surrender of Vereeniging nothing remained but the scattered
graveyards upon the veld, the empty tins still tinkling upon the wire
fences by the railways, and an occasional blockhouse, to remind the
traveller of the devastating struggle from which the country had so
recently emerged. This estimate of the period of recuperation affords
a measure of the magnitude of Lord Milner's achievement in the three
concluding years of his administration. For the rest, we look in vain
for any trace of bitterness, or even of partisanship, in his frank and
penetrating analysis. It is the survey of a man who is completely
master of the situation; who is absolutely convinced of the justice of
the British cause; who has no illusions and no fears.

[Sidenote: Feeding the enemy.]

With the circumstances in which the burghers were induced by their
leaders to continue, or renew, their resistance to the Imperial troops
before us, both the long duration of the guerilla war, and the methods
by which it was finally brought to a close, become easily
intelligible. At the same time it must not be forgotten that, from a
purely military point of view, the relapse of the conquered
territories into war was due to the insufficiency of British troops.
By the end of April, 1900, as we have noticed before, all the reserves
of the regular army had been exhausted; and, in addition to this, at
the end of twelve months' service a considerable proportion of the
Home and over-sea auxiliaries left South Africa to return to civil
life. Had there been a sufficient number of trained soldiers to
occupy effectively the Boer Republics, the war would not have swept
back through them and over their borders into the Colony. Even so, the
actual number of British troops in South Africa under Lord Roberts's
command would have sufficed to subjugate the Boers, had the British
military authorities employed the severe methods of warfare to which
any other belligerent would have had recourse under the like
conditions--methods of merciful severity which were employed, in fact,
by the Union forces in the civil war in America.[255] But, by the
irony of fate, the humane methods of the British, in the absence of a
practically unlimited supply of trained troops, made the revival of
hostilities possible on the part of the Boers, and thereby created the
necessity for the employment of those more rigorous, but, by
comparison, still humane and generous methods, in respect of which the
cha