THE DISARMAMENT OF THE DUTCH POPULATION
The new year (1901) opened with a full revelation of the magnitude of
the task which lay before the Imperial troops. Lord Roberts had
frankly recognised that the destruction of the Governments and
organised armies of the Republics would be followed by the more
difficult and lengthy task of disarming the entire Boer population
within their borders.
"Recent events have convinced me," he wrote from Pretoria on
October 10th, 1900, "that the permanent tranquillity of the
Orange River Colony and Transvaal is dependent on the complete
disarmament of the inhabitants; and, though the extent of the
country to be visited, and the ease with which guns, rifles, and
ammunition can be hidden, will render the task a difficult one,
its accomplishment is only a matter of time and patience."
That this task proved altogether more lengthy and more arduous than
Lord Roberts at this time expected, was due mainly, though not
exclusively, to the same cause as that which had placed the British
army in a position of such grave disadvantage at the outbreak of the
war--the play of party politics in England. Lord Roberts had foreseen
that the process of disarming the Boers would be slow and difficult;
but he had not anticipated that the Imperial troops would be hindered
in the accomplishment of this task by the political action of the
friends of the Boers in England, or that the public utterances of
prominent members of the Liberal Opposition would re-act with such
dangerous effects upon the Afrikander nationalists that, after more
than a year of successful military operations, the process of
disarmament would have to be applied to the Cape Colony as well as to
the territories of the late Republics.
Looking back to the year 1900, with the events of the intervening
period before us, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the
decision of the Boer leaders to continue the struggle was determined
by political, and not by military considerations. More than one
circumstance points to the fact that both the Boer generals and the
civilian members of the Executives of the late Republics recognised
that their position was practically hopeless from a military point of
view.[234] And while Louis Botha, the Commandant-General of the
Transvaal, urged his fellow-burghers to lay down their arms after the
battle of Dalmanutha, it was President Steyn, a politician, and not a
fighting man, who manifested the stubborn determination that was
directly responsible for the unnecessary devastation and suffering
which the guerilla war entailed upon the Boer people. The remote, but
still carefully cherished possibility of foreign intervention, the
belief that the colonial Dutch would even yet rise _en masse_, and the
reliance upon the traditional sympathy of the Liberal party with the
Boer aspirations for independence, were all considerations that
contributed to the decision. But of these three influences the last
was incomparably the most important; since it not only affected the
disposition of the republican leaders, but, what was more, stimulated
the Afrikander nationalists to make the efforts which brought the
Dutch in the Cape Colony to the condition of passionate resentment
that drew the Boer commandos, in the last month of 1900 and the
opening months of 1901, a second time across the Orange River.
[Footnote 234: See letter of Piet de Wet to his brother
Christian, in Cd. 547, and correspondence between Steyn and
Reitz (captured by British troops), in Cd. 903.]
[Sidenote: An injurious influence.]
We have seen the actual origin of this most injurious influence. The
"conciliation" movement was initiated in the Cape Colony by the
Afrikander nationalists in concert with President Krueger, in order
that "the hands of the friends of the Afrikander party in England
might be strengthened." They were strengthened. We have observed the
formation of a Conciliation Committee in England, working in close
connection with the parent organisation, founded by Mr. Hargrove, in
the Cape Colony; and we have noticed the declarations of Mr. Morley,
Lord Courtney, and Mr. Bryce, in favour of the restoration of the
internal independence of the Boers--declarations all made in
opposition to the expressed determination of the British Government to
incorporate the Republics into the system of the British Empire. The
official leader of the Liberal party was less consistent. In June,
1900, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman signified in general terms his
recognition of the necessity of this measure. But he returned in
October to vague expressions of sympathy with the Boers, which, after
the general election had resulted in the return of the Unionist
majority, took the form of a direct condemnation of the South African
policy of the Government. In the course of the year 1901 he reiterated
two charges with increasing vehemence. The conduct of the war was
inhuman; and the Government, by refusing to offer any terms to the
republican leaders inconsistent with the decision to incorporate the
Republics into the Empire, were exacting the unnecessary humiliation
of an unconditional surrender from a gallant foe. These injurious
utterances at length provoked Lord Salisbury's indignant comment:
"England is, I believe, the only country in which, during a great war,
eminent men write and speak publicly as if they belonged to the
enemy;" and elicited from Lord Rosebery, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Asquith,
Mr. Haldane, and Sir Henry Fowler, the assurance that the
determination of the British people to "see the war through" had in no
way weakened. But, in spite of these patriotic utterances on the part
of the Liberal Imperialists, the fact remains that, throughout the
whole period of the guerilla war, the Boer commandos were encouraged
to resist the Imperial troops by the knowledge that prominent members
of the Liberal party in England had declared themselves to be opposed
to what they termed the "suppression" of the Boer people,[235] and
were condemning in unmeasured terms the British military authorities
for employing the sole methods by which the guerilla leaders could be
encountered on equal terms, and the disarmament of the Dutch
population could be accomplished.
[Sidenote: Peace party among the Boers.]
There is another element in the attitude of the burgher population at
this critical period, a knowledge of which is essential to a correct
understanding of the methods and conditions of the guerilla war. The
existence among the republican Dutch of a considerable body of opinion
in favour of submission was a circumstance of which the Imperial
authorities were aware, and one of which they desired, naturally
enough, to take the fullest advantage. It was known also to the
militant Boer leaders; and it is obvious that any estimate of the
degree in which these leaders are to be held directly responsible for
the loss and suffering entailed by the decision to continue the war,
will depend largely upon the manner in which they dealt with those
members of their own community who were prepared, after Lord
Roberts's victories, to become peaceable citizens of the British
Empire.
[Footnote 235: "This war no longer makes a pretence of being
a war of defence; it is a war for gold-fields, for territory,
and for the suppression of two brave and noble peoples. This
wicked war has lost us the moral leadership of mankind."--Mr.
E. Robertson, M.P., June 5th, 1901.]
The action of the Boer leaders in this respect is established by the
indisputable testimony of the official documents which fell into the
hands of the British authorities in the subsequent progress of the
war. Every endeavour of the peace party to make itself heard was
punished with rigorous, sometimes brutal, severity; fictitious
reports, calculated to raise false hopes of foreign intervention, were
circulated among the burghers in the field; and every effort was made
to prevent a knowledge of the British Government's proposals for the
future administration of the new colonies from reaching the rank and
file of the burgher population. The details of this action on the part
of the Boer leaders constitute collectively a body of evidence
sufficient to have justified the employment of measures infinitely
more severe than those which were in fact adopted by the British
military authorities for the capture of the Boer commandos and the
disarmament of the Dutch inhabitants of South Africa; and in the face
of this evidence, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's reiterated charges
against the Government, whether of "methods of barbarism" or of
prolonging the war by the neglect to offer reasonable terms to the
Boers, must be held as wanton in their origin as they were injurious
in their results.
[Sidenote: Administrative changes.]
The despatch of October 18th, 1900, which, as we have seen, Lord
Milner received as he was returning from his visit to the new
colonies, contained certain new commissions, under the terms of which
the "prospective administration" of the Transvaal and the Orange River
Colony was placed in his hands in succession to Lord Roberts, while at
the same time he remained Governor of the Cape Colony and High
Commissioner for South Africa. This combination of offices was purely
temporary, since Her Majesty's Government (Mr. Chamberlain wrote to
Lord Milner) "were anxious to take advantage of his unique fitness for
the great task of inaugurating the civil government of the two new
colonies." It was proposed therefore, that, as soon as the necessary
legal provision could be made for establishing constitutions for the
two new colonies, Lord Milner should be appointed as their Governor,
with a Lieutenant-Governor for the Orange River Colony, and should
cease to be the Governor of the Cape Colony. This new arrangement,
which, as Mr. Chamberlain pointed out, involved the severance of the
High Commissionership from the Governorship of the Cape Colony to
which it had been attached for so long a period,[236] did not take
effect, however, until the end of February, 1901, when Lord Milner
finally left the Cape Colony for the Transvaal.
[Footnote 236: Cd. 547.]
Lord Roberts relinquished the command of the British forces in South
Africa on November 29th, 1900. The Home Government at this time
attached great importance to the issue of a proclamation setting out
clearly the generous terms upon which the Boers would be received into
the empire; and, in connection with this question, Lord Milner, during
his recent visit to Pretoria, had discussed with Lord Kitchener the
methods by which the influence of the surrendered Boers and the more
moderate Afrikanders, who were in favour of submission, could be
brought to bear upon the general mass of the fighting burghers. Lord
Milner, however, upon his return to the Cape Colony, expressed the
opinion that the issue of a proclamation in the then existing
circumstances would be a mistake, since it would only be regarded as a
sign of weakness. And in support of this opinion he states, in a
telegram of December 11th, that the cabled summary of Mr.
Chamberlain's
"recent speech in the House of Commons, containing virtually the
principal points in the proposed proclamation, has been instantly
seized upon by the Bond leaders [in the Cape Colony] and is
represented by them as a sign that Her Majesty's Government is
wavering in its policy, and that the reaction in British public
opinion, which they have always relied on, is setting in."[237]
[Footnote 237: Cd. 547.]
