Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XII

Elsewhere the minutes of the burgher meetings afford even more direct evidence of the fact that it was the desperate condition of the Boers, and not any desire to make friends with a generous opponent, that led them to surrender. "To continue the war," says General Botha on May 30th, "must result, in the end, in our extermination."... The terms of the English Government "may not be very advantageous to us, but nevertheless they rescue us from an almost impossible position." And Acting-President Schalk-Burger: "I have no great opinion of the document which lies before us: to me it holds out no inducement to stop the war. If I feel compelled to treat for peace" ... it is because "by holding out I should dig the nation's grave.... Fell a tree, and it will sprout again; uproot it and there is an end of it. What has the nation done to deserve extinction?" De Wet himself and the majority of the Free State representatives advocated the continuation of the war at the Vereeniging meetings. But in the brief description of the final meeting which he gives in his book,[345] he writes: