Life — December 13, 1900 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

945. $5.00 & year In ad. foreign countries in the Postal mule current copier, f tbree months from No contribution will be returned unless accompanied by stamped and addressed envelope ‘The illustrations in Live are copyrighted, and are not to be reproduced without special arrangement with the publishers, Prompt notification should be sent by sub- scribers of any change of address, L* T us hope that everyone who has a kindness for war as a school of manliness and the heroic qualities, is close- ly as meagre re- ports permit the course of the Brit- ish in South Africa and the exploits of sundr of the allies in China. In South Africa thero is still plenty of fight- ing, and no immediate prospect of an abate- ment of it. It seems as if all the Boers must have read. Motley’s history of the long resistance of the Dutch to Philip of Spain, and determined that history should repeat itself in a new century and a new continent. At any rate, so stubbornly does Boer resistance hold out that the British under Kitchener, and under Roberts, seem to have been riven to methods of procedure that little anything, by comparison h thoseof Weyler in Cuba, The new plans which Lord Roberts has been constrained to formulate, and which General Kitchener is carrying out with the least possible noise, reported to include thes burning of farmhouses over the heads of women and children in the absence of their men. The scheme is to clean out certain parts of the country so that it won't hold Boer to gather in the towns all the inhabitants that are left alive. That was Weyler’s plan in Cuba, It was doubtless very much of a piece with what Cromwell did even «LIPE = in Ireland. century war. It is good seventeenth To be sure, it is war women and children, but all war is that when it is carried to its last analysis, Our neighbors in England have the same feclings about this sort of warfare that we have. How deso- lating it must be to their sensibilities to recognize the sort of work their soldiers are engaged in! They have still about two hundred and seventy- five thousand men in South Africa ; their war has cost them five hundred million dollars, and is still costing them about a million dollars a day. They had a chance to end it months ago when De Wet and Botha asked for terms and were told ‘ unconditional surrender.” That chance was thrown away. No wonder they want to stop it now, and feel that the surest way is the only way for them. Tho surest way seems annihilation, Kill the Boers in arms, burn their farm- houses, let their women and children starve if necessary, The Boers in arms seem unconscionably hard to kill, but the other details can be car- ried out, and, apparently, are being carried out pretty thoroughly. That is war, the industry of which General Kitchener is so greata captain! Is it not a deep and miry pit for our British brethren to have fallen into? Why dwell upon it here? To deride them ? Not at all! But because this side of war gets such scant notice, and the other side — brass bands, feathers, glory, rewards —so very much. We are sorry for the British, a manly people, that they have to fight women whose men they neither catch nor conquer, It is too bad that such folks should be in such a predicament. It is not the fault of the men who are doing this repulsive fighting. It isthe fault of the commercial statesmanship that could not wait to win what it wanted by patience and superior ability. It is also, doubtless, the fault of the Boers, who scem immutably resolved to monopolize whatever glory their own subjugation may yield. Happily, in China the British are making a showing more agreeable to their national character as we know it. The needless slaughters of Chinese, of which we read, are not attributed to them nor to the Americans, but to the Germans and the Russians. The course of our Government in Chinaseems from the start to have been admirable. Its purpose has been the restoration of order and government at the least cost of outside intervention, and at the least cost of bloodshed in China. The Ger- mans seem to have gone into China with the ardor of a nation that had not had a fight for thirty years and was anxious to make up for lost time. The more one reads of their exploits the more enviable seems the case of all peoples who are big enough, and rich and wise enough, to take care of them- selves and stand off all intruders, ~~ ‘HE increase of the army and the abolition of some of the war taxes will be among the first things to receive the attention of Congress. The army will be increased, of course. It must be, unless our troops are to be with- drawn from the Philippines, and we all know that at present they are not. How the increase is to be managed is matter of first-rate importance that ought to be settled by experts unmoved by other considerations than such as affect the efficiency of our military ma- chine. Probably it will not be sosettled. As for the war taxes, we will part cheer- fully with the taxes on checks, express parcels, telegrams, notes, mortgages, deeds, and most of the other stamp taxes, The taxes that should be abated first are those which have to be licked. Lips ae ~ PKG geste Bay: bee [HE doctors of football, having meditated long and deeply on the late Yale-Harvard game, have discov- ered no better reason why Harvard was walloped with such unexpected completeness than that Yale had a better team in better condition and played ustly better game. This isa highly satisfactory reason, and nothing has been heard from Cambridge which suggests any doubt of its full accept- ance there, Football has been clean and ardent this year. ‘There have been few bad accidents, and very few cases of harsh or brutal play. The game improves in character and reputation, comicbooks.com