priety of allowing any of the indignation excited by the Boer war to find a personal application on the visit of the King to the Fatherland.

The King's First Utterances.

The expectations--baseless expectations, it must be admitted-indulged in in some quarters that the King might signalise his accession by intimating his desire that the war in South Africa should be brought to a close by the immediate concession of something like the Canadian Constitution to South Africa, were disappointed. But within the limits which custom and precedent have fixed for the action of the Sovereign, the King has not begun badly. He has not exercised his prerogative of mercy, as it was fondly hoped he would do. by a large section of American opinion, by releasing Mrs. Maybrick, who, whether guilty or not, was undoubtedly convicted on inadequate evidence; but he has been diligent in the discharge of the business of his high office, and his public utterances have not been without dignity. There is general satisfaction expressed as to the fact that the Queen's objection to be described as the “Queen Consort" has been sustained by her husband. It is expected that Her Majesty will shortly pay a visit to Copenhagen, where she will enjoy a brief but welcome rest after the trials of the last month. Her Majesty, it was noticed, displayed much more outward and visible signs of emotion during the funeral than any of her sisters. She is devoted to her grandson, Prince Eddie, who walked in the funeral procession from Windsor Castle to the mausoleum holding the hand of his grandmother.

The Royal Visit

to Australia.

In accordance with the wish of the late Queen, the programme of the Royal visit to Australia is not only to be carried out, but it is to be extended so as to include New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. The Duke and Duchess of York will sail from Portsmouth in the Ophir on the 16th with a suitable escort, and their visit to the Antipodes, although shorn of some of the scenic splendour which might have attended it had the Queen not died, will nevertheless be a very notable pageant. The extension of the tour to the other colonies will emphasise the increased importance which will be paid to Greater Britain in the new reign.

"Pay, Pay, Pay!"

The King's speech on the opening of Parliament, although of phenomenal length, foreshadowed a very meagre legislative programme. The first session of the new Parliament will be devoted

chiefly to providing a Civil List for the new Sovereign, and to voting the supplies, first for the prosecution of the African War, and secondly for the enormously increased expenditure demanded by the Secretary of War and the First Lord of the Admiralty. The weekly outgo for the war is stated to be about 1 millions sterling; the amount already spent is returned as £90,000,000, and it is estimated, although it is not officially admitted, that it will cost from £180,000,000 to £200,000,000 before British paramountcy can be finally asserted in South Africa. This, however, is but a fraction of the expenditure which is entailed by the war. Consols have dropped

from 117 to 97, and it is expected that before the end of the year they will be nearer 90 than 100. The interest upon £200,000,000 at 3 per cent. is £6,000,000 a year; but unless the rumours of the lobby are altogether at fault, the British public must prepare itself for a permanent addition to the army and navy estimates that will not fall far short of £10,000,000. The alarming rate of increase of expenditure upon the fighting services in Great Britain is a melancholy commentary upon the Standstill proposal submitted by the Emperor of Russia to the Hague Conference. It is worthy of note, however-and may be commended to those who are always casting doubt upon the good faith of the Tsar-that the Russian army estimates, which were published last month, show that the Russian Government has been faithful to the programme of the Emperor. Russia last year was at war with the Chinese Empire, as we were at war with the South African Republics; but instead of making the outbreak of this war the pretext for an enormous increase of the war estimates, the Russian military Budget is almost exactly the same this year as it was last. The Tsar is practising his precept in this respect, but there is alas! no prospect of his good example being followed by Great Britain.

The

The question of the Royal Civil List, which comes up at the accesNew Civil List. sion of each Sovereign, will, it is understood, not be the occasion for any protracted controversy. Following the usual precedent, the King has handed over his hereditary revenues to the Treasury, and Parliament will fix the Civil List at a somewhat higher figure than that at which it stood in the last reign. Instead of £387,000 a year, the new Civil List will be between £400,000 and £500,000 a year, and arrangements will be made for the King to undertake the repair of his own palaces out of this, instead of having to apply to the Treasury for a fresh vote whenever

ought to be averted once for all by fixing the Civil List at a figure which will avoid the necessity for these applications to Parliament. They bring the Crown into disrepute and occasion an unnecessary irri

tation. This is especially necessary in the interests of the Liberal Party, for anything more disagreeable can hardly be imagined than the position of a Liberal Prime Minister who may have to approach the Radical Party in a time of severe commer

cial depression

made in the debate on the Address by Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain. Lord Salisbury's declarations were entirely in his old style, than which nothing could be worse. Mr. Balfour took refuge in the miserable plea of trying to throw the responsibility for the prolongation of hostilities upon the