Both Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener confirmed this judgment at the
time; and on January 28th, 1901--when de Wet was on the point of
breaking through the British troops into the Cape Colony--the latter
telegraphed to Lord Milner:
"When the Boers are inclined to peace, they will want, I think,
to discuss various questions, and when that time comes a
proclamation which would meet as far as possible the points
raised would, no doubt, be very valuable.... But just now I do
not think they have any idea of making peace whilst the Colony
question is so prominent. I have let it be known that I would be
glad to see an officer or meet Botha at any time if he wished to
do so."[238]
[Footnote 238: Cd. 547.]
Three days afterwards Lord Milner received a further telegram from
Lord Kitchener on the same subject, which he also forwarded to the
Colonial Office:
"Ex-President Pretorius has just returned from seeing L. Botha
and Schalk Burger [the Commandant-General and the Acting
President of the South African Republic]. They stated that they
were fighting for their independence, and meant to continue to do
so to the bitter end, and would not discuss any question of
peace."[239]
[Footnote 239: _Ibid._]
[Sidenote: Boer leaders irreconcilable.]
In view of this irreconcilable attitude on the part of the Boer
leaders, Mr. Chamberlain abandoned the proposal, and the proclamation
was not issued until six months later, when the blockhouse system had
been successfully initiated.
But, although Lord Milner had recognised the futility of the appeal by
proclamation, he had readily approved of Lord Kitchener's endeavour to
make the British proposals known to the placable but terrorised
section of the fighting burghers, through the agency of those of their
kinsmen and friends who had surrendered. After all advances to the
Boer leaders in the field had totally failed, "it seemed to us," Lord
Milner reported to Mr. Chamberlain,[240]
[Footnote 240: January 12th, 1901. Cd. 547.]
"that those who had already surrendered would have means not open
to us of communicating with the bulk of the Boers still under
arms, persuading them of the hopelessness of their resistance,
and removing the misapprehension of our intentions, which some of
the commanders who were still holding out had sedulously
fostered."
It was in these circumstances and with these objects in view that,
after Lord Roberts's departure, the Burgher Peace Committee was formed
at Pretoria; and it is to the address which Lord Kitchener then
delivered (December 21st, 1900) to this Committee that we must look
for the origin and purpose of the Burgher, or Concentration Camps.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Burgher camps.]
"It having been brought to Lord Kitchener's notice," says the
published report, "that the principal difficulty that burghers,
desirous of surrendering, experienced was that they were not
allowed to remain in their own districts, and were afraid of the
penalties attached to not having adhered strictly to the oath of
neutrality, which they had, in most cases, been made to break by
the coercive measures of Boers out on commando, he wished to give
the burghers still in the field every opportunity of becoming
acquainted with the treatment he proposed now to extend to them,
their families, and their property.
"Instructions had been issued to form laagers for all surrendered
burghers, their wives, families, and stock, on the railway in
their own districts under military protection; and, except where
it was proved that a burgher had voluntarily broken his oath and
gone out on commando, no difference would be made between those
who had not taken the oath. To protect deserted women and
children they would also be brought into these laagers, where
their husbands and sons, who desired to live peacefully, could
freely join them.
"It was essential that the country should be thus cleared,
because so long as the means of subsistence remained in and on
the farms, so long small commandos were enabled to continue in
the field. In return, Lord Kitchener expected every assistance
from those to whom he gave protection. They must each and all
help to the best of their ability by influencing in every way in
their power those still in the field to surrender. These measures
would be applied gradually, and extended if they proved
successful. Burghers must understand that no responsibility could
be accepted for stock or property, except for that which they
brought in with them, and then only if they kept it within the
limits of the protection he was prepared to afford."[241]
[Footnote 241: Cd. 547.]
The report of Lord Kitchener's speech from which these paragraphs are
taken was printed in Dutch and circulated by the Burgher Peace
Committee. It is certainly significant that a measure which was
subsequently held up to the execration of the civilised world by the
official leader of the Liberal party and the friends of the Boers in
England, should have been carefully explained by Lord Kitchener to an
audience of Boers at Pretoria, and accepted by them as a means of
enabling the peaceably disposed burghers to escape from the compulsion
of their leaders. In this, as in many other matters, the English
friends of the Boers were _plus royalistes que le roi meme_.
[Sidenote: Boer coercive measures.]
These, then, were the means employed by the British military
authorities to avert a needless protraction of the war. We have now to
observe the methods by which the Boer leaders prevented their efforts
from producing the desired result. In view of the destruction of the
organised resistance of the Republics, Lord Roberts had made known by
proclamation that all burghers who surrendered their arms and took the
oath of neutrality would be allowed to return to their homes, or, if
at home, to remain there undisturbed. This implied an intention on the
part of the British authorities to provide such protection as would
enable the surrendered burghers to remain in peaceable possession of
their property. General Botha, as we have already noted, was
personally in favour of a general surrender after the battle of
Dalmanutha; but, when once the majority of the Boer leaders had
decided to continue to resist the establishment of British authority
by force of arms, it became his business to keep every fighting
burgher in the field. Here, again, the work of the Intelligence
Department provides us with instructive evidence of the purposes and
acts of the enemy. In the course of the subsequent military operations
Sir Bindon Blood captured a number of official documents in the Boer
Government laager at Roos Senekal. One of these, referring to the
period in question, sufficiently indicates the nature of the "coercive
measures" to which Lord Kitchener had alluded. Under date October 6th,
1900, General Botha gives instructions to the Boer commandant at
Bethel to telegraph round to the Boer generals and officers certain
military instructions, and he then adds:
"Do everything in your power to prevent the burghers from laying
down their arms. I will be compelled, if they do not listen to
this, to confiscate everything moveable or unmoveable, and also
to burn their houses. Get into direct communication with the
Standerton men, and destroy the railway line between Heidelberg
and Standerton, and especially derail and hold up trains. In this
manner we will obtain a large quantity of food."[242]
[Footnote 242: Cd. 663. See also the text of the circular
issued on December 2nd, 1900, by Louis Botha, as
Commandant-General of the Boer forces, to all military
officers, landdrosts, etc., giving specific instructions for
the punishment of surrendered burghers who refused to join
the commandos when called upon, and for the evasion of the
neutrality oath.]
And, while the peaceably inclined burghers were prevented from
surrendering by the fear of these penalties, the courage of the
commandos was maintained by the spread of false information. Among
these same papers found at Roos Senekal is a telegram despatched on
November 2nd, 1900, to General Viljoen, containing a number of
encouraging statements bearing upon the political and military
situation, of which the three following may be taken as
characteristic:
"October, 1900. A Congress of Delegates of the Powers was held at
Parijs [Paris], whereby England asked for an extension of six
months to carry on the war. This was refused by the powers on the
proposal of Holland and Austria.
"France is ready to land troops in England on the 1st November.
"Cape Colonial troops to the number of 2,500 have been sent back
by General Roberts, having quarrelled with the regulars. Their
arms were taken away and burnt. This last is official news
received by General Fourie."[243]
[Footnote 243: Cd. 663.]
[Sidenote: "Not civilised warfare".]
It was in order to counteract the effects of this system of terrorism
and deceit, that the endeavour was made to inform the mass of the
Boers still in arms of the actual state of affairs, both in respect of
the hopelessness of foreign intervention and the real intentions of
the British Government, through the agency of the Burgher Peace
Committee. The treatment accorded to these peace emissaries is
justifiable, possibly, by a strict interpretation of the laws of war;
but it fixes inevitably the responsibility for the needless sufferings
of the Boer people in the guerilla war, upon Ex-President Steyn,
Schalk Burger, Louis Botha, Christian de Wet, and the other Boer
leaders. On January 10th, 1901, of three agents of the Peace Committee
taken prisoners to De Wet's laager near Lindley, one--a British
subject--was flogged and then shot, and two, who were burghers, were
flogged.[244] And on February 12th Meyer de Kock, the Secretary of the
Committee, was shot.[245]
[Footnote 244: Cd. 547.]
[Footnote 245: Cd. 663. It was at this time that the utterly
unjustifiable and brutal murder of the coloured man, Esau,
took place in the invasion of the Calvinia district of the
Cape Colony. His sole offence was his known loyalty to the
British Government. "He was flogged on January 15th, 1901,
and kept in gaol till February 5th, when he was flogged
through the streets and shot outside the village by a Boer
named Strydom, who stated that he acted according to orders."
Cd. 547.]
But the efforts of the Peace Committee were not altogether thrown
away. The terrible deaths of these men, true martyrs of the Boer
cause, evoked more than one notable protest against the insensate
determination of Ex-President Steyn and De Wet.
"Dear Brother, ... From what I hear you are so angry with me,"
wrote General Piet de Wet to his brother Christian, "that you
have decided to kill me should you find me. May God not allow it
that you should have the opportunity to shed more innocent blood.
Enough has been shed already.... I beseech you, let us think over
the matter coolly for a moment, and see whether our cause is
really so pure and righteous that we can rely on God's
help."[246]
[Footnote 246: Cd. 547.]
And Mr. H. A. Du Plessis, the predikant at Lindley in the Orange River
Colony, addressed an "open letter" to the clergy of the Dutch Reformed
Church in the Cape Colony.
