n8 



The Review of Reviews, 



February 20, 1906. 



The Baroness von Suttner. 



The Norwegian Storthing conferred the Nobel Peace Prize 

 lor this year on Baroness Bertha von Suttner, whose novel, 

 " Lay Down Tour Arms," is said to have had a great in- 

 fluence on the Tsar. She is an Austrian, and has formed 

 many Austrian and German peace unions. 



'sent, and in the future. It would be the worst pos- 

 sible beginning of a new regime to start by break- 

 ing contracts even with the Chinese. 



The first question in South Africa 



The Question which dominates all other ques- 



_ of ,. tions is this. Are we going to keep 



Compensation. , , , , ° ° A 



our pledged word or are we not i 



And this is a very practical and an immediately 

 pressing and most urgent question. For there are 

 pledges which we have not fulfilled, obligations 

 which we have not discharged. The British public 

 is not aware of the fact, which unfortunately is a 

 fact the reality of which is absolutely indisputable, 

 that to this day we have not paid our debts and 

 have shirked keeping our obligations to our South 

 African fellow-subjects. Nothing was more clearly 

 asserted by the Rules of War agreed to at the 

 Hague Conference than the inviolability of private 

 property in time of war. Our officers, acting like 

 civilised men, when they found it necessary to com- 

 mandeer the flocks and the herds of the population 

 whose country they invaded, being unable to pay 

 in cash down, gave the owners of the goods sold 

 under compulsion receipts in the name of the Bri- 

 tish Government, which they declared in all good 

 faith would be redeemed at the first opportunity. 

 The existence of these promissory notes, or " chits " 

 as thev call them in India, was brought before Mr. 

 Chamberlain's attention when he visited South 

 Africa. He at once, speaking as Colonial Secre- 



tary, in the name of his Sovereign, declared that 

 every such note was as good security as a Bank of 

 England note. It followed as a matter of course 

 that their owners had only to present them and 

 they would be paid in full. But although three 

 years have gone by these notes are not paid to this 

 day. It is a scandalous outrage upon the good 

 faith of the Empire. We have dishonoured the 

 signatures of officers of the King and made our- 

 selves Imperial liars before the whole of South 

 Africa. 



The first thing to be done, there- 



The first Thing fore, is to appoint a Commission, 



to be Done. say, of the Chief Justices of the 



African Colonies, with a thoroughly 

 competent Treasury official, charged to examine 

 into and report upon all claims for compensation 

 which are outstanding against us in South Africa. It 

 is not asked that one single penny shall be paid with- 

 out careful examination. But it is absolutely necessary 

 that every bond fide claim which is declared by such 

 a commission to be just shall be paid to the utter- 

 most farthing. It is idle to say that we have no 

 money. We have no more right to bilk our credi- 

 tors in one colony than in another. We bought 

 Australian mutton and South African beef. We 

 gave bills for both. We have discharged our debts 

 to the Australians. Why should we try to shirk 

 payment of our just debts to the South Africans? 

 If we had to make any difference it would be more 

 politic to cheat any creditors rather than those 

 whom we have just converted by force into unwilling 

 subjects, and whose confidence in our honesty and 

 good faith it ought to be our first object to estab- 

 lish. But so long as there is a single claim in South 

 Africa which we refuse to adjudicate upon, and, if 

 found just, to pay, we shall be branded, and justly 

 branded, in the eyes of our bilked creditors as a set of 

 swindlers whose word can only be said to be as good 

 as their bond, because both are equally worthless. 



The second thing to be done is to 

 Responsible establish responsible Government 

 Government. in both the Transvaal and the 



Free State, and to establish it at 

 once. There must be no fooling with the simu- 

 lacrum of a representative Government, which was 

 set up in the Transvaal to evade the due perform- 

 ance of our treaty obligations. When the Boers 

 consented to lay down their arms they were assured 

 by Lord Kitchener, to whom they were told to apply 

 as the exponent of the will of the Crown, that re- 

 sponsible Government as it is in the Cape Colony 

 should be established within eighteen months of the 

 peace in the Free State, and a little later in the 

 Transvaal. Three years have passed, and not even 

 a semblance of responsible Government has been 

 established in the Free State, and only a shadow 

 of a representative Government is promised, but is 

 not yet established, in the Transvaal. If it be 



