Many months had now elapsed since the penning of that letter, and the condition of the Boers had gone from bad to worse. Their hitherto stubborn resistance was now little more than suicidal lunacy. A rough estimate of their losses for the year, so far as could be judged, is shown in the following table:--
+-----------+---------+----------+------------+-------------+--------+ | 1901. | Killed. | Wounded. | Prisoners. | Surrenders. | Total. | +-----------+---------+----------+------------+-------------+--------+ | January | { Killed and | Prisoners and | } | | February | { wounded, | surrenders, | }2,844 | | March | { 670 | 2,174 | } | | April | { | | } | | May | 153 | 90 | 1,512 | 535 | 2,290 | | June | 223 | 109 | 1,074 | 504 | 1,910 | | July | 147 | 111 | 1,045 | 367 | 1,670 | | August | 202 | 86 | 1,504 | 549 | 2,341 | | September | 170 | 114 | 1,379 | 393 | 2,056 | | October | 425 | 368 | 980 | 197 | 1,970 | | November | 233 | 269 | 1,156 | 93 | 1,751 | | December | 164 | 97 | 1,106 | 121 | 1,488 | +-----------+---------+----------+------------+-------------+--------+ Total | 1,717 | 1,244 | 9,756 | 2,759 | 18,320 | +-----------+---------+----------+------------+-------------+--------+
Lord Milner, in reviewing the situation at the end of the year, commended the marked change which had come to pass:--
"Six months ago the enemy were everywhere, outside the principal towns. It is true they held nothing, but they raided wherever they pleased, and, though mostly in small bodies, which made little or no attempt at resistance when seriously pressed, they almost invariably returned to their old haunts when the pressure was over. It looked as though the process might go on indefinitely. I had every opportunity of watching it, for during the first two months of my residence here it was in full swing in the immediate neighbourhood. There were half-a-dozen Boer strongholds, or rather trysting-places, quite close to Pretoria and Johannesburg, and the country round was quite useless to us for any purpose but that of marching through it, while the enemy seemed to find no difficulty in subsisting there. To-day, on the other hand, a great quadrilateral, bounded roughly as follows: on the east by the Wilge River and a line drawn from its head-waters to Villiersdorp on the Vaal River; on the south, by the Vaal River from Villiersdorp to about Klerksdorp; on the west, by an irregular line drawn from Klerksdorp to the centre of the Magaliesberg Range; and on the north, by that range and the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay Railway, is virtually denied to the enemy. This area is more important, economically, politically, and strategically than all the rest of the Transvaal. It contains not only Pretoria and the whole of the Rand mining area, but one of the most important coalfields and a large extent of the best agricultural land. Similarly, a great improvement is manifest in the southern part of the Orange River Colony--the districts lying south of a line drawn from Ladybrand to Bloemfontein, and thence westward through Boshof to the colonial border. It would not be true to say that this region is entirely clear of the enemy, but great progress has recently been made in clearing it. Strategically this is a very important region owing to its central position, and to the fact that it connects the northern states with the 'friendly and allied' districts of Cape Colony."