"It is not civilised warfare any more on the part of the
burghers. They have become desperate, and as fanatics do things
in conflict with a Christian spirit and civilisation.... About a
fortnight ago, G. Mueller, one of my deacons and brother of the
late minister of Burghersdorp, was brutally ill-used. He had to
strip, and received twenty-five lashes with a stirrup leather--he
is not the only one--because he took letters from a member of the
Peace Committee to certain heads of the burgher force, in which
they were strongly advised to give in. At the same time Andries
Wessels and J. Morgendael were taken prisoners. They left
Kroonstad at their own request, and with the sanction of the
military authorities, in order to have an interview with the
leaders of the burgher force. Morgendael was mortally wounded by
Commandant Froneman without a hearing, and at the instigation of
General C. de Wet. He died afterwards.... In such a shameful, in
fact, inhuman, manner were these men treated; and for what
reason? Simply because they had tried to save their country and
people....
"The burghers are kept totally in the dark by their leaders as to
what the real state of affairs is. Because I wish to save them
from certain ruin I make this appeal to you....
"If [the burghers] knew what the true state of affairs was, a
large portion would long ago have come in and delivered up their
arms....
"Therefore, I implore you, stand still for a few moments and
think of the true interests of the Afrikander nation, and see if
you will not alter your opinion, and quench the fire of war
instead of feeding the flame....[247]
[Footnote 247: Cd. 547.]
These letters, which were published in _The Cape Times_, formed part
of an attempt made by the Burgher Peace Committee, "to induce some of
the leading men in the colony, who are known to sympathise with the
Boers, to tell the men still in the field that the hope of any
assistance from here is a delusion." But, in thus reporting this new
endeavour to Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Milner adds that he is not,
himself, "very sanguine" of its success.
[Sidenote: Policy of the Bond.]
There was only too good ground for this opinion. The Afrikander
nationalists of the Cape hated England no less than did the republican
nationalists, though they feared her more. The policy which the Bond
had adopted after the occupation of the Republics by the British
forces was perfectly definite. Its object was to avert the final
disaster of the war by securing the maintenance of the Republics as
independent centres of Afrikander nationalism. In order to do this the
Bond resolved to keep the Cape Colony in a state of smouldering
rebellion, to encourage the continued resistance of the Boer
commandos, and to render all the material assistance to the guerilla
leaders and their forces that could be afforded without exposing the
Cape Dutch to the penalties of treason. It may be doubted, however,
whether the Bond leaders, in view of the resolute attitude of the
loyalist population and their consistent and unfaltering support of
Lord Milner, would have embarked upon this policy, unless they had
calculated upon the co-operation of the Liberal Opposition in England.
As it was, their expectations in this respect had been amply
fulfilled, and the policy itself, as we have seen, had been admirably
carried into effect.
The second invasion of the Cape Colony began, as we have noticed, with
the incursion of the Boers after the Worcester Congress. On December
16th, 1900, Kruitzinger, with seven hundred, and Hertzog with twelve
hundred men, crossed the Orange River; and by February 11th, 1901, De
Wet, who had been "headed back" in December, had succeeded in eluding
the British columns and entered the Colony.[248] At this moment
success seemed to be within measurable distance both to the Bond and
to De Wet. The point of view of the astute Afrikander statesmen is
different from that of the guerilla leader; but each party is equally
hopeful of the ultimate victory of the nationalist cause. Of the
attitude of the Bond in this month of February, 1901, Mr. Kipling
writes from Capetown:
[Footnote 248: Cd. 522.]
"Some of the extremists of the Bond are for committing themselves
now, fully, to the Dutch cause, De Wet and all; but some of the
others are hunting for some sort of side-path that will give them
a chance of keeping on the ground-level of the gallows, within
hail of a seat in the next Parliament. If De Wet wins--he is
assumed to be in command of several thousands, all lusting for
real battle, and sure of a welcome among many more thousands
alight with the same desire--the Bond may, of course, come out
flat-footedly on his side. Just at present the apricots are not
quite ripe enough. But the Bond has unshaken faith in the
Opposition, whose every word and action are quoted here, and lead
to more deaths on the veld. _It is assumed that His Majesty's
Opposition will save the Bond, and South Africa for the Bond, if
only the commandos make the war expensive._"[249]
[Footnote 249: The italics are Mr. Kipling's. _The Science of
Rebellion: a Tract for the Times_, by Rudyard Kipling.]
[Sidenote: De Wet in the colony.]
If this account of the attitude of the Bond stood alone, its value
would be merely that of an _ex parte_ statement by a competent
observer on the spot. But it does not stand alone. The accident of the
capture of the Boer official papers at Roos Senekal, to which we have
referred before, has provided us with a record of the thoughts which
were in De Wet's mind at the time when Mr. Kipling's words were
written. In a report dated "On the Veld, February 14th, 1901,"
Commandant-General Botha is informed that "De Wet's last news is that
the Cape Colony has risen to a man, and has already taken up arms.
They refused to give up to the British Government. Many more are only
waiting operations on part of De Wet to join him; and General De Wet
concludes this report with the words: 'It is certain that the ways of
the Lord are hidden from us, and that, after all, it seems that the
day of a united South Africa is not far off.'"
The writer of this despatch is the "Acting Chief-Commandant" of the
Orange Free State; and to his report of De Wet's success in the Cape
Colony, he now adds an account of what is happening on the other side
of the Orange River:
"The burghers in the Orange Free State are hopeful, and expecting
a happy ending. The grudge against the Britisher has now taken
deep root, and the women and girls are encouraging the burghers
to stick up to the bitter end. So that our cause now rests in the
union of the burghers, and, with God's help, we will accomplish
our end.... The enemy's plan is to starve us out, but he will
never do it, now we have an outlet from the Cape Colony, even if
we have to use force."[250]
[Footnote 250: Cd. 663.]
De Wet was chased out of the Colony by the British columns on February
28th, but smaller commandos under Kruitzinger, Fouche, Scheepers, and
Malan remained behind. Apart from their mobility, and the persistent
manner in which they clung to rugged and mountainous districts, the
ability of these Boer raiders to keep the field against the Imperial
troops must be attributed to the sympathy and material assistance
which they received from the colonial Dutch. The actual number of
recruits which they secured was small; but, in Lord Kitchener's
words--
"the friendly feelings of a considerable portion of the rural
population assured to them at all times not only an ample food
supply, but also timely information of the movements of our
pursuing columns--two points which told heavily in their
favour."[251]
[Footnote 251: Cd. 605.]
[Sidenote: Effect of Cape rebellion.]
In view of the enormous area of the sparsely populated and difficult
country throughout which their movements were thus facilitated, it is
not surprising that these roaming commandos were never completely
suppressed. Of the 21,256 men who surrendered after Vereeniging, 3,635
were Boers and rebels, who had been, up to that time, at large in the
Cape Colony.[252] The importance of the contribution which the
disloyal majority of the Cape Dutch were enabled, in this manner, to
make to the power of resistance exhibited by the Boers in the guerilla
war has scarcely been sufficiently appreciated. As it was, a large
body of Imperial troops, which would otherwise have been available for
completing the conquest of the new colonies, were kept employed, not
merely in guarding the all-important railway lines, but from time to
time in arduous, costly, and exhausting military operations in the
Cape Colony.[253]
[Footnote 252: Cd. 988.]
[Footnote 253: "Cape Colony is a great disappointment to me
... no general rising can be expected in that quarter....
[But] the little contingent there has been of great help to
us: they have kept 50,000 troops occupied, with which
otherwise we should have had to reckon."--Gen. Christian de
Wet at the Vereeniging Conference on May 16th, 1902. App. A.
_The Three Years' War_, by Christian Rudolf de Wet
(Constable, 1902). But see forward also, p. 485, for part
played by British loyalists.]
The value of this contribution was quite well understood by the
Afrikander nationalists of the Cape. In Mr. Kipling's vigorous
English, "north and south they were working for a common object--the
manufacture of pro-Boers in England by doubling the income-tax." And
it is in the extension of the area of the war by the establishment of
the Boer commandos in the Cape Colony that we must find the one valid
military consideration which underlay the failure of the peace
negotiations between Lord Kitchener and General Louis Botha
(February-April, 1901), and the final rejection of the British terms
of surrender by the Boer leaders in June. The point is made perfectly
plain in the official notice signed by Schalk Burger, as Acting
President of the South African Republic, and Steyn, as President of
the Orange Free State, which was issued to the burghers on June 20th,
1901. After reciting that the British terms had been referred to
"State President Krueger and the deputation in Europe," and that
President Krueger's reply had been considered by a conference of the
Governments of both Republics, at which Chief-Commandant C. De Wet,
Commandant-General L. Botha, and Assistant-Commandant J. H. De la Rey
had presented a full report, the document continues:
"And considering the good progress in our cause in the colonies,
where our brothers oppose the cruel injustice done to the
Republics more and more in depriving them of their independence,
considering further the invaluable personal and material
sacrifices they [the Colonial Dutch] have made for our cause,
which would all be worthless and vain with a peace whereby the
independence of the Republics is given up ... [it is resolved]
that no peace will be made ... by which our independence and
national existence, or the interests of our colonial brothers,
shall be the price paid, and that the war will be vigorously
prosecuted."[254]
[Footnote 254: Cd. 663.]
[Sidenote: Afrikander statesmanship.]
