Of the several commercial factors operating to cause the war between Japan and Russia, one was the determination of Russian finance to hold on to the Yalu timber business. The Czar, personally receiving profit from the enterprise, in his declarations to the Army and the Russian people, on the outbreak of war, summoned them to a conflict on behalf of Holy Russia, menaced by the Yellow Peril.
BRITISH AND BOER.
In less than twenty years the majority of Englishmen_have changed their opinions on South African affairs. The mineowners made the war. On their behalf, Lord Milner, the Governor-General, influenced opinion at home by writing up the hardships of the "helots" on the Rand. Concentration camps, the burning of Boer farms, the seizure of stock and crops, the devastation of the Transvaal, were justified by the British Press on grounds of necessity in order that freedom should prevail. If qualms entered the minds of Englishmen; if they questioned whether the use of military power would not benefit the mineowners more than the miners, vivacious journalism leaped to freedom's aid. Forthwith the public were alarmed by stories of poisoned wells and explosive bullets. In the early days of the twentieth century, contemporary journalism convinced the people of England that the murder of wounded British soldiers was an invincible habit of the Boers. How could South Africa be free beside a tyranny like Kruger's, which found expression in denial of all the laws of war?
POLITICS AND FREEDOM.
When the position of Germany in the Great War is considered, we find the mass of her people holding tenaciously to the idea that they fight an external Power wishing to destroy the German right of self-development. Within a nation, the social freedom of its members depends mainly upon their right to freedom of speech, and their right to form associations for the acquisition of further liberties. Individual or private 1iiberty is affected by the extent to which the law allows the citizen to participate in making his country's laws. It is now the custom in civilised communities that all, or a part of the people, have the right to register votes for the selection of Paliamentary representatives. This custom is falsely regarded as an unfailing method by which each citizen participates in the making of laws. It may be stated
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