The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-08-24
LETTERS TO
 THE EDITOR.
The Boers and British.

The Boers and British. Montgomery. Ala. Aug. 23rd, 1901. Editor The Advertiser:
 Reading an article in your valuable paper, entitled The Majority Pro boer. from The SprineheId (Mass.) Republican. and the m. >sions Of British ofncer nign Tn authority. and or the wicked Wa. En2lani Is wagina ln south Afri~a, WcuId D. to remind The Advertiser ..nI al- o T..e RepuDIi can. that the boe4 s b. ought on the war themselves py s-nding tae uitimatum 10 the Biitish Government. ordering them to take al ter troops out oi south Africa. This would have been equlFa!ent to Spain oIde. ing the United states to take all their soldiers out of riorida previous to the Spanish Ameri- can war. l suppose the editor of Tns Repuh.lc,r thinks that the British lion should have tucked his tail between his leSs and got out of South Africa at the per lemptory command Of President Kruger, and left all the English and other peoples settled In the TIansvaal 10 the tender rnercies of these uncivil- lzed Boers. Especially after 10000 res ideilts of the Tranvaal had petitioned the British Cover nment for redress of the grievances they suffered from the hands of the Boers through their mis- erable government of taxation without representation. Because it is a noto- r1ous fact that the unrepresented paid all the enormous taxes of the Trans Vaal Government, and the taxes were higher than in any country on the globe.
 And. as for President Kruger, a President in exile from the country which he misruled and bled the poor Ultlander numerically, meeting with sucn a reception from New York to San Francisco, while Chamberlain would not be welcomed at all. I would like to say two things. Firstly, that Chamberlain is not the English people, and, lastly. that 'mobs and crowds by their cheering or vice versa. do not represent American sentiment. If they did. William J. Bryan would be P1esi- dent of the United States instead of William Mckinley. The truth about the people of this country is, that they have not been troubling themselves in the least' whether the Boer or the Brit ish are in the right. l noticed all the thoroughbred American residents of the Transvaal previous to the war were decidedly in favor of the British. Be- sides, the figures given by the Spring field Republican are so palpably wrong about the British having 1.000,0 men to the 5000 of the Boers. The British Government could hardly raise a mill lion white men for any kind of war. And, as for the war dragging on so long: The war really ended when Gen. eral Roberts cleared the railway to Delagoa Bay. There has been nothing since but guerrilla warfare. and the Transvaal is no more the property or the Boers than the Western States De- long to the Indians. And there are otn- CT peoples to be taken into consldera- ton in South Africa, and those are the natives, the rightful owners of the soil; and The Springfield Republican will admit that after an experience Of two centuries of Boer wrong doing ana oppression, they are unanimously Tn favor of the English. Besides, all the improvements and progress in South Africa, and all the railroads have been built by the British and American en- terprises. not even excepting the line from Pretoria to Lorenzo Marques.
 John Bull has been in plenty of un- necessary wars, no doubt, but the Transyaal war was brought on by force of circumstances. It. was race question, which nothing but war could settle. It had to be fought and is being fought out to its bitter end although a new country and an Eng lish-speaking country like the United States will spring up in South Africa in a few years, the future of which Will be as great as any other country set tied by Britons.
 Yours truly,
 Samuel Hamlyn.