It is impossible to withhold a tribute of admiration from the
Afrikander nationalist leaders. The qualities of statesmanship that
enabled a Cavour or a Bismarck to make a nation were theirs. From the
apparent hopelessness of the position created by Lord Roberts's swift
and overwhelming victories, they had brought round their affairs to
the point at which they now stood. The task which confronted the
Imperial troops was no longer to disarm the inhabitants of the
Republics, but to disarm and subdue practically the entire Dutch
population of South Africa. And to the military difficulties inherent
in the accomplishment of such a task in such a country, they had added
the opposition of political forces operating both in England and South
Africa with scarcely less embarrassing effects. Had it been merely an
affair of the island people and the island statesmen, the Bond might
still have won. The courage and endurance of the Imperial troops alone
would not have saved South Africa. The army was the instrument of the
people, and it was for the people to make use of this instrument, or
to withdraw it, as they chose. But the over-sea British claimed a
voice in the settlement; and the Bond had no friends among them. The
"younger nations" and the "man" at Capetown saved South Africa for the
Empire.
Before we proceed to consider the broad features of the military
operations by which the disarmament of the Dutch was at length
accomplished, a reference must be made to the account of the general
situation in South Africa addressed by Lord Milner to Mr. Chamberlain
from Capetown on February 6th, 1901. Among all the notable documents
which he furnished to his official chief, none affords more convincing
evidence of cool judgment, mastery of South African conditions, and
sureness of statecraft than this. It is a letter, and not a despatch,
and as such it contains some personal details which would not have
found a place in more formal communications.
[Sidenote: Lord Milner's survey.]
Two reasons, Lord Milner writes, have prevented him from sending for a
long time past any general review of South African affairs. "I am
occupied," he says, "every day that passes from morning till night by
business, all of which is urgent, and the amount and variety of which
you are doubtless able to judge from the communications on a great
variety of subjects which are constantly passing between us." And in
addition to this, he has always hoped that "some definite point would
be reached, at which it might be possible to sum up that chapter of
our history which contained the war, and to forecast the work of
administrative construction which must succeed it." Now, however, it
is useless to wait longer for a "clear and clean-cut" situation.
Although he has not "the slightest doubt of the ultimate result," he
foresees that the work which still lies before the Imperial troops
will be "slower, more difficult, more harassing, and more expensive
than was at one time anticipated."
"It is no use denying that the last half-year has been one of
retrogression. Seven months ago this Colony was perfectly quiet,
at least as far as the Orange River. The southern half of the
Orange River Colony was rapidly settling down, and even a
considerable portion of the Transvaal, notably the south-western
districts, seemed to have definitely accepted British authority,
and to rejoice at the opportunity of a return to orderly
government and the pursuits of peace. To-day the scene is
completely altered."
The "increased losses to the country," due to the prolongation of the
struggle and to the guerilla methods adopted by the Boer leaders, are
obvious.
"The fact that the enemy are now broken up into a great number of
small forces, raiding in every direction, and that our troops are
similarly broken up in pursuit of them, makes the area of actual
fighting, and consequently of destruction, much wider than it
would be in the case of a conflict between equal numbers
operating in large masses. Moreover, the fight is now mainly over
supplies. The Boers live entirely on the country through which
they pass, not only taking all the food they can lay hands upon
on the farms--grain, forage, horses, cattle, etc., but looting
the small village stores for clothes, boots, coffee, sugar, etc.,
of all of which they are in great need. Our forces, on their
side, are compelled to denude the country of everything moveable,
in order to frustrate these tactics of the enemy. No doubt a
considerable amount of the stock taken by us is not wholly lost,
but simply removed to the refugee camps, which are now being
established at many points along the railway lines. But even
under these circumstances the loss is great, through animals
dying on the route, or failing to find sufficient grass to live
upon when collected in large numbers at the camps. Indeed, the
loss of crops and stock is a far more serious matter than the
destruction of farm buildings, of which so much has been heard."
And to this loss incidental to the campaign there has been added
recently "destruction of a wholly wanton and malicious character."
This is the injury done to the mining plant in the outlying districts
of the Rand by the Boer raiders, a destruction for which there is no
possible excuse.
"It has no reason or justification in connection with military
operations, but is pure vandalism, and outside the scope of
civilised warfare.... Directly or indirectly, all South Africa,
including the agricultural population, owes its prosperity to the
mines, and, of course, especially to the mines of the Transvaal.
To money made in mining it is indebted for such progress, even in
agriculture, as it has recently made, and the same source will
have to be relied upon for the recuperation of agriculture after
the ravages of war.
"Fortunately the damage done to the mines has not been large,
relatively to the vast total amount of the fixed capital sunk in
them. The mining area is excessively difficult to guard against
purely predatory attacks having no military purpose, because it
is, so to speak, 'all length and no breadth'--one long thin line,
stretching across the country from east to west for many miles.
Still, garrisoned as Johannesburg now is, it is only possible
successfully to attack a few points in it. Of the raids hitherto
made, and they have been fairly numerous, only one has resulted
in any serious damage. In that instance the injury done to the
single mine attacked amounted to L200,000, and it is estimated
that the mine is put out of working for two years. This mine is
only one out of a hundred, and is not by any means one of the
most important. These facts may afford some indication of the
ruin which might have been inflicted, not only on the Transvaal
and all South Africa, but on many European interests, if that
general destruction of mine works which was contemplated just
before our occupation of Johannesburg had been carried out.
However serious in some respects may have been the military
consequences of our rapid advance to Johannesburg, South Africa
owes more than is commonly recognised to that brilliant dash
forward, by which the vast mining apparatus, the foundation of
all her wealth, was saved from the ruin threatening it."
[Sidenote: Material destruction.]
As the result of the last six or seven months of destructive warfare,
"a longer period of recuperation will be required than was originally
anticipated." At the same time, Lord Milner points out that, with
Kimberley and the Rand, the "main engines of prosperity," virtually
undamaged, the economic consequences of the war, "though grave, do not
appear by any means appalling."
"The country population will need a good deal of help, first to
preserve it from starvation, and then, probably, to supply it
with a certain amount of capital to make a fresh start. And the
great industry of the country will need some little time before
it is able to render any assistance. But, in a young country with
great recuperative powers, it will not take many years before the
economic ravages of the war are effaced."
He then turns to consider the "moral effect" of the recrudescence of
the war, which is, in his opinion, more serious than the mere material
destruction of the last six months. In the middle of 1900 the feeling
in the Orange River Colony and the western districts of the Transvaal
was "undoubtedly pacific."
"The inhabitants were sick of the war. They were greatly
astonished, after all that had been dinned into them, by the fair
and generous treatment they received on our first occupation, and
it would have taken very little to make them acquiesce readily in
the new regime. At that time, too, the feeling in the Colony was
better than I have ever known it."
[Sidenote: Recrudescence of the war.]
If it had been possible to screen those portions of the conquered
territories which were fast settling down to peaceful pursuits from
the incursions of the enemy still in the field, the worst results of
the guerilla war might have been avoided. But the "vast extent of the
country, and the necessity of concentrating our forces for the long
advance, first to Pretoria and then to Komati Poort," made this
impossible. The Boer leaders raided the country already occupied, but
now left exposed; and, encouraged by the small successes thus easily
obtained, the commandos reappeared first in the south-east of the
Orange River Colony, then in the south-west of the Transvaal, and
finally in every portion of the conquered territory.
Those among the burgher population who desired to submit to British
rule now found themselves in a position of great difficulty.
"Instead of being made prisoners of war, they had been allowed to
remain on their farms on taking the oath of neutrality, and many
of them were really anxious to keep it. But they had not the
strength of mind, nor, from want of education, a sufficient
appreciation of the sacredness of the obligation which they had
undertaken, to resist the pressure of their old companions in
arms when these reappeared among them appealing to their
patriotism and to their fears. In a few weeks or months the very
men whom we had spared and treated with exceptional leniency were
up in arms again, justifying their breach of faith in many cases
by the extraordinary argument that we had not preserved them from
the temptation to commit it.
"The general rising at the back of our advanced forces naturally
led to the return of a number of our troops, and to a straggling
conflict not yet concluded, in which the conduct of our own
troops, naturally enough, was not characterised by the same
leniency to the enemy which marked our original conquest. We did
not, indeed, treat the men who had broken parole with the same
severity with which I believe any other nation would have
treated them. Entitled as we were by the universally recognised
rules of war to shoot the men who, having once been prisoners in
our hands and having been released on a distinct pledge to
abstain from further part in the war, had once more taken up arms
against us, we never in a single instance availed ourselves of
that right. But as our columns swept through the revolted
country, meeting on every hand with hostility, and even with
treachery, on the part of the people whom we had spared, no doubt
in some cases the innocent suffered with the guilty. Men who had
actually kept faith with us were, in some instances, made
prisoners of war, or saw their property destroyed, simply because
it was impossible to distinguish between them and the greater
number who had broken faith. This, no doubt, resulted in further
accessions to the ranks of the enemy. And this tendency was
augmented by the evacuation, necessary for military reasons, of a
number of places, such as Fauresmith, Jagersfontein, and
Smithfield, which we had held for months, and in which we had
actually established a reasonably satisfactory civil
administration. Latterly, something has been done to check the
general demoralisation, and to afford places of refuge for those
willing to submit, by establishing camps along the railway lines
to which burghers may take themselves, their families, and their
stock for protection. No doubt this is a very inadequate
substitute for the effectual defence of whole districts.
Consequently the camps are mostly tenanted by women and children
whose male relatives are, in many cases, in the field against us.
