Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-03-30
MOST SERIOUS INDICTMENT
Yet Made Against the Beers and
Their Method of Warfare, Comes
From Julian Ralph, an American
COrrosn0ndeut.

From Julian Ralph, an American
Correspondent.
LONDON, March 29.-The most Sc
rious indictment of the Beers methods
of warfare which has yet appeared in
England comes from Julian Ralph, the
American war correspondent, in a let
ter from Kimberley, published in this
mornings Daily Mail. 1t is, in part,
as follows:
1T is a war steadily and stealthily
planned by the Queens Dutch sub
jects and the Dutch republics for fully
twenty years. For between four and
six years they have been equipped for
it. They began purchasing arms and
planning d~efences before the Jameson
raid. Let no one fool you with the
falsehood about that. Finally Presi-
dent Kruger begged President Steyn
to declare war three years before Pres
ident Steyn consented. Next rid your
mind of the notion that you are crush
ing two farmer republics. There is
not a farmer in the two countries and
only one, the Free State, was a repub-
lie in any way except misnaming.
These people are herders of cattle,
Sllttp anu 6OdJo, lIhC IlC lol dCllCCo VI
old and the Afridis Turks and Balkan
peoples of to-day. His (the Boers) So
called farms are as nature made them,
NEARLY reaches of veldt wherein his
cattle Craze. On each n he has put
up a home, but it's surroundings are
almost invariably more re%pellant and
disorderly than any houses / ever saw,
except the cabins of freed slaves in
the United States. Their camps and
strongholds from which we have rOut-
ed them are the filthiest places l have
known men of any sort to live in, and
I have seen red Indian, Chinese and
Turkish camps, and the camps of
many sorts of black men. AS to their
bravery and honor, I have seen and
heard sufficient to fill a page of the
Daily Mail with accounts of their cow
ardly and dastardly behavior before 1
came to Kimberley. But, here, l find
they have been guilty of different and
original enormities. Here they killed
our wounded and laid their bodies in
a row after one of the forays out of
town. Here they armed many blacks
to fight against us, showing all the
world how scandalously fraudulent
were their EXPLANATIONS of horror at
the idea of our employing native In
dian troops. There has hardly been a
battle in which the Beers have not
abused either the white flag or the
Geneva cross, or both. At Spion Kop
pur people saw them loading Maxims
In ambulances, in order to get them
safely away. This we saw them do
at Modder river also, and Kimberley is
where the Beers shelled the funeral
cortege of George l.. Abram, an Amer
lean. AT many places they fired on
Our ambulances. l saw them do it at
the Modder river and saw them fire
On our stretcher bearers in that battle
time and time again. When we enter
ed Jacobsdal it looked like a city of
doctors. Every man in the streets
wore the Red Cross bandage on his
Rrm. These were the men who had
just been shooting us from behind
garden walls. There was nothing
novel or original about their seeking
the cowardly shelter of the doctors
badge. We have become quite accus-
toned to it. We once entered a Boer
laager after a victory and found TWEEN
ty-seven of these bogus doctors and
seven or eight wounded for their pa
tients. They have not been content
with footing the houses of the loyal
lists in the British colonies, 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 off. Worse yet,
they have fouled the walls of the
homes of defenseless women with OBJ
scene writings. They never knew the
value of an oath or promise and have
not learned it since the wal began"