Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1899 — BRITONS ARE BLUE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BRITONS ARE BLUE.

REVERSES IN SOUTH AFRICA BPREAD WIDE DISMAY. ————— v Alarming Rumor* and War Office Reticence Serve to Stir London —Free State Successes and Annexation Edicts Influence the Dutch. The occupation of Golesburg by the Boere was a complete surprise to the British. It has caused the greatest feeling of uneasiness, as the advance may mean the engaging of Buller’s forces as fast as they arrive at De Aar, the point where the British general contemplates gathering his army corps preparatory to a campaign against Bloemfontein and Pretoria. Colesburg is just south of the Orange Free State border in Cape Colony Details at hand show that the advance of the Boers was accompanied by -the destruction of aH bridges and the tearing up of all manner of trail*it facilities. The British retirement to Estcourt has given the impression that it is intended to make a stand there. Estcourt is the last important town between the Boers and the capital of Natal, and if the Boers sweep past Estcourt nothing can stop them from laying siege to Pietermaritzburg, which cannot be expected to make a protracted defense, whale its fall would be a tremendous blow to British prestige throughout South Africa. The British retirement south of Colenso has given the Boers an opportunity to make a bid tor the active support of the disaffected Dutch in Natal by proclaiming the annexation of the upper Tugela section. Thus far the Dutch colonists seem to have confined their sympathy with the invading Boers to a Platonic emotion. Except for surreptitious assistance there is no evidence that they have yet joined the Boers opeuly in any appreciable numbers. Boer and British Preparedness. Since the British have met reverses in Natal there is some disposition to criticise the government for not having dispatched larger numbers of troops at au earlier stage. The war preparations, it to asserted, were not made, to keep pace

with the political movements of the government. It is asserted that this criticism overlooks the wily nature of the Boer officials, who had no mind to allow a possible enemy to take his time in getting ready to crush them. Had troops been earlier dispatched to South Africa in large numbers the Boer ultimatum simply would have been delivered sooner. Nothing would have been gained by that procedure, therefore. Had the British refrained longer from moving to concentrate troops in South Africa the ulimatum would have been longer delayed and the beginning of the war would have been postpone*! to correspond. The Boers have been watching the British with suspicious eye for years, constantly preparing for the eonttiet they feared. They meant to strike whenever they saw the British rnoviug for advantageous position. It was inevitable, that the British, if they meant to invite war in South Africa, must enter the couilict with the odds against diem at the outset. The British War Office announced ait midnight Monday that no dispatches had

been received beyond those already made pubtie. Not a solitary official item of news was posted for nearly twenty-four hours. This gave rise to a crop of rumors that Ladysmith’s ammunition w*s exhausted; that Sir George Stewart White was mortally wounded-; that both facts were being concealed and that other unlucky happenings had taken place. Advices from other parts of South Africa were distinctly unpalatable to the Brit-, ish, and everything points to a critical situation. The movement of Boers into Oape Colony is beginning to awaken British fear that- they -have greatly underestimated the forces they will have to meet and that even Gen. Butter's task may not be so easy as anticipated. It is becoming apparent that all tl>6 British calculations, on the loyalty of population, are hopelessly at sea or there tax* been a very serious leakage of Dutch sympathizers from Natal and Gape Colony. Otherwise there is no accounting far the large forces of Burghers reported from all direction*. Xkw war office, urged to have more troops in readiness

GENERAL YULE. Successor to General Symons.