But, as far as it goes, it is a good measure, and there can be no
doubt that, whenever we succeed in striking a decisive blow at
any of the numerous commandos roaming about the country, a good
many of their less willing members will find their way to one or
other of these camps in order to avoid further fighting."
As the guerilla warfare thus swept back over the new colonies, the
Dutch in the Cape Colony, who at one time, about the middle of the
preceding year (1900), had seemed disposed to acquiesce in the union
of all South Africa under the British flag, became once more restless
and embittered.
[Sidenote: A carnival of mendacity.]
"Every act of harshness, however necessary, on the part of our
troops, was exaggerated and made the most of, though what
principally inflamed the minds of the people were alleged
instances of needless cruelty which never occurred. Never in my
life have I read of, much less experienced, such a carnival of
mendacity as that which accompanied the pro-Boer agitation in
this Colony at the end of last year. And these libels still
continue to make themselves felt. It is true that excitement has
subsided somewhat during the last two months, partly because some
of the worst inventions about the conduct of the British troops
have been exposed and utterly discredited, and partly because the
general introduction of martial law has tended greatly to check
seditious writing and speaking. But even now the general feeling
in most of the country districts is very bad, and the commandos
which invaded the Colony in December and have been roaming about
ever since, while they have not gained many adherents among the
colonial farmers, have nevertheless enjoyed the very substantial
aid which the sympathy of the majority of the inhabitants was
able to give them, in supporting themselves, obtaining fresh
supplies of food and horses, and evading the forces sent in
pursuit of them."
Of the general attitude of the Cape Dutch at this time Lord Milner
writes with the lenient judgment of complete understanding:
"I am satisfied by experience that the majority of those Dutch
inhabitants of the Colony who sympathise with the Republics,
however little they may be able to resist giving active
expression to that sympathy when the enemy actually appear
amongst them, do not desire to see their own districts invaded or
to find themselves personally placed in the awkward dilemma of
choosing between high treason and an unfriendly attitude to the
men of their own race from beyond the border. There are
extremists who would like to see the whole of the Cape Colony
overrun. But the bulk of the farmers, especially the substantial
ones, are not of this mind. They submit readily enough even to
stringent regulations having for their object the prevention of
the spread of invasion. And not a few of them are, perhaps,
secretly glad that the prohibition of seditious speaking and
writing, of political meetings, and of the free movement of
political firebrands through the country enables them to keep
quiet, without actually themselves taking a strong line against
the propaganda, and, to do them justice, they behave reasonably
well under the pass and other regulations necessary for that
purpose, as long as care is taken not to make these regulations
too irksome to them in the conduct of their business, or in their
daily lives.
"That there has been an invasion at all is no doubt due to the
weakness of some of the Dutch colonists in tolerating, or
supporting, the violent propaganda, which could not but lead the
enemy to believe that they had only to come into the Colony in
order to meet with general active support. But this was a
miscalculation on the part of the enemy, though a very pardonable
one. They knew the vehemence of the agitation in their favour as
shown by the speeches in Parliament, the series of public
meetings culminating in the Worcester Congress, the writings of
the Dutch Press, the very general wearing of the republican
colours, the singing of the Volkslied, and so forth, and they
regarded these demonstrations as meaning more than they actually
did. Three things were forgotten. Firstly, that a great
proportion of the Afrikanders in the Colony who really meant
business had slipped away and joined the republican ranks long
ago. Secondly, that the abortive rebellion of a year ago had left
the people of the border districts disinclined to repeat the
experiment of a revolt. Thirdly, that owing to the precautionary
measures of the Government the amount of arms and ammunition in
the hands of the country population throughout the greater part
of the Colony is not now anything like as large as it usually is,
and far smaller than it was a year ago."
[Sidenote: British population in arms.]
In these circumstances the object to be aimed at is to screen off as
much of the country as possible from raids. But the Cape Colony is
considerably larger in area than France and the United Kingdom put
together; it has "an immense length of frontier that can be crossed
anywhere," and "exceedingly primitive means of communication." The
exclusion of mobile guerilla bands from across the frontier is,
therefore, "something of an impossibility." There is one method, and
one only, by which "the game of the invaders can be frustrated." It is
to provide each district with the means of defending itself. And so a
local defence force has been formed in all districts, with the
exception of those--happily the least important in the Colony--in
which the population is extremely small and the loyalists are very
few.
"In the other districts, the response on the part of the British
population to the general call to arms recently made by the
Ministry has been better than the most sanguine expected. It was
always admitted, by their friends and foes alike, that the bulk
of the Afrikander population would never take up arms on the side
of the British Government in this quarrel, even for local
defence. The appeal was, therefore, virtually directed to the
British population, mostly townspeople, and to a small, but no
doubt very strong and courageous, minority of the Afrikanders who
have always been loyalists. These classes had been already
immensely drawn on by the Cape police, the regular volunteer
corps, and the numerous irregular mounted corps which had been
called into existence because of the war. There must have been
twelve thousand Cape Colonists under arms before the recent
appeal, and, as things are now going, we shall get as many more
under that appeal--a truly remarkable achievement under a purely
voluntary system. The fact that, if the war continues for a few
months longer, so large a number of the South African British
will be under arms (for, it must be remembered, in addition to
the Cape colonists we have about one thousand Rhodesians, and, I
should say, at least ten thousand Uitlanders) is one that cannot
be left out of account in considering either the present
imbroglio or the settlement after peace is restored.
"It is, indeed, calculated to exercise a most important and, I
believe, beneficial influence upon the South African politics of
the future. Among the principal causes of the trouble of the
past and present was the contempt felt by the Afrikander
countryman, used to riding and shooting, and generally in
possession of a good rifle and plenty of cartridges, for other
white men less habituated to arms than he was himself. That
feeling can hardly survive the experience of the past twelve
months, and especially of the last six weeks. The splendid
fighting of the despised Johannesburgers of the Imperial Light
Horse, and of the other South African Colonial Corps, has become
a matter of history, and the present _levee en masse_ of the
British people, including the townsmen, of this Colony, is proof
positive that when the necessity is really felt they are equal to
the best in courage and public spirit. In this respect the events
of the past few months, unfortunate as they have been in many
ways, have undoubtedly their brighter side. The mutual respect of
the two principal white races is the first condition of a healthy
political life in the South Africa of the future. It is possible
that if the extreme strain of the most recent developments of the
war had never been felt throughout Cape Colony, the British
inhabitants would never have had the opportunity of showing that
they were inferior to none in their willingness to bear all the
burdens of citizenship, including that of personal service."
[Sidenote: Remember the loyalists.]
And Lord Milner urges that in the future England should not forget
that there are loyalists in South Africa as well as Boers; and that
the loyalists are Dutch as well as British.
"The important part now played, even from the purely military
point of view, by the South African loyalists ought, as it seems
to me, to have a good effect not only in South Africa but in
England. The inherent vice, if I may say so, of almost all
public discussion of our South African difficulties is the
tendency to concentrate attention too exclusively on the Boers.
Say what we will, the controversy always seems to relapse into
the old ruts--it is the British Government on the one hand and
the Boers on the other. The question how a particular policy will
affect not merely our enemies, but our now equally numerous
friends, seems seldom to be adequately considered. And yet it
would seem that justice and policy alike should lead us to be as
eager to consider the feelings and interests, and to retain the
loyalty, of those who are fighting on our side, as to disarm the
present enmity and win the future confidence of those who are
fighting against us. And this principle would seem all the easier
to adhere to because there is really nothing which the great body
of the South African loyalists desire which it is not for the
honour and advantage of the mother country to insist upon.
"Of vindictiveness, or desire to oppress the Afrikanders, there
is, except in hasty utterances inevitable in the heat of the
conflict, which have no permanent significance, or in tirades
which are wholly devoid of influence, no sign whatever. The
attitude of almost all leading and representative men, and the
general trend of public feeling among the loyalists, even in the
intensity of the struggle, is dead against anything like racial
exclusiveness or domination. If this were not so it would be
impossible for a section of pure-bred Afrikanders, small no doubt
in numbers but weighty in character and position, to take the
strong line which they do in opposition to the views of the
majority of their own people, based as these are, and as they
know them to be, upon a misconception of our policy and
intentions. These men are among the most devoted adherents to the
Imperial cause, and would regard with more disfavour and alarm
than any one the failure of the British nation to carry out its
avowed policy in the most complete manner. They are absolutely
convinced that the unquestioned establishment of British
supremacy, and the creation of one political system from Capetown
to the Zambesi, is, after all that has happened, the only
salvation for men of their own race, as well as for others."
[Sidenote: "One Country, One Flag."]
And, in conclusion, he writes of the "predominant, indeed the almost
unanimous, feeling of those South Africans who sympathise with the
Imperial Government," that--
"they are sick to death of the war, which has brought ruin to
many of them, and imposed considerable sacrifices on almost all.
But they would rather see the war continue for an indefinite time
than run the risk of any compromise which would leave even the
remotest chance of the recurrence of so terrible a scourge in the
future. They are prepared to fight and suffer on in order to make
South Africa, indisputably and for ever, one country under one
flag, with one system of government, and that system the British,
which they believe to ensure the highest possible degree of
justice and freedom to men of all races."
