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.]
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 Krüger, 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.