So, in January, Kitchener renewed his efforts to get the talks started. He called up from retirement – indeed, it seemed almost from the grave – eighty-one-year-old Marthinus Pretorius, whose father had given his name to the capital of the Transvaal, and who had himself, in the years before Kruger’s ascendancy, served as President of each republic in turn. However, Pretorius returned at the end of January from his hazardous mission with the gloomy report that Botha and Schalk Burger, the acting President, ‘would not discuss any question of peace, stating only that they were fighting for their independence, and meant to do so to the bitter end’.29
The break-through came in late February after Botha’s own wife, who had helped arrange the talks the previous June (the abortive talks before Diamond Hill) had been asked to try her luck as mediator once again. Kitchener had assured her that, provided the Boers understood that the annexation of the twin republics was not negotiable, he would discuss anything else. In fact, he had already informed London of the main points which he anticipated discussing at the peace talks. First, he wanted to confirm the legal position of (and, of course, discrimination against) the native majority. Kitchener recommended extending the native laws of the Free State over both republics. ‘I believe these laws were very good.’ Second, he wanted to compensate the Boers for war damage. ‘I have little doubt that this could be arranged by making the mines pay for it; a million would go a long way to putting matters right and when the Rand is working they turn out 2 millions a week.’ Third, he would like to reassure the Boer politicians that they would not be ruled by the capitalists and would have a voice in their own affairs, ‘They are I believe absurdly afraid of getting into the hands of certain Jews [Wernher and Beit] who no doubt wield great influence in the country.’ Finally – and here Kitchener was asking for the biggest concession – he wished to offer an amnesty not only to the Boers of the republics, but to the colonial rebels – that is, to the Afrikaners from Cape Colony and Natal who had taken up arms on the side of the volk and against the British flag.30
On Mrs Botha’s return, Kitchener cabled to London again recommending ‘conciliatory attitude’ on all these points; it might end the war there and then. He added, somewhat plaintively, ‘I should like to know how far I may have a free hand in discussing such points. …’31
His doubts were justified. The conference duly took place on the last day of February at Middelburg, and Botha’s principal points were exactly on the lines that Kitchener had forecast.32 But Kitchener did not get his ‘free hand’ to deal with them in a conciliatory manner. If he had thought the war was nearly over, he had not reckoned with Milner. The High Commissioner insisted on meeting him at Bloemfontein to vet the proposed peace terms before Kitchener cabled them to London for the Cabinet’s approval.
The two men met in the railway station at Bloemfontein, where Milner had been welcomed by the Boers before his celebrated, abortive meeting with Kruger in June 1899. From Milner’s point of view, the wrangle with Kitchener that followed was not dissimilar. Although the two men openly disagreed on only one major point – the question of amnesty for colonial rebels – Milner disapproved of the peace talks in principle, and was prepared to seize on any pretext to make them fail. However, Kitchener, not to be outflanked, adopted an argument calculated to frighten Milner into agreeing to the peace terms. He claimed that ‘our soldiers can’t be trusted not to surrender on the smallest provocation, and that consequently disaster is not even now impossible if the Boers stick to it’. Was Kitchener simply bluffing? Milner honestly did not know. Nor did he know to what extent Kitchener, the sapper General, had undermined his position at home. Who would the Cabinet side with? And was there evidence that British public opinion was ‘wobbling’?
Milner explained his dilemma to Violet Cecil that week: ‘Knowing the feeling at home, which is of increasing disgust at this business, and anxiety of Ministers at the increasing cost of it, and the difficulty of keeping the national resolution at the sticking point, I felt I could not afford a rupture with K … it would not be possible to compel the army to fight on against the wishes of its own Chief and the whole popular sentiment, and an attempt to do, which failed, would only encourage the enemy to still further efforts, and demands, and end in a terrible fiasco.’ Milner therefore felt himself forced to compromise after all with Kitchener.33 The cable went off to London with Kitchener’s proposed concessions somewhat toned down by Milner, but at any rate endorsed by him, with one important qualification: Milner publicly dissented from the wisdom of giving amnesty to the colonial rebels, even if disfranchised.
