ARY

The Threatened continues and persists.

Dissolution.

September 1st, 1900. The talk about an early Dissolution But the probability increases that this Dissolution of Despair will be postponed till the New Year. By that time, if no further disasters have come to us as the result of the fumbling and blundering of Mr. Chamberlain and his colleagues, it is possible Ministers may have some success to show somewhere upon which they may go to the country. At present the proposal to go to the constituencies upon a khaki issue appeals strongly to our sense of humour. A Government which has been unable to finish in twelve months a war which the country was assured would be finished easily in three, is hardly in a position to make a triumphant appeal to the electors on the score of its military achievements-even if elsewhere it had done wonders for the efficiency of the "men in khaki." But inasmuch as it is now undisputed that the Government by its policy in South Africa has denuded the country of its army and left us exposed-but for the Navy-to be overrun and conquered by either France or Germany, it would seem that they had better appeal to the country on their social legislation such as it is than upon the khaki issue. As social reformers Ministers have not achieved brilliant success. But as a Ministry of War they stand convicted of failure.

A Khaki Test.

Ministers will be judged not solely upon their merits, but by the contrast between the popular expectations and the Ministerial performances. It may have been very absurd, but the eager advocates for war twelve months ago succeeded in convincing the Man in the Street that he had only to send out General Buller with 70,000 men to crush all the resistance of the Boers like a steam-roller. General Buller was to eat his Christmas dinner in Pretoria, and after a short and brilliant campaign British ascendency was to be so decisively vindicated in South Africa that we should never again have any trouble, military or political, in that quarter. That was what the electors expected last October, To-day they are waking up to the fact that nothing has turned out according to contract. Ministers have not put the job through. 250,000 men have not been sufficient to steam-roller flat the resistance of the Boers. We have already lost in one way or another 50,000 of our best

soldiers and have "swattered away" seventy millions of money. The net result of all this strain and waste is that the Transvaal is not yet conquered, and Ministers calmly tell us that as the reward for our unparalleled exertions we shall have to keep a garrison of 45,000 men locked up in South Africa for an indefinite time. Instead of strengthening our position in that part of the world, their policy has weakened it so much that it requires nine armed men to keep the flag flying where one would have been ample before the war. Surely never in recent times has there been so cruel a popular disappointment, so complete a falsification. of all expectations, so exact a confirmation of the warnings of the Opposition, as this war, for the making and the waging of which the electorate is expected in sheer gratitude to make Mr. Chamberlain Prime Minister.

What the Men in Khaki Think.

As for the khaki issue, it is safe to say that if we could but bring back our lost legions now Ladysmithed in Africa and distribute them throughout the constituencies so that the electors could have a fair chance of hearing what the men in khaki think of Mr. Chamberlain and his administration, the defeat of the Government would be overwhelming. Even now the men in khaki who have come back are the most effective electioneerers against the Ministry; for they have seen how Mr. Chamberlain wages war. They know the kind of country for which he has spilt so much of British blood, and they know, too, that the men whom our great manslaying machine is cumbrously endeavouring to exterminate are quite as good fellows as ourselves, as civilised, as Christian, and a good deal more humane. "I never had a bit of home feeling all the time I was in Africa," said one returned Tommy, "excepting when I was taken by the Boers. They did me up proper, I can tell you." And the men in khaki have much to say also of the hideous callousness with which they were treated when down with sickness-how they were left for weeks unwashed, their eyes tormented with flies they were too weak to brush away, their bodies swarming with vermin, stinted in medicine, cheated in food. These escapees from the Hell which we have let loose in South Africa are just the kind of witnesses whose presence in a constituency, would confound any Ministerial candidate who dared to appeal to the people on a khaki issue.

What has

the Government done with the

Army?

The record of the Government in Africa, where they have shattered our military prestige and Ladysmithed our only available force of trained soldiers, is not the only material upon which the electors voting on a khaki issue would have to take into account. In what condition have Ministers left the heart of the Empire? Is the country capable of standing four-square to all the winds that blow, from whatever hostile quarter they may come? Are our arsenals full? Have our men got guns, or our guns cartridges? Mr. Chamberlain's brother has had big orders for high explosives-that is true, but the Ministry that came in on cordite may go out on lyddite, if, despite the favouritism shown to Kynoch and Co. of Birmingham, it should be proved that we have been left practically defenceless against an invader! Our barracks, they say, are full of men and boys. But you cannot improvise an army out of a mob. Have we an army at this moment capable of taking the field if, in the temporary absence of our fleet, a force of fifty thousand disciplined and well-equipped soldiers

were thrown upon our shores? That is the first question the constituencies have a right to ask, and if it is not answered satisfactorily any Government standing on a khaki issue is self-condemned. The more these questions are weighed by the nation the more clearly will it appear that to dissolve on khaki will be strategy as mad and as suicidal as the reckless frontal attacks with which our generals courted disaster in the early stages of the South African war.

