er makes a pretence of being
a war of defence; it is a war for gold-fields, for territory,
and for the suppression of two brave and noble peoples. This
wicked war has lost us the moral leadership of mankind."--Mr.
E. Robertson, M.P., June 5th, 1901.]

The action of the Boer leaders in this respect is established by the
indisputable testimony of the official documents which fell into the
hands of the British authorities in the subsequent progress of the
war. Every endeavour of the peace party to make itself heard was
punished with rigorous, sometimes brutal, severity; fictitious
reports, calculated to raise false hopes of foreign intervention, were
circulated among the burghers in the field; and every effort was made
to prevent a knowledge of the British Government's proposals for the
future administration of the new colonies from reaching the rank and
file of the burgher population. The details of this action on the part
of the Boer leaders constitute collectively a body of evidence
sufficient to have justified the employment of measures infinitely
more severe than those which were in fact adopted by the British
military authorities for the capture of the Boer commandos and the
disarmament of the Dutch inhabitants of South Africa; and in the face
of this evidence, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's reiterated charges
against the Government, whether of "methods of barbarism" or of
prolonging the war by the neglect to offer reasonable terms to the
Boers, must be held as wanton in their origin as they were injurious
in their results.

[Sidenote: Administrative changes.]

The despatch of October 18th, 1900, which, as we have seen, Lord
Milner received as he was returning from his visit to the new
colonies, contained certain new commissions, under the terms of which
the "prospective administration" of the Transvaal and the Orange River
Colony was placed in his hands in succession to Lord Roberts, while at
the same time he remained Governor of the Cape Colony and High
Commissioner for South Africa. This combination of offices was purely
temporary, since Her Majesty's Government (Mr. Chamberlain wrote to
Lord Milner) "were anxious to take advantage of his unique fitness for
the great task of inaugurating the civil government of the two new
colonies." It was proposed therefore, that, as soon as the necessary
legal provision could be made for establishing constitutions for the
two new colonies