Meanwhile Lord Kitchener was doing his best to deal with the accruing winter discontent.  He had a plan of his own; and he was also furnished with a plan that had been drawn up by the civilian authorities in Downing Street and South Africa, who thought that the walls of Jericho would fall to the sound of a Proclamation.  In August, 1901, a legal document was served on the Boers, much in the same way that a writ is served upon a debtor.  In it they were declared to be helpless and incapable of carrying on the struggle, and their leaders were threatened with perpetual banishment.  It had little effect on the enemy, except to brace him up for further efforts; and Lord Kitchener, it is believed, had no faith in it.

Lord Kitchener’s plan was the extension across the veld of the system of blockhouse lines which at first ran only along the railways, and the formation of pens or enclaves into which the attenuated roving bands of Boers were to be herded and dealt with severally and severely.  The work of extension was taken in hand in July, 1901.  The Boers in the veld watched it with the detachment and unconcern of a wild bird on the branches looking down upon the fowler laying his snares in the field below.

Another drive by Elliott during August and September, this time through the eastern districts of the Orange River Colony, affected little.  Kritzinger remained in his corner between the Orange and the Caledon and could not be extracted from it; De Wet was still at large.  In the Transvaal the leaders were marking time.  Viljoen after the Standerton conference withdrew beyond the Delagoa Bay Railway, but was soon driven out of the mountains.  He lost heart, handed over his command to Muller, and went down to the low veld adjoining the Pietersburg Railway.

In the Western Transvaal Delarey and Kemp were alert.  Kemp in the Zwartruggens foiled an attempt to cast a net around him, and in conjunction with Delarey attacked Methuen on the Marico River without success on September 5.  A pale of blockhouses denied them access to the “protected area."[60] Muller effected a trifling success in the middle north.  Beyers in the Pietersburg district was unable to prevent Grenfell reaching a point but sixty miles from the Limpopo and there making prisoners of a local commando.

No organized attempt was made to disturb Botha in the Ermelo district.  A column under Benson did indeed set out from the Delagoa Bay Railway in August, but it was recalled by the alarm of a Boer raid on the line at Bronkhorst Spruit.  Benson subsequently did useful raiding work in the Carolina district, but was not strong enough to tackle Botha.

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