ing 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 carr