The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-06-13
FREDERIC HARRISON ON WAR
HIS INDICTMENT OF HIS COUN-
 TRY.
A sacthing Attack Upon British Po- litical Policy ana Military Methods I he Infamy of the Farm Burning Lord NIiIner Excoriated,

hc lhIHhy tne
 Lord MiIner Excoriated,
 My friends urge me to send you a
 letter about the Return of farm
 burning South Africa (Cd 52D" but |
 doubt if you would print anything
 which could fully express my own feel
 ings on studying it; and l know that
 this incident is merely part of far
 larger whole. However, if your read
 CTS would care to understand something
 of "the panopied hatred" with which
 my friends and I regard this very bru-
 tai episode in an infamous war, l will
 put our case before them in plain
 words. I am neither little England
 er'' nor "pro- -Boer," nor cosmopolitan
 crank" but patriotic Englishman.
 who does not think his country's great
 ness needs to be eked out with more
 Klondikes and Ugandas, and refuses to
 applaud every folly and crime into
 which demagogs in office may contrive
 to deude the nation.
 The official return has disclosed a
 barbarous, vindictive, systematic att
 tempt to terrorize and crush a brave
 enemy in arms by devastating
 country, which it was found impossible
 to conquer, by ruining the homes of
 soldiers with whom we were waging
 war, and by exposing their wives and
 children to misery and want. This was
 a violation of the recognized laws of
 civilized war, and was expressly for
 bidden by The Hague conference. It
 was especially infamous when resorted
 to against an honorable body of citi-
 zens who were defending the existence
 of their country. It was insane folly
 in the case of a people whom it was
 designed to incorporate in the empire,
 who had actually been proclaimed as
 our own fellow -countrymen.
 It was policy so degrading in plan
 and so revolting in its consequences
 that any honorable soldier would have
 been justified in declining to undertake
 such butcher'si work. But our com-
 manders, accustomed to wholesale slaughter and devastation in warfare with savages in Asia and in Africa and
 unaccustomed to fight with any men of European race, were found willing to act on it. And ministers at home were found willing to palliate it with cheerful indifference and evasive sneers. Both soldiers and ministers may count on this, that their names will live in history with those who or- dered and executed the barbarities ot the Thirty Years war, the devastation of the Palatinate, and the dragonnades of Louis XIV.
 Barbarities of the kind became only too probable when our rulers entered l with light heart" on a war to con- | quer and crush one of the toughest, l bravest, most independent races in the | world, and gaily announced that mot | a shred of independence" would be | left to men of proverbial courage and l obstinacy, who for many generations have faced death. famine and the eX- tremes of suffering in order to live free and especially free of the hated Brit ish bondage. When the swindlers and | braggarts told us that little show of force would COW these Dutch farmers, that, even if war did result, it would be ever in a few weeks and would only cost a few millions, when they entered | on one of the most formidable wars of the century with ignorance so laugh able and arrogance so blind, it became clear to all who knew the history and nature of the Boer and the physical l condition of the task that ghastly ferocties would be resorted to and that our British name wuold be dragged down from each meanness and atrocity to still lower depths.
 The horrible side of this war to us who retain some feeling for the honor of our country is that the nature of the task to which we were committed made violent and unlawful measure al- ,,,o net ta p | nex two free and proud nations of Eu- ropean race and most stubborn nature is an outrage which has never been at tempted since the partition of Poland. 1 Considering the vast extent of the land, the physical difficulties of the task, and the superb fighting qualities of the pa triots 1t was an undertaking of eX- { treme peril. Since they were of the same race, language and traditions as ; the Afrikanders of our own colony, it l made civil war and rebellion almost in- evitable And yet, to fail in sight of ( after all our Quixotic brag 1 gadocio, would be intolerable humiia- l tion. Accordingly, they set their teeth, { prepared Ito fight it out to finish" by whatever means, f1inging to the winds considerations of public law hu- ana IIle SOOu name Ol EHSlduu. f Men curse in their hearts the law of na- . tions, and sheer openly at the farce of I The Hague. And women of the gov z erning class do not blush to say that , what is wanted is more cruelty" The l I horrible part of this war, I say, is that it has brutalized public opinion, made i, public men desperate, and has unsexed the women whom they pervert . The nation has been hoodwinked by | an elaborate fabric of calumny and :, falsehood. The "Boer conspiracy to 4 drive us out of Africa is mere promot- ers' bounce, like the tales about pay = able gold.'' It was invented by z Rhodesian agents, and sent home by heir gullible tool in Cape Town. The V story of "Boer armaments' prior to the : -aid has been proved to be false. The myth that the war was inevitable is ,nly true in the sense that the cruci- | lxion was inevitable. Everything is I if fools will persist in their e oily, and he that is unjust twill be b Injust still" The war was inevitable | n this sense only-that there were men II 'esolved in pursuit of their own ends, d o spread blood and ruin far and wide. k The nretevt that nothing but war could [ A lecide "whether Dutchman or Briton b