In fighting negroes armed with sticks both Roberts and Kitchener were enabled to add a list of letters to their names almost equal to the number in the alphabet; but when confronted with an armed Boer, both found themselves practically helpless.
Roberts for his proclamations received from the British Government $500,000, and an earldom. Kitchener received $150,000 for wiping out of existence 22,000 women and children. It must be added, however, that he was simply carrying out Lord Roberts' instructions, to his great pleasure. Though degenerate and incompetent, yet the English soldier knows a little something. The 29th of September, 1902, was the King's Procession Day. I was present and witnessed the circus. Between Trafalgar Square and St. Paul's Cathedral, Lord Roberts was violently hissed and the people called for General Buller, who had done all the fighting and reaped disgrace as his reward. Roberts bit his lip but that is all the satisfaction he got.
There is no doubt about it, the English lords and generals in command of the British army are degenerate and incompetent and that, too, far more so than the English soldier. In hundreds of instances, I am quite sure had an English sergeant been in command, we would have been badly beaten where we gained successes. The English commanders had large numbers, but small brains.
The quiet, modest little de la Bey, with his dancing, hazel eyes, was unquestionably the ablest of the Boer generals and the greatest man of the war.
The stalwart, restless, commanding General De Wet was the great strategist and Stonewall Jackson of the war. The handsome, refined and polished General Louis Botha proved a most brilliant commander and fighter, and another war will mark him as one of the brightest military stars of modern times. He is young and cool-headed and has in him all the necessary material to make a great military leader. May the time soon come for him to make use of his material.
Although the Boers had three such able leaders, yet the two little Republics lost their liberty and independence because the 25,000 patriots under their command thought it better to surrender and save their women and children and therefore their race from extinction. Horses, mules and men from the United States of America destroyed the two little republics.
We can always point with pride to our great liberty lovers, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Jackson, Monroe, and Lincoln, but since the days of these great patriots and Americans our leader-ship has degenerated; trade and greed have taken the place of lofty ideals which made the country the hope and model of every people aspiring to freedom; vulgar ambition for territorial extension has put us on the low level of all the conquering nations of old; the late war with Spain developed all the latent greed of an ambitious upstart among nations; neither the plausible protestations of one president nor the open boldness of another justified our un-American policy in the far East.
When it came to the question of acting towards the republics of South Africa as our forefathers had acted towards the republic of Texas, neither the oily McKinley nor the vociferous Roosevelt showed the honor and courage of a pure-blooded American. I do not mean they were bought by England. Our State Department is not the kind of a courtesan whose favors have to be paid for in anything but smiles and flattery. England smiled and flattered and America smiled back as she strangled the liberties of a brave people. The Philistines captured Samson, thanks to the American Delilah.
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