; in January, 1901,
sixteen; in February, as the result of De Wet's invasion of the Cape
Colony, they were cut thirty times; in March eighteen; in April eighteen;
in May twelve; in June eight; in July four; in August four; in September
twice; and in October not at all. Still more significant of the approach
of peace was the fact that now, for the first time, the British population
was allowed to return to Johannesburg in any considerable numbers.[262]

[Footnote 262: In August 648 refugees returned; in November
the number had risen to 2,623.]

It remains to consider two questions which cannot be omitted from any
account; however brief, of the manner in which the disarmament of the
Dutch in South Africa was effected. The first of these is the charge
of inhumanity brought against the Imperial military authorities in
respect of the deportation of the Boer non-combatants to the Burgher
Camps; and the second is the actual effect produced upon the burghers
in the field by the public denunciations of the war by members of the
Liberal Opposition in England.

[Sidenote: The Burgher camps.]

In charging the British Government and Lord Kitchener with inhumanity
in the conduct of the war, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and other friends
of the Boer cause relied in the main upon the circumstance that a
certain proportion of the Boer population was removed compulsorily
from districts which the British troops were unable to occupy
effectively, and upon the further fact that the Burgher Camps
exhibited an unusually high rate of mortality. The necessity for the
removal of this non-combatant population will scarcely be disputed in
view of the methods adopted by the Boer leaders to compel the burghers
to continue their resistance to the Imperial troops, and the fact that
nearly every house in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, inhabited
by the Dutch, served as an intelligence office, a recruiting depot,
and a base of supplies for the roving commandos. Nor will it be denied
that the responsibility for the unnecessary suffering incurred by the
Boer people in the guerilla war rests upon those of the Boer leaders
who formed and enforced the decision to continue the struggle, and not
upon the British Government. The alleged "inhumanity," therefore, of
the Imperial military authorities consists in the circumstance that,
instead of leaving these helpless non-combatants to be supported by
the Boer leaders, they removed them t