Real Progress.

July 2, 1900.

The Emperor of Russia, true to his noble initiative, has taken the first step towards the constitution of the Permanent International Tribunal which it was decided to create at the Hague Conference. Each of the signatory Powers, it will be remembered, undertook to nominate as available arbitrators eminent persons of good standing, who would hold themselves in readiness to act as arbitrators whenever any international dispute arose necessitating the impanelling of a Court of Arbitration. Everything depends upon the calibre of the men whose names are entered upon the roster from which the arbitrators will be chosen. Hence the great importance of the Russian initiative. Nothing can demonstrate more clearly the status of the new Permanent Court than the high standing of the men nominated by the Tsar to represent his Empire on its roster. They are four in number: (1) M. de Martens, who presided over the Venezuela Arbitration Tribunal; (2) M. Pobedonostzeff, who is best known as the Procurator of the Holy Synod, but who, long before he attained that post, was well known as one of the soundest lawyers and best informed men in Russia; (3) M. de Mouravieff, the present Minister of Justice, brother of the late Foreign Minister; and (4) M. de Frisch, who is president of the Legislative Department of the Council of the Empire. They are beyond all question four of the ablest and most distinguished men in Russia. The new Permanent Court could not have a sounder nucleus.

THE WORLD.

Whom will England nominate?

If the British Government follows the excellent lead given it by the Tsar, there is no lack of competent and capable men available for the post. We have no longer Lord Herschell, it is true; but if Lord Salisbury were to nominate Lord Pauncefote, Lord Russell of Killowen, Sir Robert Reid and Sir Edward Clarke, Britain would be admirably represented by men whose standing, experience and general reputation would be no whit inferior to that of their Russian colleagues. To be enrolled on the roster of possible arbitrators will become one of the most coveted of all international distinctions. It is true that all the Russians appointed and all of the British suggested are lawyers. But they are also men of wide experience, statesmen and administrators; and, after all, the knowledge of law is no disqualification for the post of an international judge.

The Progress of

The Overruling Power which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will, Internationalism. seems to be at work in the Far East, where stirring events are afoot, some account of which will be found in "The Topic of the Month." The outbreak of nationalism in China has had as its immediate result the precipitation of the latent internationalism of Europe and America into the visible concrete shape of an international navy and an international army. Japan also takes her place in the international ranks. sence of a common danger menacing the common interests of all Western Powers has brought about a practical federation of the West, the like of which has never been seen, even in the days of the Crusades.

The pre

One Benefit

of

One excellent and altogether unexpected result of internationalism Internationalism. in action is that it fails to excite warlike passions among the people. This is as it should be. The use of force cannot be forsworn in international affairs, but it is at least an immense advance to have discovered the existence of an instrument the employment of which excites none of the savage enthusiasm which all national wars arouse. The fate of Admiral Seymour and of the Foreign Legations at Pekin was a thousandfold more terrible than the worst which threatened BadenPowell at Mafeking, or General White at Ladysmith. The heroism displayed by the international forces in endeavouring to relieve Tientsin and to rescue Admiral Seymour was far greater than anything which General French had occasion to show in

No End to
the

African War.

relieving Kimberley, or Colonel Mahon in relieving Mafeking. But because the honours were shared with Russians, Germans, Japs, and Americans, the Man in the Street displayed little emotion and no enthusiasm. The fact is that international force is police force, whereas national wars are always more or less of a retrogression to the savage lust of sheer barbarism. As the great formula of progress is to substitute the policeman for the soldier, we welcome this evidence of the result of widening the area of international action as affording good ground that it may be possible to use force even in international affairs without letting loose the devil all round and setting the nations aflame with the fire of hell. Another very reassuring, although exceedingly painful, fact which makes for progress is the prolongation of the struggle in South Africa. The way of the transgressor is hard, and it would be a very bad thing for the transgressor himself if it was made smooth before his feet. Lord Roberts occupied Pretoria, after a very slight resistance, on June 5. One at least of the sapient oracles of the Man in the Street announced the news as "The End of the War." It is now the 1st of July, and the war is so far from being ended that Lord Roberts has declared he cannot allow a single man to be withdrawn from Africa for service in China. We have landed 204,000 soldiers in South Africa and have provided equipment for 30,000 Colonials. The Boers have not 30,000 fighting men left. But seven-to-one odds, in the opinion of Lord Roberts, must be kept up if he is to put the thing through. Michael Davitt reports that the Boers have ammunition enough yet for two years' fighting, with ample store of food. In his opinion the war is just about to enter upon its most serious and determined character. The newspapers publish the usual mendacious nonsense about the impending collapse of all resistance; but somehow or other the collapse does not come off. This is no doubt terrible for our poor soldiers, and terrible also for our brother Boers, but nothing would be so terrible as the easy triumph of exulting wrong.

began to wage upon the long line of our communications between Bloemfontein and Pretoria :

On June 3rd De Wet captured a convoy of forty waggons with stores and ammunition for the Highland Brigade, then at Heilbron. The capture was made halfway between Heilbron and Vredefort Road.

.

On June 4th Major Haig attempted the relief of the convoy, but failed, and returned to the railway.

De Wet moved south, and on the following day he appeared astride the railway and demolished Roodevaal Bridge. June 6th found De Wet forcing his way north, working destruction on the way. He occupied Vredefort Road Station and compelled Major Haig to retire six miles north to find a defensible position.

On June 7th Lord Methuen arrived at Heilbron, where General MacDonald was very short of supplies, his men having been on quarter rations for six days.

