The age-herald., 1902-01-05


 Io\ trial progress and territorial SS< - expansion, has taken at home a new and striking form. Thanks to our many patriotic societies tablets, stones and monuments are being placed and erected on noted battlefields to mark the spot where valiant people fighting for home and self-government resisted the British troops and their mercenary aux diaries. sa
 Few of our citizens in reading these inscriptions commemorative of glorious events experienced feeling other than that of pride. After a period of one hun dred and twenty years they are prone to | forget the horrors of war, of houses and farm buildings burned for no reason oth- | CT than to deprive the families of soldiers | of shelter and sustenance of property seized and destroyed of slaves deport-
 ed and sold in the West Indies of colon-
 ists imprisoned like cattle on prison ships
 to die of fever or starvation.
 We do not and should not bear malice; yet, 1t is well for us not to forget the suf- ferings of men who followed the emblem of liberty bare foot, i'll clad, to fight for 1t. or If the noble women who strug- gled to sustain their lives and those of their children with hearts sad for news from the army. A remembrance, perhaps, of the intense distress that wrung the hearts of our ancestors from Maine to Georgia when a united people made a common cause against British oppres- sion, may make us more susceptible to feelings of sympathy for another people who fighting to preserve for themselves and their descendants land to which their invader has no just right.
 In our war against England, we were colonists. England had rights rights, the colonists refused to recognize. At the out, set the main contention was that as British subjects we had right to be rep resented in Parliament and consequently to have voice not only in the matter of levying taxes, but in the making of the laws. English people supported the col onsts but were overruled by the influ- ence of the court. Removed from the in- f1uence of the court the colonists dared to resist principle of government to which the people of England reluctantly submit ted. But England had no such right in the Transvaal. Here the people were not her colonists. They did not speak the language of her people, share in their ideas of government, or initiate their cus- toms. The Boers were a people by them selves. They were not colony of Hol- land. An off-shoot of the Dutch, yet not
 
 people, simple, hardy fighting to become a nation. They were not traders.
 Among them came European and Eng fish adventurers To the south Cecil Rhodes built up British dependency and fattenedq on. the products of trade. Eng fish fiocked to the Transvaal and her diamonds and mineral wealth excited the British lust. Jameson's raid will in time receive It's proper recognition. History will record in England's exploits in its proper place. It will rank with her ex- ploits in India and her quests for negros on the Congo, as cargoes of slaves to fatten the wallets of Liverpool ship own CTS. It will adorn the pages made infa- nous by her murders in Dude, her mur- ders on the high seas. between the Con- go and Cuba and the United States, her murders in South Carolina and Georgia and her murders in Arcadia.
 British merchants have always used British arms Industrial England forced the war against the Boers. Her flag has been like the flag of an auctioneer it has been the emblem of sales or auctions. Wherever 1t has been planted it is em- blematic of commerce. No right was given to the British merchant to overturn the government of the Transvaal, to up- set it's laws or it's customs. If the Brit ish could not conform to the Boers' ways the door of departure was open to them Instead they sought methods of opposi- tion to the will of the people who had a right to the land and endeavored to force themselves into a position of con- trol And to do this they resorted to arms-arms of England.
 world can testify to the magnificent defense the hardy Boers have waged against the great armies of England. Men, who In every way resemble In the characteristics of magnificent manhood the American colonists hava, annie scenes of indescribable suffering battled with he- roic souls against odds too enormous to calculate. Lord Roberts returned to Eng land a proclaimed conquerer, and Lord Kitchener was gent b reconstruct the country and crush cut the few remaining sparks of the conhagration But with what result? In spite of the rigid cen sorship it has leeks d out from cources as authoritative assthe British War Office that the Boers are still not only uncon- quered but show ,io signs of submission Kitchener has adopted the tActics of the Lords Howe. Arm Calling. he dfered alms