Note Back to Main Text — Chapter X

It was in order to counteract the effects of this system of terrorism and deceit, that the endeavour was made to inform the mass of the Boers still in arms of the actual state of affairs, both in respect of the hopelessness of foreign intervention and the real intentions of the British Government, through the agency of the Burgher Peace Committee. The treatment accorded to these peace emissaries is justifiable, possibly, by a strict interpretation of the laws of war; but it fixes inevitably the responsibility for the needless sufferings of the Boer people in the guerilla war, upon Ex-President Steyn, Schalk Burger, Louis Botha, Christian de Wet, and the other Boer leaders. On January 10th, 1901, of three agents of the Peace Committee taken prisoners to De Wet's laager near Lindley, one—a British subject—was flogged and then shot, and two, who were burghers, were flogged.[244] And on February 12th Meyer de Kock, the Secretary of the Committee, was shot.[245]