handful of people in this country who have kept

up an unceasing

trace of his December mood February speech. He was as brutal as Lord Salisbury in proclaiming the determination of the Government to suppress the last shred of independence possessed by the Republics. This was, and will be, the policy of the Government

by

ing

volunteer

a certifi

cate that the policy of houseburning had

been carried out with the utmost humanity. Izaak Walton's famous prescription

that you had to put a worm upon the hook as if you loved him, is outdone by the spectacle of the tender humanity with which British

troops burn down

that it has been proved a hundred times over to be a downright lie. Houses were burnt down not retail but wholesale, and for months the absence of its owner was regarded as ample justification for giving a house to the flames. Sometimes he was dead, at other times he was our prisoner in Ceylon or St. Helena; but even if he were fighting in commando, that was his duty as a subject of the Republics, and was no justification for criminal arson. The contention that you may destroy a house if ammunition is stored in it, is directly counter to international law, which provides that you may seize such a house, but at the end of the war

Ministers and their supporters, in Lies and Excuses defending house-burning, practised an economy of truth which deserves to be characterised by a stronger term. Again and again it was declared that no houses had been burnt down except when acts of treachery had been committed or when the houses had been used as military arsenals. There is only one word to describe this statement, and that is

that the army of occupation can seize depots of arms, goes on to say that while they may seize depots of arms and in general every kind of munitions of war, even those belonging to private persons, they are bound to restore them at the close of hostilities with indemnities which must be fixed when peace is made. This clearly points to a conception of the right of private persons to store munitions of war in their houses, which is very

different from that upon which our Army is acting in South Africa.

Mr. Dillon's Amendment.

Mr. Lloyd George put down an amendment to the Address intended to take the sense of the House as to whether or not a declaration of conciliatory policy should be made to the Boers; but he appears to have done so without consulting with his leaders, who, bringing private pressure to bear, induced him to remove his amendment from the paper. This, of course, gave good opening to Ministers, who declared that the Opposition shrank from raising a clear issue. That clear issue, however, was much better raised by Mr. Dillon's amendment, which for uncompromising thoroughness leaves nothing to be desired. This amendment was as

follows:

And we humbly represent to your Majesty that the wholesale burning of farmhouses, the wanton destruction and looting of private property, the driving of women and children out of their homes without shelter or proper provision of food, and the confinement of women and children in prison camps are practices not in accordance with the usages of war as recognised by civilised nations; that such proceedings are in the highest degree disgraceful and dishonouring to a nation professing to be Christian, and are calculated, by the intense indignation and hatred of the British name which they must excite in the Dutch population, to immensely increase the difficulty of restoring peace to South Africa. And we humbly and earnestly represent to your Majesty that it is the duty of your Majesty's Government immediately to put a stop to all practices contrary to the recognised usages of war in the conduct of the war in South Africa; and to make an effort to bring the war to an end by proposing to the Governments of the two Republics such terms of peace as brave and honourable men might, under all the circumstances, be reasonably expected to entertain.

The Debate.

Mr. Dillon moved his amendment, which was a powerfully eloquent and fact-crammed indictment of the infamies committed under our flag in South Africa. Mr. Brodrick's reply was beneath contempt. In face of the overwhelming evidence supplied by almost every soldier who writes home, over and above the official despatches of his own generals, he had the effrontery to declare that the devastation of the country, which has been undertaken as a deliberate policy and carried out with remorseless severity, was chiefly due to the looting of the houses of the Boers by their own Kaffirs, which, Mr. Brodrick suggested, was a righteous punishment for the way in which the Boers had treated the natives in times past! To this there are two answers-first, that the Kaffirs in Natal looted British houses just the same way as they looted those of the Dutch in the Transvaal. In

both cases the looting was occasional and not systematic. In the second place, the destruction of houses done by the Kaffirs in the later stages of the war was undertaken as part of our military operations. A band of armed Bechuanas often were sent out in advance of our troops to sweep like destroying angels across the veldt. But when all the damage done by the Kaffirs is struck off the account, there still remains the fact that our own troops have been employed for weeks at a time in the systematic devastation and destruction of houses, farming stock, and every description of property which the Boers by hard labour had won from the wilderness. It is bad enough that our officers should do it; it is even worse that Mr. Brodrick should speak as he did about it to the House of Commons.

Starving Women and Children

by Command.

