The age-herald., 1900-04-09
DAVIS PLEADS
 FOR THE BOERS Immense Audience Heard His Story of the War; ARE 4 NOBLE RACE OF PEOPLE And should be Given Sympathy
 of Americans. AMONG PIONEERS OF FREEDOM He Vividly Described Some of the Bat ties, and Denied the Reports of
 Their Disregard for the
 White Flag
AMONG PIONEERS OF FREEDOM

Washington, April S.-An immense audi ence gathered at the Grand opera house tonight to listen to an address on the South African war from Hon. Webster Davis, ex-assistant secretary of the inter- for, who has just returned to the United States from that country. Every available bit of standing room in the opera house, the largest auditorium in Washington, was filled with auditors who paid close at- tention to every word uttered by the speaker and manifested their appreciation of his telling points with frequent and generous applause.
 Simple decorations of the United States flag and the red, white and black bars, with the field of green, the emblem of the Boers, were suspended over the stage. A score or more of public men, mainly sena- tors and representatives in congress, oc- cupied seats on the stage and in the audience, among whom were the follow ing:
 Senators Clay, Daniel, Teller, Bacon, Allen and Mason and Representatives Talbert, Jett, Littefeld, Ridgely, Robin son, Indiana; Burke, Texas; Ball, Gilbert, Latimer, Cox, Tennessee; Cowherd, Clark,
 
 MT. Davis was introduced by MT. P. T. Moran, the chairman of the executive committee, who made few introductory remarks
 MT. Davis delivered his remarks in an off hand easy style, referring to his notes only occasionally and mainly when 1t was necessary to read an extract from some document or speech. He spoke for about two hours and at the close was warmly congratulated.
 Pioneers of Freedom
 "The Boers of South Africa" said MT. Davis, "are among the pioneers of freedom heroes of civil and religious liberty They were the torch bearers who blazed the pathway for civilization through the pri- meval forests of the southern part of that great dark continent which has been the marvel of the ages. No country in all the world contains a nobler race of men and women; the descendants, too, of the heroic Netherlands who, under William the Si- lent, wrested the independence of Holland from the hand of the Spanish tyrant No people in all the worlds history have made a more valiant effort to secure liberty for future peoples than they. And no people have endured more hardships in the cause of liberty and equality of rights than they. Indeed, it was and is their unconquerable love for liberty that has caused all their troubles"
 Years ago, MT. Davis continued, the Boers planted the seed of liberty in the fer tile valleys of the Cape of Good Hope, where strong national spirit developed as rIx xxrbap fho ;,,to the hands of England. Soon thereafter ill., feeling arose between Briton and Boer MT. Davis entered upon an exhaustive review of the relations between the Boers and the British government from that time to the present. He described the "great trek" northward after the emancipation of their slaves, the foundation of the republic of Natal and its absorption by English and the rise of the South African republic. Eng lands acquisition of the ditmond fields at Kimberley MT. Davis characterized as a transaction without parallel flor cupid ity, dishonor and injustice"
 MT. Davis then told at length the causes leading up to the war maintaining that the Boers were not to blame.
 White Flag in Battle
 Referring to the reports of the Boers disregard for the white flag MT. Davis said!
 During the battle of Dundee there was a lull in the firing for time, on account of the Boers seeing a buggy approaching them rapidly and floating a white flag. All awaited its arrival. At a distance of about 600 yards from them the buggy stopped, wheeled about, dropped the white flag and that innocent looking buggy was suddenly transformed into a murderous Maxim gun, which felled nearly dozen Boers I talked with the man who cap- tured that flag and saw it myself. It was a white flag with a small black stripe through the center, but at a short distance away it seemed perfectly white; that flag is now in the possession of Colonel Blake, the brave American soldier who commands the Irish brigade, which is composed al- most entirely of Irish-Americans, and no braver men are in the Boer army, said General Joubert to me-"
 MT. Davis described the storming of Spion's Kop by the Boers. after the British had occupied it, and his own visit to the battlefield seven days later.
 ''When the fight began" he said, "a giant Boer, in the prime of strength and