telegram to the landrosts of the eastern districts, bidding them send up all the shirkers to join their commandos: ‘Act on this immediately,’ he concluded, ‘because every minute lost is in itself a wrong which you are doing to your country and kindred;’ and he went himself to see that his orders were obeyed. He also made better use of the many foreign volunteers from Europe, hitherto looked at askance by the burghers, by enrolling them into special corps. Then he took over his reorganized commandos from Natal to the Free State to resist Lord Roberts’s triumphant march north in May; but, with hardly 10,000 men to oppose to Roberts’s 100,000, he had successively to abandon the positions taken up at Zand river and elsewhere, making his last stand for Johannesburg and Pretoria at Doornkop. Just before this battle (29 May 1900) it had been proposed in the volksraad to destroy the mines, but Botha, who was always a clean fighter, threatened to lay down his command if this were done. After the surrender of Pretoria, Botha retired to Diamond Hill, whence Roberts attempted to dislodge him on 12 June. In this, his last engagement with Roberts, he profited from his experience of the field-marshal’s favourite enveloping tactics and, by putting most of his strength on the wings, held up the British attacks long enough to secure for his forces a safe retreat along the line of railway.
After Diamond Hill Botha saw that the only hope left to the Boers was to abandon regular tactics and begin a guerilla war, so as to render the British positions insecure in every district of the country. He sent off the commandos to their own districts, where they could operate to the best advantage, himself remaining in the south-eastern Transvaal, chiefly because it was his own country, but also to keep in touch with the peripatetic government. At Bergendal on 27 August with a few well-entrenched troops he kept Buller long enough on the railway to enable himself to get the government away into the fastnesses of Lydenburg. Though separated during the next eighteen months from his chief subordinates by vast tracts of country, and often also by lines of block-houses and ever tightening cordons of British troops, Botha was rarely out of communication with his scattered commandos, chiefly owing to his excellent system of intelligence by means of natives and hardy Boer messengers. Periodically, too, he held conferences of his chief lieutenants to decide on the main operations for the succeeding few months. One of his chief exploits in the field was his sudden raid to the borders of Natal in September and October 1901. Thither he attracted a great many British troops from other quarters where they were sorely needed, and, after leading them a most exhausting dance, escaped through the only exit they had left open. Immediately after this he suddenly swooped down from a distance of seventy miles, thirty of which he marched in one day, to Bakenlaagte, where he defeated and put out of action Colonel George Elliot Benson’s force, long the terror of the south-eastern Transvaal (30 October). Naturally during these months of constant movement he had several hairbreadth escapes from capture, but he was well served by devoted adherents and not less by his own quickness, due to early training, in noting the slightest sign of danger on the veld.
After the first seven months of the war, Botha, though always the heart and soul of the Boer defence, never lost sight of any opportunity for making peace. Before Diamond Hill, at Middelburg in February 1901, when he had his first interview with Lord Kitchener, and on one or two other occasions he showed himself willing to discuss terms. His chief aim was of course to preserve his people’s threatened independence, but he also had a secondary object, that if independence proved impossible, the struggle should not be allowed to drift on till there were no people left to maintain a national identity even in a state of dependence. Accordingly in March 1902, when the Transvaal was almost at its last gasp, he willingly seized the olive branch offered by Kitchener. He was convinced by that time that the Boers could not win, and he realized better than any that, short of winning, they could not hope to retain their independence. At the Vereeniging conference of May 1902, when delegates from all the commandos still fighting in the Transvaal and the Free State met to discuss terms, he clinched the matter by his sane utterance: ‘Terms may still be secured which will save the language, customs, and ideals of the people. The fatal thing is to secure no terms at all and yet be forced to surrender. We are slipping back; we must save the nation.’ ‘We must save the nation!’—that was his main idea in all the negotiations with Kitchener and Lord Milner, when he fought with success, after the great points of the language and eventual self-government had been granted, for the £8,000,000 to be devoted to restoring the burghers to
55