Testimony.

There is alas! no lack of adequate Lord Wolseley's evidence as to the alarming condition of our second line of defence. Lord Wolseley, our veteran Commanderin-Chief, now on the eve of retiring from his high office, has placed publicly on record his gravely considered verdict upon the present state of our home army. We have a miscellaneous crowd of undrilled and imperfectly armed men and boys in our barracks, and a vigorous effort has been made within the last few months to bring the Aldershot division into fighting shape. Aldershot is our chief military camp. There, if anywhere, we might expect to find the best

results in the shape of military efficiency which our rulers have to show. But how do things stand? Lord Wolseley went down to Aldershot to see on a field day how the Best Best of the troops available for home defence could acquit themselves on ground with every inch of which they were perfectly familiar, in sham manoeuvres against enemies not one of whom had a ball cartridge in his pouch. He came, he saw, and he went home dismayed, to write for publication an explicit declaration that the Aldershot division-our Best Best-was absolutely incapable of taking the field as an organised military force! If this be the state of affairs at Aldershot, we can imagine how things stand in other places. The fact is, we are in the same position as France on the eve of Sedan, and we shall be lucky indeed if we do not suffer a similar disaster.

machine available for the defence of our shores might be overlooked. But at the head of the Ministry we have Lord Salisbury, who has warned us that the heart of our Empire is in imminent peril from a blow which would give the coup de grâce to our very existence, and his policy is poisoned by the presence in his councils of a colleague whom every foreign Power regards as the embodiment of reckless and insolent aggression. Under these circumstances an appeal to the country on a khaki issue compels the electors to judge Ministers primarily upon their military record. To Cæsar they have appealed, to Cæsar they must go. And to add to their condemnation the Times publishes from "an Indian officer' a statement on Our Armaments in India," which the Ministerialist National Review thus summarises :—

The long and the short of it is that the armaments of our Indian Empire are hopelessly inadequate and largely obsolete, and that the Indian Government are totally unprepared for the struggle for which they were supposed to be preparing for many years, and on which they have admittedly spent many millions. The personnel of the Army is clearly insufficient for a first-class war, while the matériel is conspicuous by its deficiencies. The supply of transport is miserable, our guns are too few, and the

Nylstroom Occupied by B.P. 26th

odile R.

21st

Olifants R.

Pilgrim's Rest

ROBERTS

Middelburg

Elands R.

Rustenburg

relieved 5th

DE WET 17

SMITH-DORRIEN

Frederickstad

Potchefstroom

Klerksdorp

Krugersdorp

Banks

24th

Lindique

METHUEN

Rietzburg

27th

30th

Belfast Wonderfontein Van Wyks Vley

BULLER

22nd

Amesfoort Paardekop

Nelspruit

Barberton

SWAZILAND

A Case for Root and Branch Reform.

The crisis is far too serious for indulgence in the arid tu quoques of party. We are face to face with the same phenomenon that confronted France at the close of the Second Empire. An era of prolonged material prosperity has sapped the soundness of our governing classes. Society has gone rotten at the top. The Army, which is most closely connected with the smart set, suffers most. There is no personal corruption, but there is little professional capacity. We have all been more or less spoiled by luxury. The time has come for a clean sweep. Hitherto we have but tinkered at Army Reform. The task will now have to be taken in hand in grim earnest. The axe will have to be laid to the root of the tree. Hitherto the officering of the Army has been practically confined to the sons of the rich and a pretty mess they have made of it. The note of the new order of things in the Army will be a free career for

all who are able-even though they are poor. A great military disaster such as would at this moment inevitably overwhelm us if we were to be involved in war with any first-class Power may be necessary before we can democratise our Army. At present it is a preserve, if not of the plutocracy, at least of the handful of well-to-do people who assume that, as they possess the wealth, they monopolise the capacity of the country. It would be odd if the Socialist régime were to be established via the Army.

The War
in

South Africa.

