Dr. Conan Doyle on the Boer War
Dr. Conan Doyle on the Boer War is an article published in The Outlook (US) on 10 may 1902.
Dr. Conan Doyle on the Boer War
Dr. Conan Doyle on the Boer War 1
In "The Great Boer War" Dr. Doyle has already published an interesting and valuable book on the present conflict in South Africa; he now publishes a dispassionate defense of the British soldier.
He first discusses the cause of the quarrel and the negotiations, unhappily in vain, for peace. He admits that the Government of the Transvaal offered arbitration and that its tender was refused. He declares that to have accepted such an offer would have been tantamount to "giving away the case." The real point at issue, he holds, was not one which could have been decided by arbitration, in the general acceptation of that term, since Great Britain was sovereign over the foreign relations of the Transvaal, and therefore would not have conceded the right of arbitration. Dr. Doyle seems to think that a submission of the case by the Transvaal to British referees would have resulted satisfactorily; in our judgment, no tribunal but a foreign one could have arbitrated satisfactorily.
So far as unofficial attempts at peace are concerned, Dr. Doyle claims that a considerable body of Boers, including many men of influence and of intelligence, were disposed to accept British rule. The leaders of this party were the brave Piet De Wet, brother of Christian, Paul Botha of Kroonstad, Fraser of Bloemfontein, and others. The burghers who were in favor of peace, finding it useless to argue with their fellow-countrymen, took the extreme course at last of bearing arms against them, so that there are at present three commandos of burghers fighting upon the British side, commanded by three Boer generals — Marais, Celliers, and the younger Cronje.
The most important feature of Dr. Doyle's book is its review of the charges of inhumanity made against British soldiers. In regard to the farm-burning, he frankly admits that the results have not justified that practice, and that, putting all moral questions aside, the members of a burned-out family are not likely to settle down as contented British subjects. He claims, however, that in the farm-burning the British commanders were well within their rights. It is true that Article XXIII. of the Hague Convention makes it illegal to destroy the enemy's property, but it adds: "Unless such destruction be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war." Dr. Doyle holds that nothing is more imperative in war than keeping open communications with and between the armies. A previous clause of the same article makes it illegal to "kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile army." It is incontestable, declares Dr. Doyle, that to use the cover of a farm-house which flies the white flag in order to make attacks is to "kill or wound treacherously," and so the action of the British becomes legal. Of the six hundred and thirty buildings which are known to have been destroyed, more than half, says Dr. Doyle, were used by snipers, or in some other direct fashion have brought the occupants within the laws of warfare. The destruction of the rest, with crops and herds, is offset against the destruction by Boers of British supply-trains on which the army depended for its food.
When considerable districts were thus cleared in order to hamper the movements of the commandos, it became evident that it was the duty of the British, as a civilized people, to form camps of refuge for the women and children, where, out of reach of harm, they could await the return of peace. Three courses were open, according to Dr. Doyle: (1) To send the Boer women and children into the Boer lines — an impossible course because the Boer army had broken into scattered bands and had no longer any definite lines; (2) to leave them were they were; (3) to gather them together and care for them. Action was made necessary by the fact that not only must burned-out families be given a shelter, but no woman on a lonely farm was safe amid a black population, even if she had the means of procuring food. From the end of 1900 to the end of 1901 the numbers of the inmates of the refugees' camps increased from twenty thousand to more than one hundred thousand. Early in 1901 Miss Hobhouse's report created a painful impression; her charges were that the diet was not sufficient in the camps, that there was little bedding, that the water supply was short, that the sanitation was bad, that there was over-crowding, and that the death-rate was excessive. Dr. Doyle confesses that the diet was a spare one; that, as to the inadequacy of the water supply, lack of water is the curse of all South Africa, which alternately suffers from having too much water and too little; that the defects in sanitation were due to the habits of the inmates, against which commandants and doctors were perpetually fighting; that on the question of overcrowding, the demand for tents had overtaxed the power of the authorities, but that the evil had been remedied ; that as to the excessive mortality, especially among children, the disease mainly responsible for it had no direct connection with anything which it was in the power of the British to alter. The cause of the mortality is said to be a severe form of measles.
Apart from that the record of the camps would have been a very fair one. Now, measles, when once introduced among children, runs through a community without any regard to diet or conditions of life. The only possible hope is the segregation of the sufferer. To obtain this early quarantine the co-operation of the parent is needed; but in the case in point, the Boer mothers, with a natural instinct, preferred to cling to the children, and to make it difficult for the medical men to remove them in the first stages of the disease. The result was a rapid spread of the epidemic, which was the more fatal as many of the sufferers were in low health, owing to the privation unavoidably endured on the journey from their own homes to the camps.
