"May I remind the right honourable gentleman," said Mr. Balfour, "that the balance of parties was disturbed by another and different cause on which he has made no protest? Some members of that Parliament, not sharing the views of those who are imprisoned, are now fighting at the front and risking their lives in the defence of the Empire. Their party is deprived of their services in the Cape Parliament, and I should have thought that this would have affected the right honourable gentleman much more than the absence of men who, under any circumstances, must be supposed to be under the darkest suspicion as to their view and policy respecting the country to which they owe allegiance."

The Cape Parliament met under the new Ministry in July, and the chief business of the session, which lasted until the middle of October, was the passing of the Treason Bill. On July 9th Lord Milner was able to inform Mr. Chamberlain (by telegram) that the Bill had been prepared, and to indicate the nature of its main provisions. These were: (1) An indemnity for acts done under martial law; (2) the establishment of a Special Court to try cases in which the Attorney-General might decide to indict any person for high treason, such cases to be tried without a jury; (3) the establishment of a Special Commission to "deal with rebels not so indicted and to punish all found guilty with disfranchisement for five years from the date of conviction"; and (4) the legalisation of the already existing Compensation Commission. In a despatch dated July 26th—the day after the Settlement debate in the House of Commons—Mr. Chamberlain replied at length to the arguments put forward by the Schreiner Ministry in favour of a general amnesty, and exposed in particular the historical inaccuracy of the appeal to the "Canadian precedent." At the same time he stated that Her Majesty's Government, while they could not be a consenting party to a policy condoning adhesion to the enemy in the field, had no doubt that "such a measure of penalty as the mass of loyal opinion in the Colony considered adequate would meet with their concurrence." That is to say, the proposal of the Home Government for disfranchisement for life was not pressed, but was abandoned in favour of the lenient penalty originally proposed by Sir Richard Solomon, independently of any consideration of the views of the Colonial Office, and now adopted by the Progressive Ministry.

The treason bill.

In spite of its leniency, the Treason Bill met with the violent and protracted resistance of the Afrikander party in the Legislative Assembly. The opportunity thus afforded for the delivery of fierce invectives against the Imperial authorities was utilised to the full, and the fires of disaffection lighted by the "Conciliation" meetings were kindled anew into the second and more disastrous conflagration that culminated in the proceedings of the Worcester Conference (December 6th). In the Cape Parliamentary Reports the picture of this nightmare session is to be found faithfully presented in all its ugly and grotesque details. Two facts will serve to show to what a degree the members of the Legislative Assembly of this British colony had identified themselves with the cause of the enemy. The first is the circumstance that it was a common practice of the Afrikander members to refer in Parliament to the military successes of the Boers with pride as "our" victories. The second is the fact that Mr. Sauer, only three months ago a minister of the Crown, declared, in opposing the second reading of the Bill, that "a time would come when there would be very few Dutchmen who would not blush when they told their children that they had not helped their fellow-countrymen in their hour of need."[226] Morally, though not legally, the Afrikander members had gone over to the enemy no less than the rebels who had taken up arms against their sovereign. This was the "loyalty" of the Bond.

Milner visits the colonies.

The Treason Bill was promulgated, under the title of "The Indemnity and Special Tribunals Act, 1900," on October 12th. On the same day Lord Milner left Capetown for a brief visit to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. The intention of the Home Government to place the administrative and economic reconstruction of the new colonies in his hands had been made known to him informally; and it was obviously desirable, therefore, that he should acquaint himself with the actual state of affairs as soon as possible. After a somewhat adventurous journey through the Orange River Colony, he reached Pretoria on the 15th, and remained at the capital until the 22nd. He then proceeded to Johannesburg, where he spent the next three days (October 22nd to 25th). At both places he made provisional arrangements, in consultation with Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, for the early establishment of so much of the machinery of civil administration as the exigencies of the military situation permitted. Leaving Johannesburg on the 25th, the High Commissioner stopped for the night at Kroonstad, en route for Bloemfontein. On the morning following he woke up to find the train still motionless, since the line had been cut by the Boers—an almost daily occurrence at this period of the war. After a few hours, however, the journey was resumed; but the High Commissioner's train was preceded by an armoured train as far as Smalldeel, from which point it ran without escort to Bloemfontein, where he remained until November 1st. Here, in addition to making the necessary arrangements for the beginning of civil administration in the Orange River Colony, Lord Milner had the satisfaction of inaugurating the career of the South African Constabulary under the command of Major-General Baden-Powell. The departure from Bloemfontein was delayed for a few hours by the destruction of the span of a railway bridge by the Boers; but at 12 o'clock the High Commissioner's train, again preceded by its armoured companion, was able to resume its journey southwards. In the course of the following day (November 2nd) the English mail, going northwards from Capetown, was met, and among other communications which Lord Milner then received was the despatch of October 18th enclosing the commissions under which he was appointed to administer the new colonies upon Lord Roberts's approaching return to England.

Lord Milner arrived at Capetown on November 3rd. During his three weeks' absence the situation in the Cape Colony had changed for the worse. After the Treason Bill debates the anti-British propaganda, still carried on under the grotesque pretence of promoting "conciliation," had taken a different and more sinister form. To their denunciation of the Home Government and its treatment of the Republics, the Afrikander nationalists now added slander and abuse of the British and colonial troops in South Africa. In order to understand how such calumnies were possible in the face of the singular humanity with which the military operations of the Imperial troops had been conducted, a brief reference to the course of the war is necessary. The change from regular to guerilla warfare initiated by the Boer leaders in the later months of this year (1900), and the consequent withdrawal of British garrisons from insecurely held districts both in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, were accompanied by the return to arms of many burghers who, on taking the oath of neutrality, had been allowed to resume their civil occupations. This breach of faith, whether voluntary or compulsory, compelled the British military commanders to adopt measures of greater severity in the operations undertaken for the reconquest of the revolted areas. The punishment inflicted upon the inhabitants of such areas, especially those adjoining the colonial border, although merciful in comparison with the penalties actually incurred under the laws of war by those who, having surrendered, resumed their arms, was considerably more rigorous than the treatment to which the republican Dutch had been originally subjected. This legitimate and necessary increase of severity, displayed by the British commanders in districts where the burghers had surrendered, and then taken up arms a second, or even a third time, was the sole basis of fact upon which the Afrikander nationalists in the Cape Colony founded the vast volume of imaginary outrage and inhumanity on the part of the Imperial troops which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was held subsequently to have endorsed by accusing the British Government of carrying on the war in South Africa by "methods of barbarism."[227]

Libels on the British troops.

The weapon now adopted for the anti-British campaign was the circulation through the Bond Press, Dutch and English, of accounts of cruel or infamous acts alleged to have been committed by British soldiers, and described with every detail calculated to arouse the passionate resentment of the colonial Dutch. There is only one way in which the reader can be brought to understand the wantonly false and wholly disgraceful character of these libels. It is to place before his eyes the literal translation of two examples, printed in Dutch in The Worcester Advertiser of November 23rd, 1900; that is to say, in anticipation of the People's Congress, which was to be held less than a fortnight later (December 6th) at the little town in the Western Province so named. The article is headed: "Dreadful Murders perpetrated on Farmers, Women, and Children, near Boshoff:

Two examples.