantage ous in riddng Great Britain of the annoy ance of having a presumably neutral, but really hostile power so close to the scene of action. and enabling Great Britain to add the Free State to her possessions with out encountering foreign protests or accu- sations of inhuman aggrandizement.