The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1901-07-16
AFRICAN WAR THE CAus|

London, July 13-The V~lakfontein
incident has come near to spelling
Waterloo for the government. An ap-
parently unimportant incident, the
censorship Of one of the newspapers
dispatches, has had the effect OF crys-
talizing all widely differing sorts of
public dissatisfaction concerning the
conduct of the wal in South Africa.
This dissatisfaction has long been
pent up and now finds free vent, not,
strangely enough, through the COL
umns of the opposition newspapers,
but in government journals.
For a month past public belief in
and admiration for Lord Kitchener
has been waning and now he is OPEN
ly and severely criticised. A rumor,
which cannot be ~substantiated, is cur
rent that he will shortly be succeed
ed in command of the British forces
in South Africa by General Sir Bin
gon Blood, who has been operating
in the easter Transvaal. Should this
change occurs it probably would be
due to a difference of opinion exist
ing between Lord Miner Of Cape
town and Lord Kitchener and it
would be announced in the form of a
Epromotion, accompanied by a state
ment that operations in South Africa
no longer justified the presence there
of an officer Of the seniority of Lord
Kitchener.
There is no doubt but that Lords
Miner and Kitchener have had sew
eral disagreements and the high COM
missioner does not want to return to
South Africa as long as high handed
General Kitchener remains in control
there.
Amid the storm of d%isapproval re-
and which the governments support
ers are pouring out upon the wa Of
fee on account of the suppression of
news and the fragrant vagaries of the
censorship, the liberal party through
: it's hopeless differences is obliged to
sit stupidity idle and see the only op-
portunity ever offered pass out OF
: their hands. The extraordinary spec.
: tacle has been presented of an ad.
: vanced radical newspaper, the Daily
. News, patting the wal office and Lord
Kitchener on the back for suppress
! ing the story of alleged Boer outrages
. to British wounded, while the Times
y and other government, though less
: radical organs like them, say the
feeling aruosed in the general public
: who have up to this time blindly ani
: enthusiastically supported the gov
ernment's war policy, can scarcely ,b'
= estimated.
. The officials of the war Office ar
: more worried now than at any prev
ious time during the war and ar
working strenuously to explain tn
= mistake. The incident has awakene
: in the public mind an eagerness mos
unfortunate for the government 70
deails of operation and ever increa:
ing dissatisfaction with the progress
of British arms in South Africa.
Prominent members of the consel
vatives believe if their party had t
go to the country now it would b
defeated, provided a semblance of Of
position could be mustered. In thi
!. connection there is some talk of tn
= possibility of a new liberal organic
ton, consisting of a combination {
= old liberal-unionists and liberal-in
perialists, many of whim would lik
to see a cabinet including Lord Ros
berry, the duke of Devenshire, pre-
:. ident of the council, Joseph Chan
berlain, colonial secretary, and H. !
~ Asquith, leader of the liberal impe
ialists, which some men believe ma
: eventually be feasible.
~ nv