Meantime, De Wet, whose force had been largely augmented by his successes, had detached Commandant Nel to attack Rhenoster. He effected a surprise, attacking in the moonlight, and the Derbyshire Militia surrendered after having one hundred casualties.

On June 9th Lord Methuen moved out from Heilbron to re-occupy the railway. On the 10th he and the force from the Vaal concentrated at Vredefort Road, the Boers, being still in the vicinity.

On June 11th the whole command under Lord Methuen moved south on both sides of the railway, and scattered a Boer commando at Reitvlei.

On June 14th the enemy again appeared at Rhenoster. They made a night attack on two construction trains, where Colonel Girouard was personally superintending repairs. The working party resisted stubbornly and were extricated by the timely arrival of support from a post to the south.

Lord Methuen returned from the east without having effected the capture of the Boer rearguard.

Add to this list the fact that on June 23rd De Wet cut up the post at Honing Spruit, broke the line of railway and telegraph, burnt three culverts, and only retired when reinforcements arrived too late to save the line.

one thousand more than those who have been killed in battle. Nor is there any sign of the deadly drain being stopped. We have lost in killed, wounded, prisoners and disease nearly 40,000 able-bodied men, two for every one who signed the famous petition of the Uitlanders which was used as a pretext to bring on this war. To get the franchise for 20,000 Uitlanders two years earlier, rather than two years later, all this hideous expenditure of the health and life of the nation's youth has been incurred. Was there ever such disproportion between object aimed

vaal and Orange Free State, whose land has been swept by a besom of flame. The sufferings of mere Boers do not appeal to the tender hearts of our Christian Jingoes. They are pleased with it rather. They clamour for more severity. They applaud the firing of the Boer homesteads, and indite hymns which would have disgraced a Carthaginian worshipper of Moloch to the "bloody baynit." We are now concerned solely about the sufferings of our own soldiers, poor fellows, who for the most part had no more option about taking part in the war than the

90,000 horses we have sent to perish in the veldt. What does the war mean to them? Read the following extract from the description given by Mr. Burdett-Coutts, M.P., of the condition of one of the field hospitals near Bloemfontein. In this particular hospital, he says

there were 316 patients, of whom half were typhoids. Their condition was almost indescribable. The tents were bell tents, in which usually six or eight soldiers sleep. In many of these tents there were ten typhoid cases lying closely packed together, the dying against the convalescent, the man in his "crisis " pressed against the

man hastening to it. There was not room to step between them. With no beds or mattresses, and only forty-two stretchers in the whole hospital, it followed that 274 patients had to be on the earth. There was a great scarcity of blankets, and no patient could have more than one, with a waterproof sheet, between his body and the ground. The ground is hard as stone, and at night the temperature falls to freezing-point. There were no sheets or pillow-cases or pretence of bed linen of any kind; only the coarse rug grated against the sensitive skin burning with fever. The heat of these tents in the midday sun was overpowering, their odours sickening. Men lay with their faces covered with flies in black clusters too weak to raise a hand to brush them off, trying in vain to dislodge them by painful twitching of the features. There was no one to do it for them. At night there were not enough to prevent those in the delirious stage from getting up and wandering about the camp half naked in the bitter cold. In one tent, where some slept and others lay with eyes open and staring, a case of perforation" was groaning out his life huddled against his neighbour on the ground. Men had not only to see, but often to feel, others die. It was a sad and sickening spectacle this, which I describe exactly as my eyes saw it, and without exaggeration or excuse.

it all.

But

Not one

"A sad and sickening spectacle " The Moral of truly, and one for which it will be well if some one or more of those responsible were summarily hanged off hand. This failure of the richest Government in the world to provide adequately for its dying soldiers. is a scandal which will ring round the world. that is only a single page out of the infernal chapter in which is written the annals of this war. single man would have been thus tortured to death in this hideous fashion if Ministers had consented to act upon the principles which they professed at the Hague, and had accepted President Kruger's urgent and repeated appeal to allow the whole question to be referred to arbitration. They would not listen to any proposal of arbitration. They rejected arbitration. They chose war. Now war means Hell let loose, and one page of the sulphurous record is written in the story of that solitary hospital tent. It is the penalty which our boys are paying for the sins of their rulers. And the end is not yet. Of the incidents The Progress of last month's the Campaign. campaigning there is not much to say. Lord Roberts rushed Johannesburg and Pretoria, President Kruger retiring with his artillery and treasure intact to the north-eastern

of

corner of the Transvaal, where the Boers declare their intention to hold out to the last. Pretoria being in the hands of Lord Roberts, the position of the Boers in front of Laing's Nek became untenable. It was evacuated, and Sir Redvers Buller, entering virtually unopposed, joined hands with Lord Roberts. The Boers as usual carried off all their guns and most of their stores. Although we are in possession of both their capitals, they have not only saved nearly all their artillery, but thanks to the cannon captured from us they have more guns than when the war began. In the Free State General De Wet has been busy severing communications and making prisoners. General Rundle down near Ficksburg continues to be on the point of cornering the Boer commandoes, but when the decisive moment arrives they slip through his fingers. So the war drags on, and is likely to drag on for many a weary month. Joubert is dead and Cronje is a prisoner. But General Typhoid is a far more formidable foe than any commandant of them all. And while we are held by the heels in South Africa we are guaranteed against all temptation to quarrel with our neighbours in China or elsewhere.

NPE Photograph by]

[G. Drake, Slough.