Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 107, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1899 — CROWDS CRY FOE WAR [ARTICLE]

CROWDS CRY FOE WAR

PEACE MEETING IN LONDON ALMOST A RIOT. English-Boer Demonstration in Trafalgar Square Brings 50,000 Crying War—Maeses Back Up lhamberlain, Approving Hia South African Policy. Trafalgar square, London, was the scene Sunday of a meeting which will become historic as showing the strong drift of the masses in England toward war. A peace demonstration had been advertised to be held in the square, where Nelson on the top of his monument has looked down on many a gathering significant of popular opinion when the tide of feeling runs high. The leaders of the peace party were to make one last, supreme effort aud demonstration to influence public opinion. The radical press during the past week gave conspicuous place to notices of the coming meeting, while the other papers were ominously silent, though a suggestion was dropped that a counter demonstration was not unlikely. Acting upon this hint, Britons of both persuasions were present Sunday, but, as events soon showed conclusively, the war party was overwhelmingly ’in the ascendant. Only one speaker essayed to plead for peace. What he said is matter of conjecture, as no sooner had he begun than on the outskirts of the crowd of 50,000 people some one started “Rule Britannia.” The chorus soon rolled over the square and swallowed up all other sounds. Nevertheless the speaker continued his address with an earnestness and determination fully as British as that of his hostile audience, but not long. Soon missiles of various kinds—decayed apples, aged eggs and whatever else came handy —rhurtled through the air; rushes were made upon the stand, soldiers who happened to be present were carried on the shoulders of the crowd and only the appearance and prompt action of mounted police enabled the speaker and his friends to escape with their lives. What was intended to be a protest against the drift of events toward war was turned into a demonstration that showed unmistakably that the tide of English feeling now funs too high in the Transvaal affair to be stayed by public discussion. Not only from the Trafalgar square meeting, but from the general tone of the English press and t>f the people, wherever the latter have given expression to their views, it is clear that the nation is back of Salisbury and Chamberlain and that it is only among scholarly statesmen such as Morley, or writers such as Frederic Harrison, that peace finds advocates. Even those seem to recognize the futility of their attempts to stem the current. Press comment is altogether partisan, the Government organs approving the crowd and the opposition claiming it was a preconcerted movement. Johannesburg advices report a wholesale dislocation of the Rand mining industry. All the mines are closing; all the Boer defenses are being strengthened. War seems the only possible outcome unless Kruger takes heed of the coming storm and bends before it.