THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR.
[TO TIIE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Once more you assure us that the war was unavoidable and is just: May one who owes the Spectator much ask whether the acceptance of arbitration offered and pressed upon Britain by her enemy would not have avoided the war ? The Spectator urged Britain to reverse its refusal and arbitrate the Venezuela dispute at the request of the United States ; why did it not do this when the Transvaal offered arbitration and it was refused ? The ordinary politician is expected to bend to the popular breeze, and is therefore in favour of war, for that always carries the masses ; but we have been trained to expect a higher standard of action from the Spectator. The Colonies are assured that if ever they wish to break the connection with the Motherland not a finger will be raised in opposition; so said the Colonial Secretary to Australasia recently—this goes without saying— and thus remaining free nations—free to take up independent existence whenever desired—they become desirous and proud to 'remain part of the Empire upon these terms of equality. The mere suspicion that they were bound irrevocably to the Empire and would be held by force would work prompt separation; this also goes without saying. Now, if it would be wrong !-o go to war with a Colony which desired to set up for itself, how is war right to establish British ascendency in South Africa by force, and destroy the independent existence of two Republics? Why has Cape Colony not the same moral right as Canada to independence if desired by a majority of its citizens? This is what the writer would like the Spectator to explain. It cannot rest upon the ground taken by the ordinary popularity-hunting politician : "We - have not the power necessary to coerce Canada; We would if we could ; but we can coerce these' small communities in South Africa, and we shall." The Spectator is fond of quoting the orders of Grant and Sherman to justify the devastation of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, what has it to say to the recent hanging as rebels of citizens of Cape Colony? There is no American precedent for this. Finally, one more inquiry. Does the Spectator believe that far distant white civilised peoples can be whipped into becoming loyal subjects of the Empire, and that the Empire would be strengthened by forcing such unwilling people in? It seems to the writer that the prestige of the Empire is seriously impaired by the spectacle of Britain forcing itself upon people who spurn the con- nection. Such are the enormous advantages to distant Colonies of being admitted as part of the Empire, provided they are left free, as present Colonies are, to set up for them- selves, if desired, that the Empire in the future would attract millions of loyal and proud subjects in many parts of the world, and hold them long, for thousands whom the use of force and the denial of "every shred of independence" can possibly secure and hold, and who, being coerced for the time, could never be trusted, or become other than a source of weakness in time of danger; for the desire for national inde- pendence, once firmly implanted in a white civilised people, has rarely been extinguished.. The seventeen Republics of America were once all Colonies, and each felt the divine spark of desire for its own national life, and not one failed to establish independence, and not one but is to-day a source of profit and advantage, and thus of strength, to Britain. The South African Republics would not be less so; probably, as in the ease of the United States, more advantageous to Britain than if they had remained Colonies ; so that when Britain annexes the two South African Republics against the ardent lenging of their people for a continuance of their national existence, and through martial law and the hanging of citizens of Cape Colony as rebels suppresses for the moment active hostilities, it seers to the writer "Her gain is loss."—I am,
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