Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 October 1901 — BULLER ADMITS CHARGES. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BULLER ADMITS CHARGES.

Tacitly Bays He Counseled Surrender of Ladysmith. Sir Redvers Buller. who gained promitence in the early part of the Transvaal war because he was so repeatedly defeated by the Boers, has been stung by press critics into a tacit acknowledgment that after his defeat at Colenso, on Dec. 15, 1899, he heliographed a message advising Sir George Stewart-White to surrender Ladysmith, with its garrison of 12,000 British soldiers. The admission has created an extraordinary sensation throughout England, and Gen. Buller is denounced severely. Gen. Buller has been goaded by the press for his repeated failures in the early part of the war, and his critics have been especially active since his recent appointment to command an army corps. In a speech Gen. Buller denounced his critics and asserted that nobody junior to him in rank was better fitted to command an army corps. Gen. Buller’s speech has made a tremendous stir. The newspapers are divided in their opinions of it. Several papers declare that his explanation that

he heliogrnphed to Gen. White suggesting that it might be necessary for him to surrender and advising what to do in such a case was actually instruction to surpmder, and they condemn him accordiagThe people of England have generally stuck to Gen. Buffer throughout, and liis and his wife’s social influence has been most powerful and has even reached the court, says a London correspondent. It had been decided that he would be elevated to the peerage on the next honor list. The Standard attacks him severely and tells him that the best thing he can do now is to resign his command of tho First army corps. The Daily Mail, which Considers that the speech would have been piore in place on the boards of a theater, points out that the message to Ladysmith is exactly paralleled by Sir H. Parker’s famous order to Admiral Nelson at Copenhagen to break off the battle and retire in order —a request which posterity hag unsparingly condemned. Stung by the public outcry against the unsatisfactory conditions in South Africa, the government, for the first time since the war, has assumed the defensive, with Mr. Brodrick, the secretary of war, as its spokesman. In so doing he showed that in her efforts to conquer the Boers Great Britain now has under arms the enormous total of more than 300,000 men. Mr. Brodrick insists that the government has kept its promise to Lord Kitchener that he should have a free hand in his command. He adds that he has not only been given all the men asked for, but in ore.

GENERAL BULLER.