Kitchener’s original four points had thus become a ten-point peace plan: (1) Amnesty for all bona fide acts of war (with disfranchisement for the colonial rebels). (2) Prisoners of war to be brought home. (3) The two new colonies to be governed at first by a governor and executive (that is, as Crown Colonies) but to be given self-government ‘as soon as circumstances permit’. (4) Both the English and Dutch languages to be used in schools and in courts. (5) Property of the Dutch Reformed Church to be respected. (6) Legal debts of the State, even if contracted during the war, to be paid, with a limit of one million pounds. (7) Farmers to be compensated for horses lost during the war. (8) There would be no war indemnity for farmers. (9) Certain burghers to be licensed to keep rifles. (10) ‘As regards the extension of the franchise to Kaffirs in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, it is not the intention of His Majesty’s Government to give such a franchise before a representative government is granted to those colonies.’34
When the British Cabinet’s cabled comments were received a week later, it was clear that two of these points – the first and last – had aroused serious objections in London. Kitchener was rebuffed on the first point – his proposed amnesty for colonial rebels – and Milner’s opposition was endorsed. Both Kitchener and Milner were rebuffed on the question of the civil rights of Africans. Chamberlain insisted on tacking on to the clause about the native franchise: ‘And if then given it will be so limited as to secure the just predominance of the white races, but the legal position of Kaffirs will be similar to that which they hold in the Cape Colony.’35 He added, for the benefit of the two proconsuls alone, a sentence that re-echoed his claim in 1899 that one of the war aims was to protect the natives. ‘We cannot consent to purchase a shameful peace by leaving the coloured population in the position in which they stood before the war, with not even the ordinary civil rights which the Government of the Cape Colony has long conceded to them.’36
The revised text of this ten-point plan was duly forwarded to Botha at Middelburg on 7 March. Kitchener had understandable misgivings that Milner, by toning down the concessions, had tilted the balance disastrously against peace. Botha had warned him that he would have difficulty in convincing his fellow-generals. Kitchener hoped for the best, but feared the worst. In the interval — that is, while Botha and the generals were digesting these proposals – he threw himself with his usual demonic energy into prosecuting the war.37
There was one aspect of Kitchener’s strange character that no one, not even his worst enemies, could question: his passion for work. How unthinkable it would have been for him to say, like Milner, that he enjoyed being lazy! Kitchener loved work as Milner loved Bohemian social life; Kitchener gorged himself on work. No job was too tough or too indigestible for him. He strode into his office at 6 a.m., an awe-inspiring figure, with those porcelain-blue eyes, and the inscrutable glare of an oriental idol. All day, he sat at the desk (apart from a furious gallop across the veld with his staff), devouring files and telegrams, and scattering papers to the winds. And so he went on, day after day, week after week, the very incarnation of superhuman will-power and machine-like energy. Yet, though the pleasure he took in hard work was real enough, what else, what deeper sense of satisfaction, or avenue to promotion, could Kitchener get out of this war? To Brodrick (and even to Milner) he confessed openly his distaste for the business. He was sick of the war, saw no possible credit to be derived
from prolonging it, and was consumed by the fear that it might cost him the prize on which he had set his heart: India.38
It was the dream of becoming Commander-in-Chief in India that had added bitterness to Kitchener’s wrangle with Milner and desperation to his rough, soldierly desire to accommodate Botha and make peace. By the end of February, he had virtually given up hope of displacing General Palmer, the acting Indian C-in-C. Roberts had promised to do everything to help, but there was stiff opposition from both Cabinet and the Palace. The Queen understandably felt that the Sirdar, with all his great qualities, might prove a trifle heavy-handed for her sensitive Indian subjects. Brodrick tried to persuade Kitchener to come back to the War Office instead, to help Roberts sweep the Horse Guards clean. Kitchener was adamant. It was India, or back to the Sudan – or he would leave the army: ‘I feel sure I am not the man,’ he told Brodrick, ‘for the place [the War Office]… and that I should be a certain failure.’39 He spoke still more bluntly to Lady Cranborne, the Prime Minister’s daughter-in-law, one of the few people to whom he ever bared his heart. ‘I could do no good there, and would sooner sweep a crossing. ’40 At last, Roberts’s importunities – and Brodrick was pledged to back Roberts for all he was worth – together with the death of the Queen, removed the final obstacles in Kitchener’s path. A week after the Middelburg talks, Brodrick cabled him with the news that, once the war was over, India would be in his grasp.41
