t time, at large in the
Cape Colony.[252] The importance of the contribution which the
disloyal majority of the Cape Dutch were enabled, in this manner, to
make to the power of resistance exhibited by the Boers in the guerilla
war has scarcely been sufficiently appreciated. As it was, a large
body of Imperial troops, which would otherwise have been available for
completing the conquest of the new colonies, were kept employed, not
merely in guarding the all-important railway lines, but from time to
time in arduous, costly, and exhausting military operations in the
Cape Colony.[253]

[Footnote 252: Cd. 988.]

[Footnote 253: "Cape Colony is a great disappointment to me
... no general rising can be expected in that quarter....
[But] the little contingent there has been of great help to
us: they have kept 50,000 troops occupied, with which
otherwise we should have had to reckon."--Gen. Christian de
Wet at the Vereeniging Conference on May 16th, 1902. App. A.
_The Three Years' War_, by Christian Rudolf de Wet
(Constable, 1902). But see forward also, p. 485, for part
played by British loyalists.]

The value of this contribution was quite well understood by the
Afrikander nationalists of the Cape. In Mr. Kipling's vigorous
English, "north and south they were working for a common object--the
manufacture of pro-Boers in England by doubling the income-tax." And
it is in the extension of the area of the war by the establishment of
the Boer commandos in the Cape Colony that we must find the one valid
military consideration which underlay the failure of the peace
negotiations between Lord Kitchener and General Louis Botha
(February-April, 1901), and the final rejection of the British terms
of surrender by the Boer leaders in June. The point is made perfectly
plain in the official notice signed by Schalk Burger, as Acting
President of the South African Republic, and Steyn, as President of
the Orange Free State, which was issued to the burghers on June 20th,
1901. After reciting that the British terms had been referred to
"State President Krueger and the deputation in Europe," and that
President Krueger's reply had been considered by a conference of the
Governments of both Republics, at which Chief-Commandant C. De Wet,
Commandant-General L. Botha, and Assistant-Commandant J. H. De la Rey
had presented a full report, the document continues: