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]
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]
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.
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 depôt, 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.
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]