"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]
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:
"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][Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XI
PREPARING FOR PEACE
We have already noticed that arrangements were made in October, 1900, under which the High Commissionership was to be separated from the Governorship of the Cape Colony in order that Lord Milner might be free to undertake the work of administrative reconstruction in the new colonies. In pursuance of this decision of the Home Government, Lord Milner became Administrator of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony upon the departure of Lord Roberts (November 29th, 1900); but circumstances did not permit him to resign the governorship of the Cape Colony and remove to the Transvaal until three months later. The new Governor of the Cape Colony was Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, who was himself succeeded, as Governor of Natal, by Sir Henry E. McCallum; and at the same time (March 1st, 1901), Sir H. (then Major) Goold-Adams was appointed Deputy-Administrator of the Orange River Colony, where he took over the duties hitherto discharged by General Pretyman as Military Governor.