In this luminous review of what Lord Milner terms "if by no means the
most critical, possibly the most puzzling" state of affairs since the
outbreak of the war, it will be observed that he puts the time
required by South Africa to recover from the economic ravages of the
war at "not many years." In point of fact, two and a half years after
the surrender of Vereeniging nothing remained but the scattered
graveyards upon the veld, the empty tins still tinkling upon the wire
fences by the railways, and an occasional blockhouse, to remind the
traveller of the devastating struggle from which the country had so
recently emerged. This estimate of the period of recuperation affords
a measure of the magnitude of Lord Milner's achievement in the three
concluding years of his administration. For the rest, we look in vain
for any trace of bitterness, or even of partisanship, in his frank and
penetrating analysis. It is the survey of a man who is completely
master of the situation; who is absolutely convinced of the justice of
the British cause; who has no illusions and no fears.
[Sidenote: Feeding the enemy.]
With the circumstances in which the burghers were induced by their
leaders to continue, or renew, their resistance to the Imperial troops
before us, both the long duration of the guerilla war, and the methods
by which it was finally brought to a close, become easily
intelligible. At the same time it must not be forgotten that, from a
purely military point of view, the relapse of the conquered
territories into war was due to the insufficiency of British troops.
By the end of April, 1900, as we have noticed before, all the reserves
of the regular army had been exhausted; and, in addition to this, at
the end of twelve months' service a considerable proportion of the
Home and over-sea auxiliaries left South Africa to return to civil
life. Had there been a sufficient number of trained soldiers to
occupy effectively the Boer Republics, the war would not have swept
back through them and over their borders into the Colony. Even so, the
actual number of British troops in South Africa under Lord Roberts's
command would have sufficed to subjugate the Boers, had the British
military authorities employed the severe methods of warfare to which
any other belligerent would have had recourse under the like
conditions--methods of merciful severity which were employed, in fact,
by the Union forces in the civil war in America.[255] But, by the
irony of fate, the humane methods of the British, in the absence of a
practically unlimited supply of trained troops, made the revival of
hostilities possible on the part of the Boers, and thereby created the
necessity for the employment of those more rigorous, but, by
comparison, still humane and generous methods, in respect of which the
charge of inhumanity was brought against Great Britain by the friends
of the Boers in England and on the continent of Europe. No one will
maintain that it is a part of the duty of a belligerent to support the
non-combatant population of the enemy. Yet this duty was voluntarily
assumed throughout the war by the British military authorities, who,
from the occupation of Bloemfontein onwards, fed the non-combatant
Boer population as well as they fed their own troops.
[Footnote 255: _E.g._ those employed by General Sherman in
his march to the Sea, through Georgia, in the latter part of
1864.]
[Sidenote: Lord Kitchener's task.]
An incident that happened after the occupation of Pretoria exhibits
the remarkable generosity of the British attitude. At a time when,
owing to the Boer attacks upon the railway, the utmost difficulty was
experienced in getting supplies from the thousand-miles'-distant base
at the coast, Lord Roberts was compelled to send away a part of the
civilian population to General Botha, and they were removed by the
Boer Commandant-General to Barberton. That is to say, while the
British, on the one hand, were giving part of the supplies on which
the existence of their troops depended, to the non-combatant
population of the enemy, the enemy, on the other hand, was doing his
utmost to destroy the single line of railway which alone stood between
the British Army and starvation. When, therefore, Lord Kitchener
succeeded to the command of the British forces in South Africa
(November 29th, 1900), he found the task of disarmament complicated by
two factors. There was the desire of the Home Government that the war
should be conducted upon the humane lines hitherto adopted, and there
was also the fact that the Imperial troops were not numerous enough to
occupy effectively the whole territory of the Republics, or, in other
words, to do the one thing of all others necessary to make this humane
conduct of the war consistent with military success. It was
impossible, with the troops at his disposal, for Lord Kitchener to
hold the enormous territory of the conquered Republics. It was
impossible, perhaps, to support a larger force in a country so poorly
provided with food supplies and means of communication. An
alternative plan had to be found. This plan was to remove the horses,
cattle, and food supplies from the areas which he was unable to
occupy, and to transport the non-combatant inhabitants to places where
they could be both fed and protected. And, when this had been
done--or, more correctly, while it was in process of being done--he
had to capture the small, mobile bodies of burghers operating over the
whole of the unprotected area of the late Republics and the Cape
Colony, and to collect gradually the fighting Boers, captured or
surrendered, into the colonial or over-sea prisoners' camps.
Certain districts, of which those surrounding the towns of Kimberley,
Bloemfontein, Pretoria, and Johannesburg were the more important, had
from the first been effectively occupied and securely held. All the
troops at Lord Kitchener's disposal, that were not absorbed in the
work of garrisoning these districts and maintaining the lines of
communication, were organised into mobile columns, which were
distributed among General Officers respectively attached to a
particular area. In a despatch of July 8th, 1901, Lord Kitchener was
able to report that, as the result of the recent work of these mobile
columns, the Boers, although "still able, in case of emergency, to
concentrate a considerable number of men," were, in his opinion,
"unable to undertake any large scheme of operations." Apart from the
heavy drain from prisoners captured and deaths in the field, the loss
of their ox-waggons had seriously affected their mobility and supply
arrangements.
"Divided up into small parties of three to four hundred men," he
writes, "they are scattered all over the country without plans
and without hope, and on the approach of our troops they
disperse, to reassemble in the same neighbourhood when our men
pass on. In this way they continue an obstinate resistance
without retaining anything, or defending the smallest portion of
this vast country."
He estimates that there are not more than 13,500[256] Boers in the
field in the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and the Cape Colony.
But he adds that--
[Footnote 256: This estimate was very much too small: at the
Vereeniging surrender, when many thousands more of Boers had
been captured or killed 21,256 burghers and rebels laid down
their arms. Cd. 988.]
"with long lines of railway to hold, every yard of which has to
be defended, both to secure our own civil and military supplies,
and, what is more important, to prevent the enemy from obtaining
necessaries from the capture of our trains, the employment of
large numbers of troops continues to be a necessity.... The Boer
party who declared war have quitted the field, and are now urging
those whom they deserted to continue a useless struggle by giving
lying assurances to the ignorant burghers of outside assistance,
and by raising absurdly deceitful hopes that Great Britain has
not sufficient endurance to see the matter through."[257]
[Footnote 257: Cd. 695.]
But it had become evident that some more systematic effort was
required for the capture of the commandos, unless the slow task of
wearing down the Boer resistance was to be almost indefinitely
protracted; and this same month of July, 1901, witnessed the extension
of the blockhouse lines, which proved the turning-point in the
guerilla war. The origin of Lord Kitchener's system of blockhouse
defence is described by him in his despatch of August 8th, 1901.
[Sidenote: The blockhouse system.]
"Experience had shown," he writes, "that the line of defensible
posts, extending across the Orange River Colony, from Jacobsdal
to Ladybrand, constituted a considerable obstacle to the free
movement of the enemies' roving bands, and that the gradual
completion of chains of blockhouses placed at intervals of a
mile, sometimes less, along the Transvaal and Orange River Colony
railways, had obtained for our traffic a comparative security
which it had not previously enjoyed."[258]
[Footnote 258: Cd. 820.]
In July, therefore, Lord Kitchener made arrangements for the
construction of three additional lines of blockhouses. The first ran
from Aliwal North westward, following the course of the Orange River, to
Bethulie, and was continued thence alongside the railway through
Stormberg, Rosmead, Naauwpoort, and De Aar, northward to Kimberley. The
second commenced at Frederickstad and ran northward by the source of the
Mooi River to Breed's Nek in the Magaliesberg, from which point it was
connected with the British garrison at Commando Nek, and thus screened
the western side of the Pretoria and Johannesburg area. The third,
running from Eerste Fabriken in the north, by Springs and Heidelberg,
southward to the Vaal River, protected the same district from attack
upon the east. These new blockhouse lines, Lord Kitchener wrote,
promised to be of much assistance in the future. Not only did they
protect the British communications, and render inter-communication
between the different portions of the Boer forces difficult, but, in the
absence of frontiers, natural or artificial, they served as barriers
against which the British mobile columns were able to drive bands of the
enemy and force them to surrender. Indeed, the blockhouse lines proved
the chief instrument of success; for with the gradual extension of the
system, the area of active hostilities was confined in an increasing
degree to the vast half-deserted regions through which the commandos
roamed, and the British columns swept at intervals in pursuit of them.
A month later, August 8th, Lord Kitchener reported a further step in
advance. He had formed "some specially mobile columns for independent
and rapid action in different parts of the country, generally at some
distance from the operations of other troops." The commanders of these
new mobile columns had a free hand in respect of their movements,
since they were guided by the special intelligence, which they
themselves collected, and not solely by information from headquarters.
The effect produced by the development of the blockhouse system,
combined with the greater freedom of initiative allowed to the new
mobile columns, became apparent in the increasing number of Boers
captured or voluntarily surrendering themselves in the month of
August, when altogether more than two thousand of the enemy were
accounted for.[259] On the 7th of this month the delayed[260]
proclamation was issued, and a date--September 15th--was fixed as the
limit within which the guerilla leaders might, by voluntarily
surrendering, avoid certain penalties which were duly set out. In
order to counteract the effect of this action on the part of the
British Government, General Botha stimulated his followers to
increased military enterprise.