But even Mr. Brodrick's capacity for prevarication and misstatement occasionally fails him. In reply to Mr. Lloyd-George, he indignantly denied that our military authorities in the Transvaal were deliberately half feeding women and children of burghers who were still in the field, in order to bring pressure upon the husbands to induce them to lay down their arms. Of course the charge was a monstrous one. It was equivalent to saying that at the beginning of the twentieth century we were resorting to the practices of barbarians who torture women and children in order to break the spirit of patriots who were defending their country. But monstrous as the accusation was, Mr. Brodrick had afterwards, on the night of Mr. Dillon's amendment, to admit that his denial was false, and that the policy which he repudiated with indignation is at present being carried out by the British military authorities in the Transvaal. The women and children whose husbands and fathers are absent, whether in the grave or on commando no one knows, are deliberately put on half rations. The other women whose husbands have come in are at once supplied with the food which they need. Those whose husbands continue fighting are starved. This means that many of the children are absolutely starved to' death, and that a process of slow torture is applied in the name of Christian civilisation to the helpless noncombatants. It is a policy worthy of fiends, but it is a policy which is carried out without protest and without interference by a Ministry which contains in its ranks the humane Mr. Balfour, and excites no indignant protest from any of the representatives of the English Church, from the Archbishop of Canterbury downwards. And after it was admitted only

ninety-one members of the House of Commons had heart enough to vote with Mr. Dillon. The majority cheered with delight the admission that we were, as a matter of policy, starving the women and children of our unconquered foes.

De Wet in Cape Colony.

In South Africa last month the chief interest was centred upon the movements of De Wet. This incomparable partisan leader led a commando of 2,000 men into Cape Colony, where other Boer commandoes had established themselves for months past. At first he appears to have met with almost uninterrupted success, but he was followed up by Colonel Lisle and others and lost one gun, which he had previously captured from us, and two pompoms. According to the latest intelligence to hand, he has effected a junction with Hertzog, and is likely to remain a long time in the Colony.

The Campaign against Botha.

Transvaal

In the North of the General French has been engaged in elaborate operations intended to corner General Botha, who has still 5,000 men under his command. In the course of these operations the Boers, following their usual tactics, have retreated before superior forces, not, however, without occasionally turning at bay to inflict severe losses upon their pursuers. The chief result of General French's operations, however, has been the seizure of 155,000 sheep, a great addition no doubt to the stores of mutton available for the rations of our troops; but this foray upon the flocks of the burghers can hardly be regarded as one of the decisive actions of the war. Botha, however, is reported to be willing to surrender on terms. He will not make an unconditional surrender.

Trains are being held up in all Lord Kitchener's directions, and successful attacks Escape. made upon isolated posts, which show that the country is as far from being pacified as ever. Lord Kitchener himself had a narrow escape from being killed or captured. The train in advance of his was blown up, and it is evident that outside the line of rail and the towns we have no hold upon the country, and that even the railways are exposed to perpetual interruption. The opinion in London is that the Boers are being worn out, and that for the hundredth time the end of the war is in sight. The Boers, on the other hand, are absolutely convinced that they are as unconquerable as were the Dutch who broke the power of Spain in the Netherlands, and refuse to listen to suggestions made by their friends as to the expediency of offering to

accept the position of British subjects even if they were guaranteed Australian or Canadian rights of self-government.

The New Bishop of London.

At the moment of writing London is still without a Bishop. Dr. Creighton was buried immediately before the death of the Queen, and in the confusion and preoccupation which followed the demise of the Crown it was natural that London should have to wait for the selection of its chief pastor. The see was offered in the first case to the Bishop of Winchester, who promptly rejected it, knowing as he did that acceptance would have meant suicide. The Prime Minister is said to have pressed the claims of Dr. Jacob, Bishop of Newcastle, but this appears to have been vetoed by the King, who favoured the appointment of the Bishop of Rochester, whose claim to the See of London is universally recognised. The only question is as to whether after ruling half London that lies south of the Thames, he would have a sufficient reserve of strength left to undertake the exhausting task which killed Dr. Creighton. The fact is that the merely clerical and administrative work of the London diocese has increased to such an extent that no Bishop can get through his work, and the vain attempt to overtake it is fatal to all but men with nerves of steel and lungs of leather.

The Nicaragua Treaty.

In foreign affairs the reign has not opened very auspiciously. There was some hope that the King and his Ministers would have had the moral courage to recognise the fact that, whatever faults there may have been in the form of the American demand for the abrogation of the ClaytonBulwer Treaty, much the wisest policy would have been to have treated this merely as "Pretty Fanny's" way, and, looking to the substance of things rather than to the form, to have accepted the amended treaty as it stands. Unfortunately Lord Lansdowne has not done this. It is stated that he criticises one of the proposed amendments as vague, and that he objects to the abrogation of the ClaytonBulwer Treaty by a clause in a new treaty. But the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty for all practical purposes is dead as a door nail. It is much more to our interest than to that of the Americans to get rid of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, for no one knows what trouble might arise before we could get it decently buried. However, Ministers have taken a different view of the situation, and instead of the new reign opening with an act of grace

as