On March 7th Lord Kitchener wrote to Botha from Pretoria, recapitulating the points which he had advanced.  The terms offered were certainly as far as, and indeed rather further than, the general sentiment of the Empire would have gone.  If the Boers laid down their arms there was to be a complete amnesty, which was apparently to extend to rebels also so long as they did not return to Cape Colony or Natal.  Self-government was promised after a necessary interval, during which the two States should be administered as Crown colonies.  Law courts should be independent of the Executive from the beginning, and both languages be official.  A million pounds of compensation would be paid to the burghers—­a most remarkable example of a war indemnity being paid by the victors.  Loans were promised to the farmers to restart them in business, and a pledge was made that farms should not be taxed.  The Kaffirs were not to have the franchise, but were to have the protection of law.  Such were the generous terms offered by the British Government.  Public opinion at home, strongly supported by that of the colonies, and especially of the army, felt that the extreme step had been taken in the direction of conciliation, and that to do more would seem not to offer peace, but to implore it.  Unfortunately, however, the one thing which the British could not offer was the one thing which the Boers would insist upon having, and the leniency of the proposals in all other directions may have suggested weakness to their minds.  On March 15th an answer was returned by General Botha to the effect that nothing short of total independence would satisfy them, and the negotiations were accordingly broken off.

There was a disposition, however, upon the Boer side to renew them, and upon May 10th General Botha applied to Lord Kitchener for permission to cable to President Kruger, and to take his advice as to the making of peace.  The stern old man at The Hague was still, however, in an unbending mood.  His reply was to the effect that there were great hopes of a successful issue of the war, and that he had taken steps to make proper provision for the Boer prisoners and for the refugee women.  These steps, and very efficient ones too, were to leave them entirely to the generosity of that Government which he was so fond of reviling.

On the same day upon which Botha applied for leave to use the British cable, a letter was written by Reitz, State Secretary of the Transvaal, to Steyn, in which the desperate condition of the Boers was clearly set forth.  This document explained that the burghers were continually surrendering, that the ammunition was nearly exhausted, the food running low, and the nation in danger of extinction.  ‘The time has come to take the final step,’ said the Secretary of State.  Steyn wrote back a reply in which, like his brother president, he showed a dour resolution to continue the struggle, prompted by a fatalist conviction that some outside interference