[Footnote 259: There were 186 killed, 75 wounded, 1,384
prisoners, 529 voluntary surrenders; while 930 rifles, 90,958
rounds of ammunition, 1,332 waggons and carts, 13,570 horses,
and 65,879 cattle were captured. Cd. 820.]
[Footnote 260: See p. 420.]
"But," says Lord Kitchener, "though there has been no general
surrender, the device to which the Commandant-General resorted
for turning the thoughts of his burghers in another direction has
probably cost him and his cause [a heavier loss] than a simple
pursuance of the usual evasive tactics would have even entailed."
[Sidenote: Large captures of Boers.]
The precise extent of this loss is shown in the returns for September,
which record captures and surrenders almost as numerous as those of
the preceding month.
"It cannot be expected," Lord Kitchener adds, "even under the
most favourable conditions, that in the presence of the
ever-diminishing numbers opposing us in the field, these figures
can be maintained, but I feel confident that so long as any
resistance is continued, no exertion will be spared either by
officers or men of this force to carry out the task they still
have before them."[261]
[Footnote 261: Cd. 820. The September returns were: 170 Boers
killed in action, 114 wounded prisoners, 1,385 unwounded
prisoners, and 1,393 surrenders.]
[Sidenote: The railway lines secured.]
In another month a position had been reached in which it was possible for
the work of administrative reconstruction--interrupted a year ago by the
development of the guerilla warfare--to be resumed. At this date
(November, 1901), the resistance of the Dutch population had been weakened
by the loss of 53,000 fighting Boers, of whom 42,000 were in British
custody, while the rest had been killed, wounded, or otherwise put out of
action. In the Transvaal 14,700 square miles, and in the Orange River
Colony 17,000 square miles of territory had been enclosed by blockhouse
lines. A square formed roughly by lines running respectively from
Klerksdorp to Zeerust on the west, from Zeerust to Middelburg on the
north, from Middelburg to Standerton on the east, and from Standerton to
Klerksdorp on the south, enclosing Pretoria and the Rand, was the
protected area of the Transvaal. The whole of the Orange River Colony
south of the blockhouse line, Kimberley-Winberg-Bloemfontein-Ladybrand,
was also a protected area; and the Cape Colony, south of the main railway
lines, was similarly screened off. But an application of what may be
termed "the railway-cutting test" yields, perhaps, the most eloquent
testimony both to the magnitude of the original task undertaken by the
Imperial troops, and to the degree of success which had been obtained. In
October, 1900, the railway lines, upon which the British troops depended
for supplies of food and ammunition, were cut thirty-two times, or more
than once a day. The number of times in which they were cut in the
succeeding November was thirty; in December twenty-one; in January, 1901,
sixteen; in February, as the result of De Wet's invasion of the Cape
Colony, they were cut thirty times; in March eighteen; in April eighteen;
in May twelve; in June eight; in July four; in August four; in September
twice; and in October not at all. Still more significant of the approach
of peace was the fact that now, for the first time, the British population
was allowed to return to Johannesburg in any considerable numbers.[262]
[Footnote 262: In August 648 refugees returned; in November
the number had risen to 2,623.]
It remains to consider two questions which cannot be omitted from any
account; however brief, of the manner in which the disarmament of the
Dutch in South Africa was effected. The first of these is the charge
of inhumanity brought against the Imperial military authorities in
respect of the deportation of the Boer non-combatants to the Burgher
Camps; and the second is the actual effect produced upon the burghers
in the field by the public denunciations of the war by members of the
Liberal Opposition in England.
[Sidenote: The Burgher camps.]
In charging the British Government and Lord Kitchener with inhumanity
in the conduct of the war, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and other friends
of the Boer cause relied in the main upon the circumstance that a
certain proportion of the Boer population was removed compulsorily
from districts which the British troops were unable to occupy
effectively, and upon the further fact that the Burgher Camps
exhibited an unusually high rate of mortality. The necessity for the
removal of this non-combatant population will scarcely be disputed in
view of the methods adopted by the Boer leaders to compel the burghers
to continue their resistance to the Imperial troops, and the fact that
nearly every house in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, inhabited
by the Dutch, served as an intelligence office, a recruiting depot,
and a base of supplies for the roving commandos. Nor will it be denied
that the responsibility for the unnecessary suffering incurred by the
Boer people in the guerilla war rests upon those of the Boer leaders
who formed and enforced the decision to continue the struggle, and not
upon the British Government. The alleged "inhumanity," therefore, of
the Imperial military authorities consists in the circumstance that,
instead of leaving these helpless non-combatants to be supported by
the Boer leaders, they removed them to places of security, where they
were fed, housed, and generally maintained, in as little discomfort as
circumstances permitted. If the lesser suffering of the Burgher Camps
was the only alternative to greater suffering, and possibly
starvation, on the veld, the Boers had only their own leaders to thank
for the position in which they found themselves. The death-rate of the
Burgher Camps was exceptionally high as compared with that of any
ordinary European community. But the population of the camps was no
less exceptional. It consisted of women and children, with a small
proportion of adult males; and of all these the majority had come to
the camps as refugees, insufficiently clothed, weakened by exposure
and often by starvation. Obviously the death-rate of such a refugee
community would be much higher, under the most favourable conditions,
than that of an ordinary European town; and, in order to find a valid
point of comparison, we must seek statistics provided by similar
collections of refugees, brought together under the like exceptional
circumstances. We are unable to find any such parallel case, for the
sufficient reason that history records no other example of a nation at
war which, at the risk of impairing the efficiency of its own forces
in the field, has endeavoured, not merely to feed and clothe, but to
house, nurse, and even educate the non-combatant population of its
enemy.
[Sidenote: Reduction of the death-rate.]
What we do know, however, is that, of the total deaths in these camps
of refuge, the great majority were those of infants and children.
This is a circumstance which in itself goes far to make the excess of
the camp death-rate apparent rather than real; since, in the first
place, the Boer mothers, owing to their insanitary habits and
ignorance,[263] are not accustomed to bring more than one out of every
two children to maturity; and in the second, the rate of infant
mortality is abnormally high, as compared with that of a given
community as a whole, even in the most highly developed countries. The
highest monthly death-rate was that of October, 1901, when, out of a
population of 112,109 in all camps, there were 3,205 deaths, or 344
per thousand per annum.[264] But of these deaths, 500 only (in round
numbers) were those of adults, and 2,700 were those of children. That
is to say, in this worst month we have in the refugee camps an adult
death-rate of (roughly) 50 per thousand, as compared with a European
death-rate varying from 16.7 in Norway to 33.2 in Hungary,[265] and a
children's death-rate of 300 per thousand, as compared with the 208
per thousand of the contemporary rate of infant mortality in
thirty-three great towns of the United Kingdom, or in Birkenhead alone
of 362 per thousand. And from this time forward the death-rate of the
refugee camps was rapidly reduced. The reason for this reduction is
significant. By the development of the blockhouse lines the British
military authorities had been enabled to protect their supplies from
the attacks of the guerilla leaders. In other words, Lord Kitchener
was now able to defend the Boer non-combatants against the efforts
made by their own leaders to deprive them of food and other
necessaries of life. And ultimately the mortality in the Burgher Camps
was reduced to a point "much below the normal rates under ordinary
local circumstances."[266]
[Footnote 263: For the grotesque, repulsive, and even fatal
remedies employed by the Boer women in the treatment of their
children in sickness, the reader is referred to the medical
reports on the condition of the refugee camps published in
the Blue-book.]
[Footnote 264: The figures are those given by Miss Hobhouse,
as based upon the official returns (_The Brunt of the War_,
pp. 329-31).]
[Footnote 265: _I.e._ annual per 1,000 on a basis of 25 years
(1874-98).]
[Footnote 266: Cd. 1,163, p. 159. See also _ibid._, p. 151,
and p. 178. Lord Kitchener's reply to the official Boer
complaint against the system of the Burgher Camps (made by
Acting President Schalk Burger), is as follows:
"Numerous complaints were made to me in the early part
of this year (1901), by surrendered burghers, who stated
that after they laid down their arms their families were
ill-treated, and their stock and property confiscated by
order of the Commandant-Generals of the Transvaal and
Orange Free State. These acts appear to have been taken
in consequence of the circular dated Roos Senekal, 6th
November, 1900, in which the Commandant-General says:
'Do everything in your power to prevent the burghers
laying down their arms. I will be compelled, if they do
not listen to this, to confiscate everything movable or
immovable, and also to burn their houses.'
"I took occasion, at my interview with
Commandant-General Louis Botha (February 28th, 1901), to
bring this matter before him, and I told him that if he
continued such acts I should be forced to bring in all
women and children, and as much property as possible, to
protect them from the acts of his burghers. I further
inquired if he would agree to spare the farms and
families of neutral or surrendered burghers, in which
case I expressed my willingness to leave undisturbed the
farms and families of burghers who were on commando,
provided they did not actively assist their relatives.
