TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE END OF THE WAR. THE end of the war has come. No doubt there will still be a month or so of what Mr. Gladstone used to call "military operations," but the notion of some twenty thousand Boers concentrating at an entrenched position and making a great and heroic stand may now be safely dismissed. The Boers, who have not even the heart to defend their splendidly appointed forts at Pretoria, are not going to "stagger humanity" by a kind of national Plevna. What apparently made the Boers yield both Johannesburg and their capital almost without a blow was the same thing that made them retreat again and again from strong and prepared positions in the face of Lord Roberts's advance. They bolted from Kroonstad, from the Rhenoster, from the Klip River position because their flanks were threatened. They have abandoned Johannesburg and Pretoria and the main part of the Transvaal because on a larger scale they were threatened in the same way. The know- ledge that Carrington was to the north of them, that Baden-Powell was advancing from Mafeking and the north-west, that Hunter was coming from the south-west, that Roberts was due south, that Rundle was on the south-east, and that Buller was on the east made them feel as regards the whole situation what Lord Roberts has been daily making them feel in detail. They aban- doned their capital and all their chief places for fear of being surrounded, and fled in the only direction from which they were not threatened,—i.e., the north-east.
We presume that what will now happen is something of this kind. To begin with, the various columns we have just enumerated will converge on Pretoria, compelling the surrender of all the troops they encounter as they march. Possibly Rundle may be able to take a considerable portion of the force in front of him, and we still have hopes that General Buller will not merely capture waggons and big guns, but may also be able to take a number of prisoners. The other generals are not likely to be able to do more than pick up small bodies of men here and there, for no doubt the news of the fall of Pretoria will be taken generally by the Boers as a signal to disperse in twos and threes to their farms. After, or even while the various armies are concentrating at Johannesburg and Pretoria, Lord Roberts will doubtless send out flying columns in various directions to bring home to those parts of the Transvaal that have not yet seen British troops the knowledge that the Boers have been finally beaten. Needless to say, he will in no sense harry or injure the inhabitants, but he will make it clear in all parts of the country that the British have been completely victorious. Possibly these flying columns will meet with a certain amount of opposition, and possibly also they may every now and then fall into ambuscades in difficult ground and otherwise suffer, but these risks must be run. In any case, we do not believe in a serious guerilla war. The Boers are not numerous enough and are too much broken for that. There remains of course the question of the Lydenberg district. If it is true that large quantities of stores have been laid up there and positions prepared in a district which is at once feverish and mountainous, we may still have before us a troublesome task, and may find that the work of dislodging even a rem- nant of two or three thousand Boers will take several months and may involve the use of an army of twenty thousand men. On the whole, however, we are disinclined to believe in any such resistance, and think it far more probable that the last embers of fire will be trodden out by the end of July.
That we shall then find any very great difficulty in the work of civil settlement we do not believe. And for these reasons. In the first place, the Boers have been very thoroughly beaten, and as they will not be oppressed in any way or harried by vexatious enactments, they will be very loth to start new troubles. In the next place, the true Boers of the Transvaal, never very numerous, have been greatly reduced in strength by the war. Some have been killed, some wounded, but still more have been dis- persed throughout a very wide area, and it will be a long time before they get baCk to their homes, and when they do they will think of anything rather than of going out on commando again. They will be intent on "picking up the pieces," rather than on planning how to break something more. But while the Boers—always, remember, a minority in the Transvaal—have thus diminished, the Outlanders will soon begin to return, and in far larger numbers than before. The foreigners who have been fighting against us for pay have no real hatred of the British and no real love of the Boers, and are certainly not going to turn into irreconcilables for the sake of a sentiment. They will settle down without any difficulty.
Within two years the Boer part of the Transvaal community will bear a not very important proportion to the rest of the population, and within five years the Boer element will be the least numerous in the Transvaal. In the Orange River Colony, no doubt, the racial difficulty will be less easily solved, as the majority of the population will remain Dutch, for there is no great likelihood of an influx of non-Dutch settlers. But to balance this, the Dutch population of the Orange River Colony will not be specially anti-British. At this moment it is far more likely to be anti-Transvaaler, for the Free Staters are beginning to realise that they were betrayed by their neighbours. And here we may note that the ques- tion of the Dutch in South Africa as a whole has been immensely simplified by the course of the war, for it has broken up the homogeneity of the Dutch Afrikanders. Competent observers declare that there are now four Dutch parties in South Africa— the pro-Boer Cape Dutch, the pro-British Cape Dutch, the Free Staters, and the Transvaalers—and that for the time, at any rate, they all hate each other furiously. The pro-British Cape Dutch—and remember there are thousands of these, though we hear only of the disloyal, who are more picturesque—are hated by the pro-Boer Cape Dutch, and described as the slaves of the oppressor. Free Staters hate the Transvaalers because they say they betrayed them, and the Transvaalers hate the pro-Boer Cape Dutch because they say that they betrayed them and refused to rise at the critical moment. They are, in fact, with the change of a word, like the girls in Crabbe,—" Each loathes the other, and herself is loathed." No one who cares for the future welfare of South Africa will, of course, desire this state of things to last, or will do anything to encourage it, and doubtless it will ultimately die out. It is, however, a very important fact, and for the present militates strongly against any risk of a second rising. In truth, there is no danger of anything of the kind. The length and intensity of the war has been disagree- able, no doubt, but at any rate it has done one good thing. It has made the settlement really decisive. If we had had a series of brilliant successes at first, the Boers might have patched up a peace with the intention of springing at our throats at the next good opportunity. That possibility has now passed away, and people use the language of panic and exaggeration who talk of the need of a permanent garrison of fifty thousand men to hold down South Africa. After a very few years, five at the most, South Africa will be quite able to hold itself down, and will—except only because of the black terror—need troops no more than does Canada. At first, no doubt, a garrison may be required, but with the railways under proper control, with the forts and all the artillery in our hands, and with thirty thousand loyal Volunteers in the Transvaal and Natal always ready to turn out if required, we doubt if more than ten thousand mounted men, together with a good force of horse artillery, will be required. People talk as if the Transvaal will have to be held as Alsace-Lorraine is held, or, at any rate, had for twenty years to be held, —i.e., against the will of its inhabitants. In reality the majority of the inhabitants will be absolutely determined to keep it "within the Empire," and will not only not need to be overawed by a garrison, but will themselves supply the force to keep the Boers from revolting. But the Boers will not want to revolt when once they understand what a free Government means. Free institutions, such as the Boers will ultimately enjoy, are the greatest of political anodynes, as the Boers would have found. had they bad sufficient wisdom and political morality to give the Out- landers their liberty.
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