BOOKS.

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S LETTERS ON THE WAR.*

Mn. WINSToN Onunenum's letters from the front were well worth reprinting, for they are a good deal more than mere battle pictures. The writer has a political head, and sees with a statesman's eyes rather than with those of a soldier or a mere word-painter. The military point of view evidently interests him deeply, as also does the picturesque side of his work, for he is a true journalist; but what strikes

deepest is clearly that which has to do with the government of men and all that concerns the new State or States whose foundations are to be laid on the bones of the men that have

died in the war. While Mr. Winston Churchill was in captivity he talked and argued much with his captors, and from the instantaneous photographs, as it were, which he

took of these conversations emerge many useful things. It is very difficult to get even the thoughtful Englishman to understand what the Boer really means when he talks about his freedom and about his liberty being in danger. One little talk between Mr. Winston Churchill and a Boer shows the true Boer feeling as by a flash of lightning :-

"Then Spaarwater said. Yes, but we shall have to pay a tribute to your Queen.'—' Does Cape Colony ? ' I asked.—' Well, what about that ironclad ? '= A present, a free-will offering because they are contented —as you will be some day—under our flag.'—' No, no, old chappie, we don't want your flag ; we want to be left alone. We are free, you are not free.'—' How do you mean "not free" ?'—' Well, is it right that a dirty Kaffir should walk on the pavement—without a pass too ? That's what they do in your British Colonies. Brother ! Equal ! Ugh ! Free ! Not a bit. We know how to treat Kaffire Probing at ran- dom I bad touched a very sensitive nerve. We had got down from underneath the political and reached the social. What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule ? It is not Slagters Nek, nor Boomplatz, nor Majuba, nor the Jameson Raid. Those incidents only foster its growth. It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man. British government is associated in the Boer farmer's mind with violent social revolution. Black is to be proclaimed the same as white. The servant is to be raised against the master ; the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights. The dominant race is to be deprived of their superiority ; nor is a tigress robbed of her cubs more furious than is the Boer at this prospect."

Very sound and good is Mr. Winston Churchill's further

moralising on this point,—so good that we strongly advise our readers to look at it for themselves. We will not quote it, however, but will instead supply two lines out of the fundamental Constitution of the Transvaal Republic to show that this passionate feeling in regard to the native question is not the mere opinion of an individual Boer, but lies deep in the Boer race. Article IX. of the Constitution, published in

1889, declares as an essential and fundamental principle that "tie people will not .allOw any equalisation of the coloured inhabitants with the white.- Here is the plea for freedom expressed by Mr. Winston Churohill's Boer put into legal

language. Freedom means freedom to treat the native as the Iroer thinks he ought to be treated,—freedom to shove him off the pavement. Mr. Winston Churchill—did well in giving-the-

Prominence he has given to this unguarded remark of a Boer ,,._• T9actoo to Ladysmith, vi4 Pretoria. By Winston spencer ahurcbIll. .wanon Lonstaans and Co. PACI

soldier, for it is essentially an illuminating word. Equally illuminating is the conversation he had with a young man of Scotch extraction whom he found fighting on the side of the Boers. It shows far better than a hundred pages of argument and disquisition what we have lost in South Africa by not standing by our own people. A boy enemy offered the prisoner some cigarettes, and this was the conversation that followed :—

" How old are you ? Sixteen.'—' That's very young to ga and fight.' He shook his head sadly. What's your name? Cameron.'—' That's not a Dutch name ? '= No, I'm not a Dutch- man. My father came from Scotland.'—' Then why do you go and fight against the British How can I help it ? I live here. You must go when you're commandeered. They wouldn't let me off. Mother tried her best. But it's "come out and fight or leave the country" here, and we've got nothing but the farm.' —' The Government would have paid you compensation after- wards Ah ! that's what they told father last time He was loyal, and helped to defend the Pretoria laager. He lost every- thing, and he had to begin all over again.'—' So now you fight against your country P'—'I can't help it,' he repeated sullenly, you must go when you're commandeered.' And then he climbed down off the footboard, and I did not see him again —one piteous item of Gladstone's legacy—the ruined and abandoned loyalist in the second generation."

If the politicians would only remember these two facts, the Boer feeling towards the native and the bitterness left by our betrayal—not less wounding because unconscious—of the men who stood by us in the war of 1881, they would greatly better their chance of making a successful settlement after the war. We do not desire for a moment that in order to conciliate the Boers we should be unjust to the natives, or, again, that in order to conciliate the loyalists we should treat the Boers too harshly. We merely desire that both facts should be remembered, and the proper lessons drawn from them. These two feelings are factors in the situation that cannot be ignored.

On the whole, we can heartily recommend Mr. Winston Churchill's book as one from which a great deal may be drawn for the right understanding of the situation,—though we must express our regret that he writes so harshly and discourteously about the Army chaplains, basing apparently his strictures on one chaplain and a single sermon. The book has, no doubt, some of the defects of youth, but in the main it is an eminently sane and fair-minded criticism of a portion of the problems before the British people. That the writer has a very considerable future before him in the world of politics and action we cannot doubt. He has not only a good head for a political problem, but he has also wonderful eyes to observe, and a fluent pen to record. His eyes, indeed, are most re- markable, and appear to have lost nothing going on in the panorama of battle, but to have seen everything that ought to be seen by a special correspondent. We may, indeed, in regard to him and his future, parody and pervert a couplet from Pope,—written in part about an ancestress :—

"Another age shall Churchill's race surprise, And other Specials envy Winston's eyes."

Whether Mr. Winston Churchill will continue to surprise us in the future remains of course to be seen, but that all good special correspondents will wish to cultivate his power of noting and observing striking and sensational things is beyond a doubt.