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Show BULLER'S CHRISTMAS DINNER. And General Buller will not eat his Christmas dinner in Pretoria after all! Before leaving for South Africa this English Weyler, blood-thirsty butcher that he is and always has been, made affirmation, in a very boisterous manner, man-ner, that he would eat his Chrit-Vmas dinner in Pretoria. But Buller's prophecies, like all other prophecies from English sources, have lamentably- failed of , fulfillment. -Instead of eating his Christmas dinner in Pretoria he will be fortunate indeed if he is not a prisoner there,.and in that case the dinner which he would eat in the race course would be quite different from the one which he fondly hoped to eat in the Dutch capital as master of the Dutch republic. The braggadoeia whjeh has characterized charac-terized Englishmen when speaking of ! the British-Boer war is quite in keeping with the English character. Buller, after af-ter informing his friends of his intentions inten-tions for Christmas day, calmly added that he would be back in England for Derby day. From present indications he will be more than fortunate if he ever sets foot on English soil again. Of all the prophecies made concerning this war, it is worthy of note that those which have come from Boer sources are finding literal fulfillment. : President Kruger said that the war would stagger humanity, and his words indeed are being fulfilled every day. On Oct. 27 last General Joubert, com: mandant of the Boer forces, writing to a friend in Berlin, spoke as follows: "Ever since the infamous Jameson raid of '96 our government was con- I vinced that some disreputable characters charac-ters would urge England to war. Its meaning could not be mistaken. It could have for its sole object only, the annihilation of the Boer republic. We were equally -sure that we would have to depend on our own resources, for, although al-though we knew that this war would meet with the unanimous condemnation of all European pow ers, we did not anticipate an-ticipate that any of them would summon sum-mon strength to come to our rescue. England's arrogance and her strong navy have so cowed the European powers pow-ers that they dare not bid her stop in her despicable land grabbing, not even where their own interests are involved. Knowing these circumstances, ' we depended de-pended solely upon ourselves, improved our means of defense and tried to keep the English in the dark as to our real preparations.' To this purpose we gave their disguised spies access to our antiquated an-tiquated guns and artillery, but wero. very careful to conceal from them our modern artillery parks. Our calculations calcula-tions proved correct. The English public pub-lic .credited these misleading reports. Their cry, "To Pretoria,' is on a level with the Parisian cry of 1870, 'A Berlin!' Ber-lin!' "Your letter lays much stress on the numerical superiority of the English, but in my opinion the example is a different dif-ferent one. England cannot send more than 85.000 soldiers to the Transvaal without ; withdrawing all her troops from the colonies. This in itself is an imposing army, but only half of thera will be available. Granting that England Eng-land will have effected the landing of her troops by the middle of December, cue vwu iue iusi m me meantime at least 10,000 through deaths, casualties, desertions and captures. Their number would accordingly be reduced to 75,000. We will try to prevent the Junction of the English forces under Buller, but even if we should not succeed the English Eng-lish will be unable to put more than S5.000 men in the field against us. The rest will.be needed for garrisons and protection of their bases of operations. "The scene of the war will cover Natal Na-tal and Cape Colony, an area of, say, 700 kilometres. Our own camp is protected pro-tected by three mountain ranges, and 500 men are amply sufficient for its protection. pro-tection. Our manner of communication is excellent. The outposts have command com-mand of and facilities for destroying provisions in case their position becomes be-comes untenable. If the war should be carried into our own country, of which there are no prospects at present, our advantages would become greater yet. FOr while facing unknown conditions hi Natal and in the south, we are quite able to make use of the splendid opportunities op-portunities of defense which our own country offers. "The enemy will meet a very stub born resistance in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, and every inch oC ground will cost them dear. You correctly cor-rectly suggest that we most likely would resort to guerilla tactics. A few months would be sufficient to show to Eng-land the impossibility of the task she has undertaken. Har losses will be tremendous." . Those who have followed the' history of the war up to the present time will be struck with the accuracy with which General Joubert Diulin.'S, in October last, the results of the war up to the present time. That England will eventually event-ually win in this struggle does not appear ap-pear quite so certain as it did some time ago. I The statement made by some who talk without thinking that by his mar-riags mar-riags to a Catholic Admiral Dewey has spoilt hiS chance ever to be president, is utter nonsense. It would help him more than it would hurt him. But he does not want the honor, simply because be-cause he does not think himself properly prop-erly trained for it; and he may be right. The Independent. Our contemiporarv talks nonsense, and knows it full well. The fact that Admiral. Dewey has married a Catholic has taken him forever out of the range of possible candidates for the pros!-' deney. Quitenaturaily the Independ-. ent does not want to admit that its coreligionists co-religionists are so ,'fanatically bigoted as to deprive a man cf political preferment prefer-ment because of his religion, but it is a fact, and none knows-it better than the Independent. V Religious liberty is, of course, guaranteed guar-anteed to all the citizens of the United' States by the Constitution, but it cannot can-not be denied that if a citizen's religion relig-ion happens to be Roman Catholic, the spirit of- the Constitution finds application appli-cation only so far as latent bigotry and fanaticism will allow. , Admiral Dewey, we have no doubt in the world, was as well aware of this fact as anrone else when he married a Catholic wife. On this one point at least, the Independent belongs to a religion re-ligion of the barbarous ae. |