Lord Milner's Work in South Africa Part 28

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, const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sistance 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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstances."[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 a.s.sist their relatives.

The Commandant-General emphatically refused even to consider any such arrangement. He said: 'I am ent.i.tled 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s over words of that sort, though I believe they would not have been uttered with impunity by a member of the Legislative a.s.sembly 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: