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Show THE SITUATION IN SOUTH AFRICA. The Beer war has now entered on its third year, and, to all appearances, hiay go on indefinitely. The situation as described from the Boer side is about this: The commandoes in the field, while shedding those who become physically-unfit physically-unfit or undesirable, receive recruits from among the disaffected Dutch and others in Cape Colony and Natal, and, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, con-trary, have sufficient arms and ammunition ammu-nition to last, with care, for a prolonged pro-longed period. According to reports from perfectly trustworthy sources. President Steyn and General Botha are confident of their ability to continue the war for quite two years longer. At present they are using the Lee-Metford rifles taken during the war, for which they obtain ample ammunition in the convoys they capture and in the Brit- I ish camps which they surprise at in- I tervals. In case this resource fails them, they still have a r vrve of Mauser Mau-ser rifles with ammunition to fall back upon, sifely deposited beyond danger of falling into the hands of the British column 3. Although a large extent of country has been laid waste, the fool supply has not failed, and as the natives na-tives are not hostile to the Boers, the latter find no difficulty in obtaining what they require to replenish their simple commissariat. The Basutos hold aloof from participating In the ; war. owing to the younger and more ; intelligent element being opposed by I other tribes. One notable feature of the present stage of conflict is thatthat section of the population of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State before the war which was opposed to the Kruger policy pol-icy and would have been willing to arrange ar-range with the British government, is now opposed to any terms that do opt recognize the independence of the two republics, and is resolved to fight on to the end, whatever it may be, Thev were much encouraged by the results of the fighting at Vladfont-iin in May and at Wilmansrust in June. In thii fight at Vladfontein they inflicted serious se-rious loss on a strong British column with a loss of only nine killed and eleven wounded; while at Wilmansrust they captured the British camp, all standing, with a loss of only six killed and four wounded to themselves. Th'2 British loss in killed, wounded and prisoners was over 350, of whom 260 were unwounded prisoners. In the recent re-cent fiehtimr in Zululand they appear to have been less fortunate, but the details de-tails are still wanting; and, the capture cap-ture of a large British convoy close to Melmoth would seem to imply, that their reported defeat had not seriousiy discouraged them. In the attack on the British camp at Moedwil, west of Pretoria, on the road to Mafeklng, they were more successful and struck a heavy blow at a vital point in the communications com-munications between the two places. The force engaged in tnis affair was under General Delarey. and was. reported re-ported a short time before to have been driven north by Lord Methuen jn great confusion. , , .'. . v , . .'. .. The present activity of .the Boers ' is due principally to the fact that their horses find grass all over the country, whereas during the w inter they were restricted to the valleys. The British, owing to the devastation of the country, coun-try, have contributed to the restriction restric-tion of their own movements, ; which are rarely carried out to any reat distance from the railway lines and large supply depots. To guard Johannesburg Johan-nesburg and the mines they have between be-tween 40.000 and 50.000 men permanently permanent-ly encamped on the Rand. A, large proportion of the remaining 150,000 men composing the effective army are in blockhouses along the railway lines and in barbed-wire enclosed camps at the principal towns, or watching the drifts on the Vaal and Orange rivers. The mobile force is thus reduced to a minimum, and is quite inadequate to put down the insurrection in the Cape Colony and dispose of the commandos operating over a territory as large as France and Germany. All the efforts to end the war on the part of the British have, so far, been ineffectual. The army is with difficulty diffi-culty kept up to full strength, the men enlisting in England falling off both , in numbers and quality; so much so that many, both officers and men, have I been sent back to England from South 1 Africa as unfit for the field. The Cape Dutch who were disposed in the earlier ear-lier stages of the war to remain quiet and abide the issue, have, through the rigorous administration of martial law in certain districts, been practically driven to active rebellion; and it is only through fear that the Afrikanders Afrikand-ers of British and other origins than Dutch would also be driven to revolt that martial law has not been declared all over the colopy. What the issue of the conflict is to . is not at all clear. It hardly seems within the bounds of possibility that the Boers should win all they are fighting for, but conditions seem to be arising in other parts of the world that would appear to make it prudent, to say the' least, on the part of the British Brit-ish government to make concessions o a brave and spirited people. The British estimate that about 11.-000 11.-000 Boers still remain in arms; they themselves had in May last 249,416 officers of-ficers and men in the field and a Ion;: ; lines of communication the largest larg-est army Great Britain has ever put in' the field. At present nineteen of the thirty-one cavalry regiments, one-third of the flc-ld and horse batteries of artillery, ar-tillery, and one-half of the infantry battalions, are in South Africa, without with-out counting militia and volunteer troops. The military question is complicated com-plicated by financial questions as well: the war has already cost one-fourth as much as the Napoleonic wars cost England, and the British public is said to be wearying of the delay in ending the strife. Sftcial influence and favoritism, favor-itism, to the effects of which, rihtly or wrongly, the early British disasters were ascribed, is regaining strength, and it seems as if the dearly bought lesson of the last two years micht be thrown away. Altogether, though the nal outcome of the war cannot be doubted, the future offers little more of hope to the British than the imst two years have had of glory. New-York New-York Sun. UNKINDEST CUT OF ALL. A puzzle has occupied the mind of the British press and public for some time, namely, where do all the Boers como from? Here is the answer by an Englishman Eng-lishman fresh from South Africa: , "Where are all the Boers coming Srbiri?" is the question heard a dozen times a day. If the official reports of the1, killed and prisoners are trustworthy, trustwor-thy, the entire male population of the two republics has been wiped out long ago. A gentleman heard an answer to this question from one lately returned from South Africa, which he gives exactly ex-actly as it was stated, without vouching vouch-ing for .Its accuracy: "Have you noticed how many are reported re-ported missing after every skirmish? Some of these return to the ranks, but many don't. No," the Boers do not keep prisoners, and are not yet accused of murdering them. This means that many are missing from the English V ;' : : ' : i ranks and prefer to stay among the Boers. , "Besides these there have been hundreds, hun-dreds, probably thousands, of desertions deser-tions of dissipated 'Tommies,' who, besides be-sides being underpaid and ill-fed, are treated worse than slaves by arrogant officers and compelled to do menial work with savage Kaffirs, even envy ing those the privilege they enjoy of roaming off at their own sweet will when they don't choose to work. "This accounts in a large degree for the facility. of the Boer commandoes in walking through the British cordons wherever they please. It Is the easiest thing, in the world for a few former Tommies,' actlnr as scouts, on meeting meet-ing a British outpost, to give a false description of the troops following and pass themselves off as British and so escape in the darkness. "Of course, there is no mean3 of veri- I fying the actual number of such deser- I tions. but it was learned, on what I have reason to regard as excellent au- thority in Cape Town, that the total i would more than account for all the i reinforcements sent out for many months." BOER FIGHTER FOR PARLIAMENT . London, Oct. M. The nationalists of Galway have selected Arthur Lynch to I contest the vacancy in the house of j commonos caused by the elevation of f Martin H. F. Morris to the peerage. Mr. Lynch contested the constituency as a Parnellite in 1892. lie served as a colonel with the Second Irish brigade on the Boer side, operating in Natal ' under General Botha and afterwards in the Orange Free State. When Pre- i toria fell Mr. L-fch returned to France, where he remains. He will doubtless be arrested if he returns to Ireland. i s. ' -' ' |