Their ultimate success
shows that this complacency and this patience were eminently the
right attitude to adopt.
On March 23rd the Transvaal representatives were despatched to
Kroonstad for the purpose of opening up the matter with Steyn and
De Wet. Messengers were sent to communicate with these two leaders,
but had they been British columns instead of fellow-countrymen they
could not have found greater difficulty in running them to earth.
At last, however, at the end of the month the message was conveyed,
and resulted in the appearance of De Wet, De la Rey, and Steyn at
the British outposts at Klerksdorp. The other delegates had come
north again from Kroonstad, and all were united in the same small
town, which, by a whimsical fate, had suddenly become the centre
both for the making of peace and for the prosecution of the war,
with the eyes of the whole world fixed upon its insignificant
litter of houses. On April 11th, after repeated conferences, both
parties moved on to Pretoria, and the most sceptical observers
began to confess that there was something in the negotiations after
all. After conferring with Lord Kitchener the Boer leaders upon
April 18th left Pretoria again and rode out to the commandos to
explain the situation to them. The result of this mission was that
two delegates were chosen from each body in the field, who
assembled at Vereeniging upon May 15th for the purpose of settling
the question by vote. Never was a high matter of state decided in
so democratic a fashion.
Up to that period the Boer leaders had made a succession of
tentative suggestions, each of which had been put aside by the
British Government. Their first had been that they should merely
concede those points which had been at issue at the beginning of
the war. This was set aside. The second was that they should be
allowed to consult their friends in Europe. This also was refused.
The next was that an armistice should be granted, but again Lord
Kitchener was obdurate. A definite period was suggested within
which the burghers should make their final choice between surrender
and a war which must finally exterminate them as a people. It was
tacitly understood, if not definitely promised, that the conditions
which the British Government would be prepared to grant would not
differ much in essentials from those which had been refused by the
Boers a twelvemonth before, after the Middelburg interview.
On May 15th the Boer conference opened at Vereeniging. Sixty-four
delegates from the commandos met with the military and political
chiefs of the late republics, the whole amounting to 150 persons.