‘I should be a certain failure’ might seem an odd phrase for Kitchener to choose to describe himself, if he tried to reorganize the War Office, but it was not false modesty. Kitchener knew his limitations. The paradox of Kitchener, as we saw, was that he had made his name as a brilliant organizer as Sirdar in Egypt, yet his talents did not lie in that direction at all. He had none of the true administrator’s qualities: delegation he hated; letter-writing he despised; he used a pen like a broadsword – that is, to cut Gordian knots. His gifts were raw and heroic, and, like Rhodes, he suffered the all-consuming frustrations of a man who fancied himself a colossus, frustrations that sometimes found expression in a child-like petulance. Still, unlike Rhodes, he had no gift for the political arts of persuasion and diplomacy. His real forte was not organization, but leadership, and leadership of a strange, personal kind; a human whirlwind, driving his men to the limits of endurance – and beyond – all in the pursuit of clear-cut military victory.42
To end the war quickly was Kitchener’s overwhelming objective. But how to end it if the enemy refused to fight a pitched battle? It was the guerrillas’ refusal to play the game and fight like men that appalled Kitchener, not his doubts (though doubts he certainly had) about his own troops’ ability to fight. Hence the policy that he now proposed to London: a policy for progressively adopting more drastic methods of forcing the enemy either to give battle or throw in the sponge. This was the ‘policy of punishment’ that Milner so totally opposed; the reverse of Milner’s proposal to create protected areas, starting with the Rand and the industrial districts, and to let the war in other areas gradually ‘fade away’.
In the three months since he had taken over the supreme command at Pretoria, the honours and dishonours had been fairly evenly distributed, militarily speaking – Smuts and De la Rey had dealt Clements that crushing blow at Nooitgedacht on 13 December; Wiljoen had surprised a garrison at Helvetia in the Eastern Transvaal on 29 December and temporarily captured 235 men and a 4–7-inch gun; there were attacks on other British garrisons nearby on 7 January, all repulsed; meanwhile, Kritzinger and Hertzog had invaded Cape Colony on 16 December. The culmination of the guerrillas’ offensive was reached on 8 February, when De Wet, on his second attempt, succeeded in breaking through the cordon guarding the fords over the Orange River and followed Kritzinger into Cape Colony.43
However, in all these four cases, the initiative had rapidly passed to the British, as the invaders became fugitives in turn. De Wet’s new ‘invasion’ lasted only a fortnight, and was something of a fiasco from all points of view. On his part, De Wet failed to raise new recruits among the Cape Afrikaners; and lost some of his own commando and his guns. But once again, his pursuers excelled him in blunders – despite the apparently overwhelming odds in their favour: numerical superiority, fresh horses, unlimited supplies and the use of the railway and telegraph lines. Soon the fox was back in his earth to the north of Bloemfontein, and the opportunity to catch him in the open had slipped through Kitchener’s hands once more.44 This set-back was especially disappointing for Kitchener, as the capture of De Wet and Steyn, had it occurred then, would presumably have given Botha decisive help in convincing his fellow-generals to accept the Middelburg peace terms.
In early March, Kitchener decided to break the stalemate by a double sweeping operation: to flush out the guerrillas in a series of systematic ‘drives’, organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly ‘bag’ of killed, captured and wounded; and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas: not only horses, but cattle, sheep, women, and children. But where could the women and children be put, if removed from their homes?