The probability of an early Dissolution has been increased by the successes which have been achieved by Lord Roberts and General Buller in the Transvaal and by General Hunter in the Orange Free State. General Olivier has been captured and about 4,000 Boers, and the last organised fighting force in the Orange Free State have been made prisoners and despatched to Ceylon. In the Transvaal General Roberts, advancing along the railway, compelled the retreat of General Botha from the carefully prepared positions which he had taken up to defend Machadodorp, and placed himself in occupation of the railway to within twenty miles of Koomati Poort. It is not very difficult to turn a position when there are only 5,000 men opposed to 50,000, and Botha's retreat seems to have been compelled by the turning movement of General French. But although the Boers have been worsted and are apparently very much discouraged, there is no evidence that either Botha, De Wet, or President Kruger has yet decided to throw up the sponge.

The Transvaal Annexed.

Lord Roberts has felt sufficiently encouraged by the retreat of General Botha to proclaim the annexation of the Transvaal to the British Empire, in accordance with a Royal Warrant dated July 4thof all days in the year! But although annexed, one half of the country is still outside the pale of British occupation. Even while Lord Roberts was winning his victory at Dalmanutha, Theron's scouts had seized a railway station close to Johannesburg and captured and burned a convoy train of thirty-eight trucks. General De Wet has eluded all attempts to capture him, and has returned to the Orange Free State, where he is still at large and capable of doing as much mischief as ever to our ways and communications. Reports are current as to the exhaustion of the Boers' supplies of ammunition and food. After the defeat of Dalmanutha they voluntarily released the private soldiers, some 3,000 in number, whom they had taken prisoners, and the Boers in the Transvaal are beginning to use Martini

Henrys with black powder. Of course, if the Boer resistance were suddenly to collapse, Mr. Chamberlain's desire to hurry on an appeal to the country under an old register would be greatly increased, but it would be running a great risk to force a premature Dissolution with the chance that the Ministerial speeches claiming a renewal of public confidence might appear side by side with the reports of fresh British reverses and a continuous increase of the savagery with which we are waging war in the Transvaal.

The attempt on the part of our officers to wage war on civilised Fire and Sword. and humane principles, which was persisted in for a little time, has now been definitely abandoned. Looting wholesale seems to be practised without any attempt at hindrance, especially by the South African Colonials under General Brabant, who appear to be establishing for themselves a reputation like Kirke's Lambs or Claverhouse's Dragoons. General Roberts, who had first endeavoured to carry on the war in accordance with the principles of international law, has succumbed to the savage colonial sentiment in the midst of which he is living. One of the latest despatches proclaims that thirty homesteads must be given to the flames in reprisal of an interruption of the railway communications. That the owners of these homesteads had anything to do with the roving band who cut the railway is not even alleged. This is in accord with the blind policy of vengeance which is of all others least calculated to facilitate the pacification of the country. I had an interesting conversation in Paris the other day with the Dutch Minister of the Colonies. He told me that the practice of burning down houses and villages as reprisals had been tried by Holland in Atchin, but had proved a total failure. Experience proved that there was no method so certain to reinforce the ranks of the insurgents and extend the area of the insurrection as the burning of houses and the destruction of homes. Hence any Dutch officer who supplemented the sword by the torch would be instantly cashiered. In confirmation of this it may be noted that it is reported in South Africa that General De Wet would long ago have laid down his arms if Lord Kitchener had not wreaked an unworthy vengeance on a brave foe by giving orders for the destruction of De Wet's homestead. These orders, it is said, were carried out to the letter under the eyes of De Wet who, from a neighbouring kopje, witnessed the burning of his comfortable farmstead. All the trees in the orchard were cut down or torn up, his live-stock was butchered,

411 Boers, whose dead bodies were found on the various battlefields. So that the process of reducing the personnel of the Boers by continued military attrition has made some progress. Our own losses have mounted up, according to the official reports, to more than 40,000 men, to which additions must be made for the sick and wounded not enumerated, which brings up the total to more than 50,000. Of course we can better afford to lose 50,000 men than the Boers 500. But notwithstanding this the spirit of the people is so far from being broken that Lord Roberts, borrowing a leaf from the policy adopted by General Weyler in Cuba, is now making war upon women and children. We read that:

Lord Roberts has issued a proclamation declaring that all burghers in districts occupied by British forces, except those who have sworn the oath of neutrality, will be regarded as prisoners of war and transported; and all buildings, structures, and farms where the enemy's scouts are harboured will be liable to be razed to the ground. All fines under the former proclamation will be rigorously exacted, and prisoners are warned to acquaint her Majesty's forces of the presence of the enemy upon their farms, otherwise they will be regarded as aiding and abetting the enemy.