OCR Text |
Show ENGLISH FEELING ABOUT THE WAR. The idea current in this country that the masses of people in England view the war with complacency is groundless. ground-less. The repeated reverses which the BritMi arms have encountered has had the natural effect of making the people resentful towards those whom they consider responsible for the war. Mr. A. Y. Langdon-Blake, a distinguished distin-guished Englishman, now visiting in this country,-thus sums up what may be considered the real feeling of the English masses concerning the war: "The feeling of - intense resentment is growing in England against the powers pow-ers that be and those who are responsible respon-sible for the present war, and for the position in which England finds herself today. To date we have oractically won not a victory, and each day brings the news cf some fresh reverse to our arms. When the storm breaks it will go hard with those responsible for bringing the war on, but, nevertheless, to mv mind there is something: more than mere personal responsibility to blame. That we have been outgeneraled outgener-aled and apparently outfought and out- . classed by an untried lot of fmhters would seem to argue that England is paying the penalty for the long tars in which she. has fought out of the way and barbarous or semi-barbarous people, peo-ple, unfamiliar with modern warfare and tactics, and unused to and not using us-ing modern weapons. Such lighting as that islikely to beget a contempt for your enemy, and a tendency to hold him cheaply, and, to my mind, this seems to be exactly what has happened in South Africa. "But it seems to me that there are one or two unexplained things about the present fight, concerning which I have longingly looked for light, and they are, first, how on earth did the English authorities so woefully underestimate under-estimate the numerical strength of the forces which the Boers could put in the field? If the extra numbers of men which the Boers manifestly poreess over and above the military authorities' authori-ties' estimates must come from the Boers cf the Cape Colony, as has been frequently stated, how could they leave that country in such numbers without the cognizance of the authorities authori-ties there and the consequent warning cf the war office at home? And, secondly, sec-ondly, how could the Boers have imported im-ported artillery and other weapons of warfare in sucCi enormous quantities as they evidently possess, without England Eng-land knowing anything about it and preparing for the very contingency for which the Boers were preparing, and which ha.s now come into existence? exist-ence? These are questions which are agitating England jut now." |