Colonel Redvers Buller has also made a speech at Exeter,
in which, after some just remarks upon the danger which exists in our day that the General will be forgotten in his instruments, special correspondents not being able to see the working of a brain, and some regular Devon talk about Devon worthies, he defended the justice of the war. It was, he declares, impossible for Natal to become a quiet colony, while Zulus were threaten- ing peaceful farmers all along the country-side. They were always stealing cattle and threatening their owners, and a war to repress them was a " righteous " war. This is a very different argument from Sir Bartle Frere's, which was not that outrages 'occurred, but that a celibate, man-destroying machine was going to commit them by-and-by, and it seems open to an ob- jection. Did we tell Cetewayo that unless he hung a few of his cattle-lifting subjects, we should find it necessary to invade P He would have consented, and the war, if that were its reason, which, however, was not the case, might have been avoided. One seems to have heard, too, of people nearer home, Grahams, Kerrs, and the like, who lived under Natal conditions, and acquired a habit of defending themselves which made cattle- lifting very unprofitable. Will &LIMB cease to steal, because Cetewayo is in prison P
Previous page