The Commandant-General emphatically refused even to
consider any such arrangement. He said: 'I am entitled
by law to force every man to join, and if they do not do
so to confiscate their property, and leave their
families on the veld.' I asked him what course I could
pursue to protect surrendered burghers and their
families, and he then said, 'The only thing you can do,
is to send them out of the country, as if I catch them
they must suffer.' After this there was nothing more to
be said, and as military operations do not permit of the
protection of individuals, I had practically no choice
but to continue my system of bringing inhabitants of
certain areas into the protection of our lines. My
decision was conveyed to the Commandant-General in my
official letter, dated Pretoria, 16th April, 1901, from
which the following is an extract:
"'As I informed your Honour at Middelburg, owing to the
irregular manner in which you have conducted and
continue to conduct hostilities, by forcing unwilling
and peaceful inhabitants to join your Commandos, a
proceeding totally unauthorised by the recognised
customs of war, I have no other course open to me, and
am forced to take the very unpleasant and repugnant
steps of bringing in the women and children.
"'I have the greatest sympathy for the sufferings of
these poor people, which I have done my best to
alleviate, and it is a matter of surprise to me and to
the whole civilised world, that your Honour considers
yourself justified in still causing so much suffering to
the people of the Transvaal, by carrying on a hopeless
and useless struggle.'
"From the foregoing, it will, I believe, be perfectly
clear that the responsibility for the action complained
of by Mr. Burger (the so-styled Acting State President
of the Transvaal), rests rather with the
Commandants-General of the Transvaal and Orange Free
State, than with the Commander-in-Chief of the forces in
South Africa....
"It is not the case that every area has been cleared of
the families of burghers, although this might be
inferred from the despatch under discussion. On the
contrary, very large numbers of women and children are
still out, either in Boer Camps or on their farms, and
my Column Commanders have orders to leave them alone,
unless it is clear that they must starve if they are
left out upon the veld....
"Finally, I indignantly and entirely deny the
accusations of rough and cruel treatment of women and
children who were being brought in from their farms to
the camp. Hardships may have been sometimes inseparable
from the process, but the Boer women in our hands
themselves bear the most eloquent testimony to the
kindness and consideration shown to them by our soldiers
on all such occasions."
With this statement it is interesting to compare Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman's words at Bath, November 20th, 1901:
"Is our hypocrisy so great that we actually flatter
ourselves upon our great humanity, because we have saved
from starvation those whose danger of starvation we have
caused?... The hypocrisy of these excuses is almost more
loathsome than the cruelty itself.... We have set
ourselves to punish this country, to reduce it
apparently to ruin, because it has ventured to make war
against us."
Truly an extraordinary attitude for a future Prime Minister
of England!]
The charge of prolonging the war by public declarations of sympathy
with the enemy[267] was definitely formulated against certain members
of the Liberal Opposition and the Irish Nationalist party by Lord St.
Aldwyn (Sir Michael Hicks Beach), at Oldham on October 10th, 1901.
[Footnote 267: What was even worse than such declarations of
sympathy with the Boers was the manifestation of hostility
against the loyalist population of South Africa. _E.g._ Sir
William Harcourt (in a letter in _The Times_ of December
17th, 1900), wrote: "I sometimes think that those bellicose
gentlemen--especially those who do not fight--must
occasionally cast longing, lingering looks towards the times
before they were subsidised (_sic_) by the authors of the
Raid to bring about the position in which they now find
themselves."]
[Sidenote: Why the war was prolonged.]
"The real cause of the prolongation of this war has been
something which, on my word, I believe could never have been seen
in any other country in the world. It has been the speeches in
Parliament of British members of the House of Commons, doing
everything they could against their country and in favour of her
enemies. It has been articles in certain journals taking
absolutely the same lines--I am not talking of mere attacks on
his Majesty's Government, or even calumnies of individual
ministers, that is part of the ordinary machinery of political
warfare, and one of the advantages of an absolutely free Press.
No, what I am talking of is the prominence given to the opinions
and sentiments of men who were called Pro-Boers, as if they
represented the feelings of a large section of their
fellow-countrymen. The invention of lies, like the alleged
quarrel between Lord Kitchener and the War Office, was intended
to damage this country in the conduct of the war, as was also the
wicked charges made against the humanity of our generals and our
soldiers in the Concentration Camps and in the field, the
attempts, such as I saw only the other day in one of these
papers, to prove that in those gallant contests at Fort
Itala[268] and on the borders of Natal our soldiers had not
repulsed their enemies, but were themselves the defeated party.
We here do not attach any importance to those things. We rate
them at their true value because we know something about their
authors--but what do you think is thought of them when they go
out to South Africa? What do the Boers and their leaders think
when they read the newspapers written in England which are full
of these things? The Boers have many faults, but they are a
simple and patriotic people. They never can imagine that English
newspapers would print these things, that English members of
Parliament would speak them, taking always the side of their
country's enemies, unless these things were true. They are
deceived. They greedily swallow all this as representing the
opinion of a great section of the public in this country, and
those who have said these things and those who have circulated
them are the parties who are guilty before God of prolonging this
war. There are the Irish Nationalists. Let me read to you words
which I heard with the greatest pain in the last session of
Parliament from the leader of the Irish Nationalists, a man of
consummate eloquence and perfect self-control. What did Mr. John
Redmond say? He prayed God that the resistance of the Boers might
be strengthened, and that South Africa might take vengeance for
its wrongs by separating itself from the Empire which had deluged
it with blood, and become a free and independent nation. We in
England pass over words of that sort, though I believe they would
not have been uttered with impunity by a member of the
Legislative Assembly of any other country in the world."
[Footnote 268: September 26th, 1901. See Cd. 820 for report
of this action.]
[Sidenote: Campbell-Bannerman's reply.]
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's reply to the charge brought against him
by Lord St. Aldwyn, and subsequently by Lord Salisbury,[269] is
contained in the words following, which were spoken by him at
Plymouth, on November 19th:
[Footnote 269: Letter to Miss Milner, November 11th, 1901.
See p. 416.]
"Now I declare, ladies and gentlemen, for myself, that from first
to last I have never uttered one syllable that could be twisted
by any ingenuity into encouragement by the Boers. No, I have
never even expressed ordinary pity for, or sympathy with them,
because I did not wish to run the risk of being misunderstood.
What I have done, and what I hope I shall continue to do, is to
denounce the stupidity of the way in which the Government were
dealing with the Boers."
There is only one method by which the amazing effrontery of this
denial can be sufficiently exhibited. It is to place underneath it
quotations from speeches delivered by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
himself at Stirling on October 25th, by Mr. Thomas Shaw, M.P., at
Galashiels on October 14th, and by Mr. E. Robertson, M.P., at Dundee
on October 16th, as printed in the "Official Organ of the Orange Free
State Government," dated September 21st, 1901, a copy of which was
found in a Boer laager on the veld. The extracts selected are these:
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman:
"The whole country in the two belligerent States, outside the
mining towns, is a howling wilderness. The farms are burned, the
country is wasted. The flocks and herds are either butchered or
driven off; the mills are destroyed, furniture and instruments of
agriculture smashed. These things are what I have termed methods
of barbarism. I adhere to the phrase. I cannot improve upon it.
If these are not the methods of barbarism, what methods did
barbarism employ?... My belief is that the mass of the British
people ... do not desire to see a brave people subjugated or
annihilated."
Mr. Thomas Shaw, M.P.:
"The war was unnecessary, and therefore unjust.... He wished he
could agree that we were fighting in a just cause, that we had
always fought according to acknowledged civilised methods; but as
an honest man he could not do so."
Mr. Edmund Robertson, M.P.:
"The victory of the Government (at the last General Election) had
been the main cause of the prolongation of the war. If they had
been defeated their successors would have been men with a free
hand, and the Boers themselves might have been ready to make
concessions, which they would not make, and had not made, to
those whom they believed to be their enemies and persecutors. If
the Empire was to be saved, the Government must be
destroyed."[270]
[Footnote 270: The facts are stated in a letter published in
_The Times_ on March 10th, 1902.]
Can any human being of ordinary intelligence believe that these
passages, containing denunciations of the war, were circulated by
Ex-President Steyn for any other purpose than that of encouraging the
burghers to continue their resistance to the Imperial troops?
And to this evidence may be added the protest made by "An Old
Berliner" in _The Times_ of November 27th, 1901:
[Sidenote: "Methods of barbarism".]
"What I want to impress upon your readers is the much more
serious and, indeed, incalculable mischief done by the public
utterances of responsible politicians, and, to take the most
pernicious example of all, by the reckless language of Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman. The words he uttered about England's methods
of barbarism have been used ever since as the watchwords of
England's detractors throughout the length and breadth of
Germany."[271]
[Footnote 271: See also note, p. 399 (Extract from the
_Vossische Zeitung_). The baseless and malevolent allegations
of specific acts of inhumanity or outrage on the part of
British soldiers, circulated by Boer sympathisers in England
and on the continent of Europe, have been passed over in
silence. For an exposure of these calumnies the reader is
referred to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's _The War in South
Africa_ (Smith, Elder). A record of the manner in which they
were repudiated by the Boer population in South Africa will
be found in Cd. 1, 163, pp. 99, 106-111, 113-121. Among those
who protested were German subjects, and Germans who had
become British subjects, resident in South Africa. Perhaps
the most significant of all these protests is the resolution
passed unanimously by the members of the Natal House of
Assembly, all standing: "That this House desires to repudiate
the false charges of inhumanity brought against His Majesty's
Army by a section of the inhabitants of the continent of
Europe and certain disloyal subjects within the British
Isles, and this House places on record its deliberate
conviction that the war in South Africa has been prosecuted
by His Majesty's Government and Army upon lines of humanity
and consideration for the enemy unparalleled in the history
of nations."]