The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-03-26
AN AMERICAN ON THE SPOT.
What Julian Ralph Thinks About the
Beers and Their Cause.
Letter in London Mail.

Letter In London Mall.
L am here with a British army. but l
came with an open mind. On the voyage L
read all the trustworthy books upon the
history of South Africa, and since l landed
here four months ago l have made 1t my
task TO study the Boer at home and at
large. The public at home knows, so far as
II knows me at all, that i take no retainer
for what 1 write. Here / am a foreigner, an
outsider and a looker,on: l am tranR 10
grave mistakes In their dealings with both
their own colonists and, in one or two in
stances, with the Beers, but these mis-
takes were always. to their own damage
They did one injustice. They acted un1usti-
fiably in their mode of acquiring the Kim
berley diamond fields, but the Free state
accepted a small sum OF money as a save,
and may never with dignity or decency re-
open that sore. AS to the Jameson raid
by means of which the Beers seek to Justl-
fy their present war-so long as the BIT
ish government be not shown to have been
privy to 1t, there can be no more to say
than that it was an asinine and outrageous
affair, for which man of the reformers
were punished as the Beers saw fit, and a
portion of the raiders as the English law
decreed.
The Beers would have you believe that
the capitalists among the disappointed ult-
landers are the p~rogenitors of this war,
and that their purpose is to hand over the
Rand to England. Several facts interfere
with this theory. In the first place, there
are hundreds of men in Cape Town who
were approached as far back as seventeen
years ago with an invitation to join the
Dutch in their conspiracy to drive the Brit
ish out of South Africa and make 1t a great
Boer empire. In the second place, the uit-
landers are not nearly all Engllshmen, and
the Rand mines are mainly owned Dy
French and German investors the EnSnsh
interest being n very small part OF the
whole. In the third place. the grievances or
the uit,anders truly were the basis and
cause of the demands, which England made
of the Transvaal last year, but those were
not unjust demands. They could have been
acceded to with great credit 10 the Trans
vaal, but every man who was here, be he
Boer or Briton, knows that war and not
peace was the goal at which Kruger was
driving, and driving in such hot haste that,
three weeks before he declared IL, ne de-
voted a Sunday morning to urging Steyn 10
join him I'm its instant declaration. that the
English might be thrashed before they
were ready to fight.
If this really was a war OF the uitlanders
against the Beers. and II the American
public would inform itself upon the nature
of the rule which prosecuted these heavy
taxpayers who have created BOREDOM s
wealth and made possible its crude ambi-
ton, then, / say, no Boer could get a near
ing from my countrymen- Grave and cruel
as was the injustice our forefathers surfer
ed at the hands of an imbecile English
king before we threw off his yoke. 1 do
not hesitate to say that the grievances of
these ~uitlanders were more numerous ana
In some part more grave and intolerable.
The crafty Beers have dared TO hken their
present hapless plight TO our unhappy
condition as colonials. but whenever they
rouse an American to the point of study
ing the facts. they will find that man lik-
ening the uitlanders to his ancestors and
vowing that SO narrow, bigoted. unjust.
and corrupt a people as the Transyaal
Beers have no right 10 national existence
in this broad. humane and progressive age
You are 1900 miles from the Beers, but I
assure you hat the nearer you approach
them and the more closely You view them,
the less you VIII respect them; to like them
Is impossible. Their lip service to religion
decieves those who do not know that they
are a non-moral people, cunning. tricky.
dishonest and untruthful In the extreme