have any idea of making peace whilst the Colony
question is so prominent. I have let it be known that I would be
glad to see an officer or meet Botha at any time if he wished to
do so."[238]

[Footnote 238: Cd. 547.]

Three days afterwards Lord Milner received a further telegram from
Lord Kitchener on the same subject, which he also forwarded to the
Colonial Office:

"Ex-President Pretorius has just returned from seeing L. Botha
and Schalk Burger [the Commandant-General and the Acting
President of the South African Republic]. They stated that they
were fighting for their independence, and meant to continue to do
so to the bitter end, and would not discuss any question of
peace."[239]

[Footnote 239: _Ibid._]

[Sidenote: Boer leaders irreconcilable.]

In view of this irreconcilable attitude on the part of the Boer
leaders, Mr. Chamberlain abandoned the proposal, and the proclamation
was not issued until six months later, when the blockhouse system had
been successfully initiated.

But, although Lord Milner had recognised the futility of the appeal by
proclamation, he had readily approved of Lord Kitchener's endeavour to
make the British proposals known to the placable but terrorised
section of the fighting burghers, through the agency of those of their
kinsmen and friends who had surrendered. After all advances to the
Boer leaders in the field had totally failed, "it seemed to us," Lord
Milner reported to Mr. Chamberlain,[240]

[Footnote 240: January 12th, 1901. Cd. 547.]

"that those who had already surrendered would have means not open
to us of communicating with the bulk of the Boers still under
arms, persuading them of the hopelessness of their resistance,
and removing the misapprehension of our intentions, which some of
the commanders who were still holding out had sedulously
fostered."

It was in these circumstances and with these objects in view that,
after Lord Roberts's departure, the Burgher Peace Committee was formed
at Pretoria; and it is to the address which Lord Kitchener then
delivered (December 21st, 1900) to this Committee that we must look
for the origin and purpose of the Burgher, or Concentration Camps.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Burgher camps.]

"It having been brought to Lord Kitchener's notice," says the
published report, "that the principal difficulty that burghers,