The Daily Chronicle, which is rendering excellent service to the
cause of sane Imperialism, published last Saturday a striking commentary on Lord Roberts's official denial of one of the worst of the many atrocious libels on the British Army now being circulated in Germany. Mr. Maxwell, the Standard correspondent, in his spirited denunciation of this campaign of calumny had declared that the libels were manufactured in Germany. The Daily Chronicle has unquestionably tracked down the lying story of the maltreatment of the Boer women in the Irene camp to a leaflet printed in America by Charles D. Pierce, " Consul-General of the Orange Free State," repro- ducing an interview with a certain Fred La Velle which ap- peared in the Clarion. Ledger of Jackson, Missouri, for May 14th, 1901. On the back of these leaflets are anonymous letters, purporting to come from English people, ordering supplies of these documents, of which they had come to know "though the Stop-the-War Committee office in London," or through Pro-Boer journals. One of the leaflets prints a statement about Kitchener's "Hints to Kill Prisoners," which is given on the authority of what purports to be an extract from a Pro-Boer newspaper in London. The trail is followed up one stage further by a correspondent in Monday's Chronicle, who quotes from Mr. W. T. Stead's circular, " British Atrocities in South Africa," issued on November 7th, 1900, a passage in which the writer, after charging the Government with inflicting death by famine on women and children, asks : " Is cannibalism less awful than the enforced degradation of matron and maid compelled by hunger to submit to the extremity of shame in British camp and Kaffir kraal ?" The " foul and filthy lies " are in their origin neither of German nor American fabrication. Calumny, like charity, too often begins at home.
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