In his "Great Boer War" Dr. Doyle gave considerable credit to the Boers, and affirmed that they had been the victims of cheap slander in the press, and that to discredit their valor would be to discredit British victory. He characterized as a calumny the story that the Boers had hoisted the white flag as a cold-blooded device for luring the British into the open. This was his judgment in November, 1900. He now declares that these words could not be written today. "Had the war only ended when it should have ended, the combatants might have separated each with a chivalrous feeling of respect for a knightly antagonist. ... So long as an excuse could be found for a brave enemy, we found it; but the day is rapidly approaching when we must turn to the world with our evidence and say, 'Are these the deeds of soldiers or of brigands? If they act as brigands, why must we forever treat them as soldiers?'"
Dr. Doyle declares that, from the first, the position of the Boers was entirely irregular as regards the recognized rules of warfare. The very first article of the Hague Convention insists that in order to claim belligerent rights an army must first wear an emblem visible at a distance. It is true, as Dr. Doyle admits, that the second article excuses from this rule a population which has no time to organize ; but the Boers were the invaders at the outset of the war, and in view of their long and elaborate preparation he deems it absurd to say that they could not have furnished burghers and commandos with some distinctive badge. When they did make a change, it was for the worse from the British standpoint, for the Boers dressed themselves in the khaki uniforms of captured British soldiers, and by this means effected a number of surprises.
Again, the Boers began a systematic murdering of the Kaffirs, which Dr. Doyle thinks the most savage feature in the whole business. He says that the British could easily have swamped the whole Boer resistance at the beginning of the war by Jetting loose the Basutos, the Zulus, and the Swazis, all of whom have blood-feuds with the Boers, On both sides Kaffirs have been used as scouts, teamsters, and servants, but on neither side as soldiers. Realizing this, the Boers, when the war began to go against them, tried to terrorize the Kaffirs into deserting the British by killing them without mercy whenever they could be in any way connected with the British, and sometimes they even killed the children.
Thirdly, so long as the Boers were fighting as an army under the eyes of the honorable men who led them, their conduct was on the whole good, but guerrilla warfare brought with it demoralization. Dr. Doyle makes no assertion that the Boers behaved as did the Spanish guerrillas in 1810, or the Mexican in 1866, but he gives a number of instances which indicate nothing more or less than brigandage. Some of these instances, however, should now be offset by General Delarey's magnanimous treatment of Lord Methuen and the horrible story of wanton butchery by the British Bushveldt Carabineers.
The name Methuen recalls the author of that able and moderate pro-Boer statement entitled "Peace or War." Mr. Methuen holds that the war might have been avoided, and also that after it broke out the British might have found some terms which the Boers could accept. He draws a comparison between the situation and that which existed at the outbreak of the American Revolution. Dr. Doyle admits that there are points of resemblance — but also of difference. "Our cause was essentially unjust with the Americans and essentially just with the Boers. ... The revolt of the Boer States is much more like the revolt of the Southern States against the Government at Washington. The situation here, after Colenso, was that of the North after Bull Run. Mr. Methuen has much to say of Boer bitterness, but was it greater than Southern bitterness? That war was fought to a finish, and we see what has come of it. ... History has shown that it is the fights which are fought to an absolute finish which leave the least rancor. Remember Lee's noble words: 'We are a Christian people. We have fought this fight as long and as well as we knew how, We have been defeated. For us, as a Christian people, there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.' That is how a brave man accepts the judgment of the God of Battles."
Mr. Methuen is severe on Lord Salisbury for the uncompromising nature of the Government’s reply to the President's overtures for peace two years ago; but Dr. Doyle asks what other practical course could Mr. Methuen suggest. "Is it not evident that, if independence were left to the Boer, the war would have been without result, since all the causes which led to it would still be unsolved? On the morrow of such a peace we should be faced by the franchise question, the Uitlander question, and every other question for the settling of which we have made such sacrifice. Is that a sane policy? Is it even tenable on the grounds of humanity, since it is perfectly clear that it must lead to another and greater struggle in the course of a few years?"
Four-fifths of the fighting force of the former Boer republics is already in the hands of the British, claims Dr. Doyle, and, while the fifth remaining diminishes week by week, British mobility and efficiency increase. 3It is mathematically certain that a very few months must see the last commando hunted down.3 Few observers, pro-Boer or pro-British, are so optimistic.
(1) The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct. By A. Conan Doyle. McClure, Phillips & Co., New York.
