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tion; (4) that under the new régime existing property rights should be respected, and the English and Dutch languages taught in the schools and employed in the courts; (5) that the franchise should not be extended to the Kaffirs in the Transvaal or Orange Free State; (6) that the British government should assume the legal debts of the republics. These stipulations Lord Kitchener communicated to Lord Alfred Milner, the high commissioner for South Africa, with the recommendation that they be favorably considered. Lord Milner made the same recommendation to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, expressing his belief that the demands formed a reasonable basis for the conclusion of peace and the beginning of the task of erecting a civil government in the annexed territories. The secretary for the colonies, however, insisted upon some changes being made in the conditions, not affecting, perhaps, the general character of the terms extended, but indicating the fact that the British government in yielding to the demands of the Boers was acting not under compulsion, but in a spirit of generosity. As finally formulated, the terms offered to General Botha were as follows: Upon the complete cessation of all hostilities the British government promised to proclaim general amnesty for the Transvaal and Orange River colonies and to use its influence to induce the government of Cape Colony and Natal to do the same in the case of citizens who had taken up arms against Great Britain; such British subjects, though not compelled to return to Cape Colony or Natal, would be liable to punishment if they did so of their own free will; the Boer prisoners in Ceylon, St. Helena, and the Bermudas were to be transported to South Africa as soon as possible; military rule was to be replaced by civil government of the type of a British crown colony, in which limited representation and self-government would be allowed the Boers; a high court of justice, independent of the executive, was to be established; the public debt of the republics could not be assumed; but as an act of grace the British government would contribute the sum of £1,000,000 to be distributed pro rata among the bona fide debtors of the two governments. The Kaffirs, under civil government, were to enjoy the same legal rights as they possessed in Cape Colony; but at no time was the franchise to be so distributed as to endanger white supremacy. The hope of government loans to farmers to assist them in reestablishing themselves on their farms was also held out. On March 16, General Botha informed Lord Kitchener that the nature of the conditions offered would make it impossible for the Transvaal government to accept them, and in a proclamation, which he issued soon after, he pointed out that the terms were in no way more liberal than those the British government could advance in the worst case, that is, in case the Boers were reduced to complete subjection.

The War up to August.-The month of March was characterized by great activity on the part of the Boers in the Orange River Colony, and by severe fighting in the western Transvaal. British columns under General Lyttleton succeeded in clearing the country east of the railway from the Orange River to the Thaba Inchu-Ladybrand line. The Boer forces under Piet Fouri were closely pursued by the British under Bruce Hamilton, Colonel Thorneycroft, and others. At the end of the month the country southeast of Heilbronn was swept clean by the columns under General Williams. The Orange River Colony was divided into four districts, traversed by General Elliott in the north, Hamilton in the south, Rundle in the east, and Knox in the centre. During March, General French operated along the Swaziland and Zululand border, and succeeded in driving the Boers from that region. In the western Transvaal, heavy fighting took place between the British forces under Methuen and the Boers under Delarey. Encounters occurred at Lichtenburg, Geduld, Ventersdorp, and Haartebeestefontein. On March 22, the Boers captured a supply train near Vlaklaagte. From March 23 to 25, Babbington was engaged in a continuous fight with Delarey, which resulted in favor of the British, who took some hundreds of prisoners and captured nine guns and a large number of cattle. The months of April, May, and June were free from any set engagements. There were a number of raids in the Orange River Colony, and there was considerable Boer activity in Cape Colony, where Kritzinger and Herzog, with reinforcements from across the Orange River, succeeded in taking Jamestown, and capturing a large amount of stores. Though constantly pursued and forced to engage in a number of running fights they succeeded in holding their own in the country between the Orange River and Aberdeen. A notable exception, however, to the petty guerrilla raids was the battle at Vlakfontein, forty-five miles southwest of Johannesburg, fought on May 29, when Delarey, with 1,200 Boers, attacked the rear guard of General Dixon in command of the Seventh Yeomanry. The Boers were repulsed with the loss of forty-one dead, but the British casualties amounted to 178, and the moral effect of the engagement made it practically a defeat for the latter. More than a month after the battle, the charge was made by the British, and substantiated by the affidavits of those who had participated in the fighting, that the Boers had been guilty of the shameful act of shooting the wounded and prisoners after the engagement. The same accusation

