hose points which
had been at issue at the beginning of the war. This was set aside.
The second was that they should be allowed to consult their friends in
Europe. This also was refused. The next was that an armistice should be
granted, but again Lord Kitchener was obdurate. A definite period was
suggested within which the burghers should make their final choice
between surrender and a war which must finally exterminate them as a
people. It was tacitly understood, if not definitely promised, that the
conditions which the British Government would be prepared to grant would
not differ much in essentials from those which had been refused by the
Boers a twelvemonth before, after the Middelburg interview.

On May 15th the Boer conference opened at Vereeniging. Sixty-four
delegates from the commandos met with the military and political chiefs
of the late republics, the whole amounting to 150 persons. A more
singular gathering has not met in our time. There was Botha, the young
lawyer, who had found himself by a strange turn of fate commanding a
victorious army in a great war. De Wet was there, with his grim mouth
and sun-browned face; De la Rey, also, with the grizzled beard and
the strong aquiline features. There, too, were the politicians, the
grey-bearded, genial Reitz, a little graver than when he looked upon
'the whole matter as an immense joke,' and the unfortunate Steyn,
stumbling and groping, a broken and ruined man. The burly Lucas Meyer,
smart young Smuts fresh from the siege of Ookiep, Beyers from the north,
Kemp the dashing cavalry leader, Muller the hero of many fights--all
these with many others of their sun-blackened, gaunt, hard-featured
comrades were grouped within the great tent of Vereeniging. The
discussions were heated and prolonged. But the logic of facts was
inexorable, and the cold still voice of common-sense had more power than
all the ravings of enthusiasts. The vote showed that the great majority
of the delegates were in favour of surrender upon the terms offered by
the British Government. On May 31st this resolution was notified to Lord
Kitchener, and at half-past ten of the same night the delegates arrived
at Pretoria and set their names to the treaty of peace. After two
years seven and a half months of hostilities the Dutch republics had
acquiesced in their own destruction, and the whole of South Africa,
from Cape Town to the Zambesi, had been added to the British Empire. The
great struggle had c