Review of Reviews, 2012/06. 



history or tne Month. 



119 



objected that no such precise stipulation as to 

 eighteen months or as to the Cape Colony style of 

 responsible government is inserted in the Articles 

 of the Treaty of Vereeniging, the answer is that the 

 Boers dealt with us as if we were gentlemen, and not 

 as if we were horse coupers. Lord Kitchener is 

 accessible. The statements which he made to the 

 Boers, on the strength of which they laid down their 

 arms, have never been disputed by him ; they have 

 been constantly asserted by President Steyn and the 

 other negotiators. Are we going to shirk the fulfil- 

 ment of this obligation also ? It is a test question 

 which will put to the proof the much disputed point 

 whether the Liberals are any more to be relied upon 

 as honest men than the Tories. The latter no one 

 in South Africa will ever trust. But the Liberals 

 are now on their trial. 



of 

 the Chinese. 



Good comes out of evil, and 

 The Advantage although the importation of the 

 Chinese has been fraught with 

 much evil, it has at least brought 

 with it one compensating advantage. For now that 

 it is clearly declared that the future of Chinese la- 

 bour in the Transvaal is to be left to the decision of 

 the responsible Government of that Colony, both 

 parties wall be anxious to expedite the establishment 

 of responsible government. The mine owners see 

 now clearly enough that they have no chance of re- 

 taining their saffron-coloured masculine machinery if 

 the final decision rests with the democracy at home. 

 They think that they may possibly secure the sup- 

 port of a sufficient number of Boers to carry a 

 decision in favour of Chinese labour in a respon- 

 sible Colonial Government. It is true that the 

 chance is rather a forlorn one. The Boers who 

 spoke through General Botha declared frankly that 

 the only safety lay in the expatriation of the 

 Chinese. But some of the Boers — General de Wet, 

 for instance, and others of a speculative turn of 

 mind — would have no objection to have a few yel- 

 low boys to supplement the deficiency in the supply 

 of native labour. There is, therefore, a chance that 

 under a responsible Government the Chinese might 

 be allowed to stay ; therefore those who before the 

 Liberals came in were the stoutest opponents of re- 

 sponsible Government will now come over to the 

 other side. And as the Government at Home hear- 

 tily wishes to place the responsibility for the settle- 

 ment of the question on some other shoulders than 

 its own, there is a fair prospect that responsible Go- 

 vernment will be established in the two Colonies 

 before the end of the year. 



The thirty millions which Mr. 



That Thirty Chamberlain promised should be 



Millions. paid by the Transvaal towards the 



cost of the war is still unpaid. 



What is to be done about that? The answer is 



easy. The whole of that thirty millions must be 



paid, but every penny of it must be devoted to de- 



The European 

 Outlook. 



fraying the unpaid bills, the outstanding claims for 

 compensation which await examination and settle- 

 ment. The devastation wrought in the two Re- 

 publics entailed a destruction of private property — 

 inviolable according to the rules of civilised warfare 

 —estimated at anything between seventy and a hun- 

 dred millions sterling. In strict justice we ought to 

 pay every penny of this enormous sum. The thirty 

 millions levied upon the mines would enable 

 us to pay from live shillings to ten shillings in 

 the pound, and the immediate distribution of this 

 sum to those to whom it has long been overdue 

 would have a most healing effect upon South 

 Africa. At last the South Africans would begin to 

 feel there are honest people in England after all. 

 And that conviction will do more to knit South 

 Africa to the Empire than all the victories of Lord 

 Roberts and Lord Kitchener. 



There has been of late a sensible 

 movement both in Germany and 

 in Britain towards a saner view of 

 the relations of the two great 

 nations. But there is still an unjustifiable amount 

 of perturbation in some minds as to the possible out- 

 break of a foreign war. Germany, it is asserted, 

 wishes to seize the opportunity afforded by Russia's 

 effacement in order to attack France, and it is fur- 

 ther alleged that the Kaiser will find in the Confer- 

 ence on Morocco some pretext for wounding France. 

 It is mere moonshine. Germany has far more 

 reason to keep her powder dry and abstain from 

 foreign adventures than she has had since the 

 Kaiser came to the throne. With Russia in a blaze 

 on her eastern frontier, with the German barons 

 being burnt out of the Baltic provinces, with Poland 

 straining in the leash in order to re-establish her in- 

 dependence, with Austria in dissolution at her doors, 

 and with a navy which after all these sacrifices can 

 only put four battleships in the fighting line at the 

 range at which modern sea fights are decided, the 

 Kaiser would be a lunatic were he to contemplate a 

 wanton war with France — knowing as he does, from 

 the plain-spoken reasoning of Lord Lansdowne, that 

 in such a war France would not stand alone. The 

 French Government is much too sane to give any 

 reasonable pretext for a war by pressing its claims 

 on Morocco in such a way as to justify any breach 

 of the peace. The fact is that all these war scares 

 are the echoes of the anti-German agitation so per- 

 sistentlv carried on by half-a-dozen wrong-headed 

 alarmists on the English press, all of them, be it 

 noted, without a single exception belonging to the 

 party which at the election was judged and con- 

 demned by the British nation. 



That the Kaiser and his Chan- 

 cellor should have done their best 

 to exploit the indiscretion of British 

 journalists in order to secure popu- 

 lar support for their new navy scheme is natural 



From the 



German Point 



of View. 



enough. 



Nor can anyone wonder that they are dis- 