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was made with regard to the battle of Graspan, fought on June 6. The charges were denied by the Boers, and cannot be regarded as absolutely proven; but it would seem to be a fact that late in July, after a skirmish at the Doorn River, in the Orange River Colony, a number of native Kaffir scouts were shot by the Boers. Minor victories were gained by the Boers in June, as on the 12th of the month, when 200 Victorian Mounted Rifles were surprised and taken prisoners at Steenkoolspruit, near Wilmansruist. The character of the warfare carried on by the British is portrayed in the London Weekly Times for July 26. British columns are described as moving actively in all directions, with the railway lines from Cape Town to Pretoria as a base of operations. Although in spite of the rapidity of movement on the part of the British, it was found difficult to take any considerable force of Boers so effectually by surprise as to insure their capture in a body, the numbers of the enemy were being steadily reduced by the capture of small detachments all over the field of operations in South Africa. The degree to which the British authorities were at loss in estimating the strength of the Boers in the field is indicated by the various conjectures made during the months of May and July. In the former month the number of belligerents was placed at anywhere from 10,000 down to 2,000; while in July, Lord Kitchener estimated the number of Boers engaged in active operations at 13,500. The difference between these figures might be partially accounted for by the fact that large numbers of burghers participated in the fighting intermittently only, so that a Boer victory would be followed by the appearance of a large number of commandos all over the country, while a setback would cause practically the total dispersion of the Boer forces.

War by Proclamation and Editorial.-On August 7, Lord Kitchener issued a proclamation declaring that all Boer officers taken in arms against Great Britain, after September 15, would be permanently banished from South Africa. Upon the course of the war this proclamation produced no effect, for it was quite natural that men who had been in arms against the British government for nearly two years, and of whom many had laid themselves open to the charge of treason in case of capture, would not in any way be deterred from hostile action by the threat of a contingent exile in an indefinite future. But to the enemies of Great Britain in Europe, Lord Kitchener's action was a source of infinite gratification in that it supplied them with an apparent basis for the charges they had been bringing through press and parliament against the conduct of Great Britain in Africa. German and Russian newspapers dealt with deep indignation upon the ruthless policy which the British authorities had seen fit to adopt, and went so far as to declare that to exile men who were fighting in defense of their liberties and their homes from their native land was carrying war beyond_the_limits set by the modern standards of humanity. In the Orange River Colony, President Steyn published a counter proclamation rehearsing the entire story of the quarrel from the very beginning and setting forth the conduct of the British in terms of the utmost condemnation. General De Wet also joined in this war by proclamation and issued a manifesto on his part declaring with a sense of humor, seeming strangely in a Boer, that all British soldiers found in South Africa after September 15 would be shot. Practical results, then, there were none following upon Lord Kitchener's proclamation, and the war continued to drag on in a monotonous series of raids and night attacks on the part of the Boers, and in a patient, unceasing chase on the side of the British. If, however, the British failed to gain any decided success, the drag-net policy established by Lord Kitchener seemed to produce satisfactory results. Considering the limited number of Boer belligerents in the field, the steady captures made by the British seemed to promise that within a comparatively short time Boer resistance must collapse from utter exhaustion. Figures issued by the war office showed how serious was this drain on the Boers' strength. For the month of May, Lord Kitchener reported that in killed, wounded, prisoners, and voluntary surrenders, the Boers had lost 2,600 men, and a fairly accurate estimate of what their losses during 1901 were may be derived from a comparison of the weekly figures issued at different parts of the year. Thus, for the week ending August 12, the number of the Boers was decreased by 39 dead, 20 wounded, 685 prisoners, and 85 surrendered, a total of 829; for the week ending September 9, the figures were 681; for the week ending September 23, they were 443; between November 7 and November 18, the loss was 356. In view of the fact, therefore, that the forces of the Boers suffered an average diminution of nearly 600 men per week, through the greater part of the year, the confidence expressed by a large number of Englishmen in the speedy termination of the war appeared to be not wholly unjustified. In the spring of 1901 the distribution of the Boer population of the Orange River Colony, according to the official figures of the British government, was as follows: 42,000 men and women were held as prisoners outside of South Africa, or detained in the concentration camps; the number of killed and wounded during the war was placed at 11,000, and the strength of the men in the field was estimated at 10,000. Of the entire population before the war only about 15,000 were living in the larger towns under British protection.

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