Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1900 — SAYS BRITAIN IS RIGHT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SAYS BRITAIN IS RIGHT.

John Hays Hammond Condemns Oom Paul and His Policy. According to John Hays Hammond, the American engineer whose activity at Johannesburg while associated with the Rhodes mining interests at the time of the Jameson raid in 1896. came near costing him his life at the hahejs of the Boers, America’s sympathies in the Brit-ish-Boer conflict should be not with Oom Paul but with her majesty’s forces. Mr. Hammond gave expression to this view at a brilliant dinner given him a few days since in Chicago. He spoke of the condition of affairs in the Transvaal prior to the war and took the opportunity to say that England was carrying on a just war and that the Boers were wholly to blame for the present diffietilty. Mr. Hammond made the assertion that the Transvaal mining industry would never have achieved success were it not for the fact that English capital and American ingenuity became interested and entered the field. The Outlanders, he said, were invited to the territory by Oom Paul, who, when they had served his purpose, denied them the right' to.exist there by reason of the oppressive laws

,he directed against them. The (Jutlanders paid nine-tenths of the taxes and yet had little or no voice in the government. All that is wanted by the Outlanders, said Mr. Hammond, is the establishment of the principle that there shall be no taxation without representation. In Mr. Hammond's opinion, the present strife was forced upon - President Kruger by -his inability to longer control the widespread conspiracy he had built up against England. Oom Paul, said Mr. Hammond, was waiting for a rupture between Great Britain and some other power when he t would make his effort to attain independence. For many years the Boers were actively pursuing a scheme of conspiracy for driving the English from South Africa and were buying guns, building fortifications and hiring foreign officers in anticipation of a conflict. It might be supposed that Mr, Hammond was prejudiced in the matter in favor of the English because of his participation hi' movements against the Boers, but, he claims, this view of the matter would be wrong. He spoke as an American, he said, and put the facts of the case plainly before his auditors.