The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-20
STRUGGLE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

race.
 The present unfortunate war between the English and the Dutch in Soutf
 Africa recalls wildly the collisions be l tween the two nationalties in the past
 and the cause of their unnatural guar.
 rels Springing from a common stock | menaced by the same enemies actua- ted by similar political impulses, and /, inspired by the same religious reform
 movements, the two nations in bygone days should always have been friends; but commercial rivalry and opposing trade interests interfered to make them foes.
 Old Holland has now settled down to
 comfortable old age, having made her
 fortune, and being content to enjoy 1t in peace, reaping the benefits of past enterprise from her still vast Oriental
 empire. But her children at the Anti pcdes, actuated by the stubborn spirit of their ancestors, have challenged England by the arbitrament of war to
 make good her claim to be the supreme
 power in South Africa, as their fore
 fathers contested England's right under
 Cromwell and Charles II. to be the
 mistress of the sea.
 The trade of the Orient was, in the
 seventeenth century as now, the great
 cause of jealousy among commercial
 nations. The English East India com
 pany was created In 1899, and the
 Dutch in 1902 They were rivals from
 the start. Strange to say, the East In-
 dia question is again involved in this
 fresh English Dutch collision. It was
 the India trade in the hands of the
 Dutch East India company that gave
 Holland her naval and commercial im-
 portance after she had so gloriously
 thrown off the shackles of Spain. And
 it was Hollands jealousy of England's
 commercial growth and of her inroads
 on her eastern market that irrtated
 the pride of the two peoples, and em-
 bittered their relations until they flew
 at each others threats. It was as a
 halfway house to England that Cape
 Colony was established by the Dutch in
 1852, and as such it became of supreme
 importance in Hollands trade. Had she retained her full commercial vigor,
 she would not have submitted as meek ly as she did to it's conquest by the Brit ish in 1906. Conditions are somewhat changed to-day. The Suez canal gives a short cut to the Orient. One line of railroad Is already completed connect ing the North Atlantic with the North Pacific, and others are projected. But, nevertheless, the great pathway of the sea is, and will continue to be, the highway of commerce It can never be obstructed nor blown up. Yet 1t can be used effectively only by steam ves- sels, and steam vessels must have coal; and therefore coaling stations are as essential to great naval power as the sea itself. Cape Town is the corner shop, and Cape Colony the corner block, of the two highways of the Atlantic and Pacific and England will cease to be the naval power she is. as certainly as Holland has shrunken to a shadow of what she once was, if she allows so vi- tai a link In the long chain of naval sta- tions which bind her commercial cen ters with her foreign markets to be 
 There is no proof that any such far reaching schemes as a resuscitation of Hollands former greatness through the infusion of young Dutch blood has ever entered the minds of the South Af- rican Dutch; but there is good reason to suppose that their plans of empire are on as magnificent scale as their for war The influx of wealth from the gold mines excited their imagination. Instead of putting It into their pockets, as was supposed, they have put 1t into ornaments. AS we ourselves know, the ideas of na- -ional greatness grow with their grati- fcation, and nothing stimulates magni- icent national aspirations as sensitive y as military success. That the Boers enjoyed in 18S1 and it has influenced heir policy ever since. It would be as therefore, if hopes were not excited of recreating new Dutch re- public out of human elements as sturdy IS those which set Spain at defiance, by nen inspired by religious fervor as free rom the taint of either ritualism or ikeptcism as that which steeled the soldiers of William the Silent. There s every reason for supposing that the Afrikander bond has had more intricate notifications than was ever dreamed | # by the political agents of Great Brit | lin, and that the military preparations | all South Africa were on a | ecale not even suspected by English nen living among the Dutch them elves It is not unfair, therefore, to | ssume that brilliant statesmen like pr. 4eyds and President Steyn, and sturdy, ilent, profound diplomats like Kruger, nd generals as Joubert, should have reamed dreams not only of complete but of creating another Jew Netherland which at any rate lower that engulfed the struggling col ny of Dutchmen on the Hudson
 One thing is certain, that England is ace to face with another crisis In her istory; that Englishmen the world over ow realize it, and are prepared to act s one man in meeting it, Whatever nay have been the exciting cause of he trouble--probably unjust distrust n one side and disregard for national eHsibilities on the other-the Dutch of outh Africa have evidently been pre- airing for many day to throw off all ependence on England, and have been -aiting till either favorable opportu- ity occurred of forcing a quarrel, or II compelled to unmask their batteries y Brtans advance. The world at lrge is interested in the struggle, in- smuch as no commercial nation can few with indifference the transfer om one power to another of such taI artlo nh