As we shall see, it was the clearance of civilians – uprooting a whole nation — that would come to dominate the last phase of the war. At the time, however, it hardly held much interest for Kitchener’s far-ranging but narrow-angled mind. Administrative problems of this kind, involving civilians, always bored him. There was a double need, he thought, for concentrating women and children in protected ‘laagers’ alongside the railway lines. To prevent the guerrillas being helped by civilians was the first priority. He had also to protect the families of the Boers who were at risk because their menfolk had surrendered: Botha, Smuts, and De la Rey had made it official policy to drive these unfortunates from their homes. Therefore relief camps must be set up in places where it was administratively convenient. The two sorts of ‘refugees’ (the word ‘internees’ would have better described the first and much larger category of women and children) could be concentrated in the same huge ‘laagers’, run on military lines, with reduced-scale army rations. This was the rough idea, and rough it was, for Kitchener wasted no time in complicated preparations. He left the details to the administrators in the two new colonies: Major-General John Maxwell in the Transvaal, Colonel Hamilton Goold Adams in the Orange River Colony. They, in turn, arranged with Milner for the despatch of tents and mattresses, plus a hurriedly selected skeleton staff of civilians to run the camps: roughly, one superintendent, one doctor, and a few nurses for each of twenty-four camps.45
Thus, the plan had all the hallmarks of one of Kitchener’s famous short cuts. It was big, ambitious, simple, and (what always endeared Kitchener to Whitehall) extremely cheap. There were two ration scales. Meat was at first not included in the rations given the women and children, whose menfolk were still out on commando, which provided both a useful economy and a useful encouragement for the men to come in and surrender. Even after rations were improved, they still remained extremely low. There were no vegetables, nor jam; no fresh milk for babies and children; just a pound of meal and about half a pound of meat a day, with some scrapings of sugar and coffee; much worse than the diet of the barrack room, or the official diet of the troops on campaign; a diet quite poor enough to allow the rapid spread of disease.46
Was Kitchener alarmed at the prospect of what might happen in his new ‘laagers’? He does not appear to have worried in the least, though in March he decided to make Milner responsible – in theory – for all the camps in the new colonies. At this time, there were the first hints from London that all might not be well with the camp system. Brodrick cabled for full reports.47 Kitchener replied cheerfully that the inmates were ‘happy’; as for the camps, ‘though they are not all so good they will be very shortly’.48 In a letter of explanation, Brodrick added,
One point, however, we shall have trouble about. I wired to you for a full report on the laagers for refugees. Pretty bad reports have been received here of the state of the Bloe
mfontein laager in Jany – insufficient water, milk rations, typhoid prevalent, children sick, no soap, no forage for cows, insufficient medical attention….
I think I shall have a hot time over these probably in most cases inevitable sufferings or privations – war of course is war…. Tell me all that will help the defence.49
And Kitchener, of course, blandly replied that there was no defence needed. It was true that recently the military governor of the Transvaal had launched a public appeal for the donation of blankets and clothes for the camps; he himself disapproved of the appeal, as to admit shortages would play into the hands of ‘pro-Boers’.50 The camps were not supposed to be comfortable. They provided a minimum. Everything was under control, and, though he had never visited one, the inmates were ‘happy’.
Today, Kitchener is not remembered in South Africa for his military victories. His monument is the camp – ‘concentration camp’, as it came to be called. The camps have left a gigantic scar across the minds of the Afrikaners: a symbol of deliberate genocide. In fact, Kitchener no more desired the death of women and children in the camps than of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman, or of his own soldiers in the typhoid-stricken hospitals of Bloemfontein. He was simply not interested. What possessed him was a passion to win the war quickly, and to that he was prepared to sacrifice most things, and most people, other than his own small ‘band of boys’, to whom he was invariably loyal, whatever their blunders.
The Boer War Page 78
