Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1900-04-05
JULIAN RALPH'S SEVERE ARRAIGN
MENT OF THE Beers.

London, March 30.-The most serious
Indictment of the Boers' methods of war;
fare which has yet appeared in England
comes from Julian Ralph, the American
war correspondent, in letter from Kim
berly, published in yesterday mornings
Daily Mail. 1t is, in part, as follows
at is a war steadily and stealthily
planned by the Queens Dutch subjects
and the Dutch republics for fully twenty
years. For between four and Elk they
have been equipped for it. They began
purchasing arms and planning defences
before the Jameson raid. Let no one
fool YOU with the falsehood about that.
Finally President Kruger begged Presi-
dent Steyn to declare war three weeks
before President Steyn consented. Next,
rid your mind of the notion that you are
crushing two farmer republics. There Is
not farmer in the two countries, and
only one, the Free State, was a republic
in any way, except misnaming. These
people are herders of cattle, sheep and
goats, like the Afridis, Turks and Balkan
peoples of today. His (the Boersl 60
called farms are as nature made them
merely reaches of ve!dt wherein the
cattle Craze.
"On each one he has put up some hut,
and it's surroundings are almost lnva-
riablv more repellant and disorderly than
any house l ever saw, except the cabins
of freed slaves in the United States.
Their camps and strongholds from which
we have routed them are the tilthlest
places / have known men of any sort to
live in, and l have seen red Indian,
Chinese and Turkish camps and the
camps of many sorts of black men. AS
to their bravery and honor, have seen
and heard sufficient to fill page of the
Daily Mail with accounts of their coward
ly and dastardly behavior before l came
to Kimberly. But here, find, they
have been guilty of different and original
enormities. Here they killed our
wounded and laid their bodies Iii row
after end Of the forays out Of town. Here
they armed many blacks to fight against
us, showing all the world how scandalous'
ly fraudulent were their EXPLANATIONS OF
horror at the idea of our employing ma
tive Indian troops.
"There has hardly been battle in
which the Beers have not abused either
the white flag or the Geneva Cross, or
both. At Spion KOp our people saw
them loading Maxims in ambuances in
order to get them safely away. This we
saw them do at Modder river also, and
Kimberly is where the Beers sheled the
funeral cortege of George L. Abram, an
American. At many places they fired
on our ambulances. l saw them do it at
Modder river and saw them fire on our
stretcher-bearers in that battle time and
again. When we entered Jacobsdal it
looked like a city of doctors. Every
man in the street wore the red-cross ban
dage on his arm. These were the men
who had just been shooting us from be-
hind garden walls. There was nothing
novel or original about their seeking the
cowardly shelter of the doctors badge.
We have become accustomed to it.
eve once entered Boer lager after
a victory and found twenty-seven OF
these bogus doctors and seven or eight
wounded for their patients.
"They have not been content with
footing the houses Of the loyalists in the
BritishIcolonies, but in Natal, in scores
of instances, they have smashed into
kindlings and torn into ribbons whatever
they did not want or could not carry of.
They never knew the value of an oath
or promise and have not learned it since
the war began"