234 THE BOER WAR - NEWSPAPER POSTERS 1902: Two (2) fragile but largely intact "The Age" [Melbourne] posters, each 67 x 49cm and held within a metal frame. The first poster, dated April 1st 1902 features a two-line heading "COURT-MARTIALLED AUSTRALIANS / ACCOUNT OF THE TRIAL." being a reference to the infamous and alarming court martials and executions of Harry "Breaker" Morant and Peter Handcock and the trials of several of their companions in the Bushveldt Carbineers. The second poster, dated April 21st 1902, provides headlines indicating that despite "BOER PEACE MOVES" there was "NO SUSPENSION OF FIGHT." Remarkable survivors of the newspaper coverage, the only media source for information regarding the involvement of Australian soldiers in this foreign war. We are not aware of any other examples of these two posters. Lieutenant Morant was arrested and court-martialed for "war crimes" – one of the first such prosecutions in British military history. According to his military prosecutors, Morant retaliated for the death in combat of his commanding officer with a series of revenge killings against both Boer POWs and civilian residents of the Northern Transvaal. He stood accused of the summary execution of Floris Visser, a wounded prisoner of war and the slaying of four Afrikaners and four Dutch school teachers who had been taken prisoner at the Elim Hospital. Morant was found guilty and sentenced to death. Lieutenants Morant and Peter Handcock were then court- martialed for the murder of the Rev. Carl August Daniel Heese, a South African-born Minister of the Berlin Missionary Society. Rev. Heese had spiritually counseled the Dutch and Afrikaner victims at Elim Hospital, indignantly vowed to inform Morant’s commanding officer, and had been shot to death the same afternoon. Morant and Handcock were acquitted of the Heese murder, but their sentences for murdering Floris Visser and the eight victims at Elim Hospital were carried out by a firing squad drawn from the Cameron Highlanders on 27 February 1902. Shortly before 06:00 hours, Morant and Handcock were led out of the fort at Pretoria to be executed. Both men refused to be blindfolded; Morant gave his cigarette case to the squad leader, and his last words were reported as: "Shoot straight, you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!" The exact sequence and nature of the events leading up to Morant’s arrest and trial are still disputed, and accounts vary considerably. While it seems clear that some members of the BVC were responsible for shooting Boer POWs and civilian non-combatants, the precise circumstances of these killings and the identities of those responsible will probably never be known for certain. Due to British military censorship, reports of the trial and execution did not begin to appear in Australia until the end of March 1902. The Australian government and Lieutenant Handcock’s wife, who lived in Bathurst with their three children, only learned of Handcock and Morant’s deaths from the Australian newspapers weeks after their executions. The Australian government demanded an explanation from Kitchener who, on 5 April 1902, sent a telegram to the Australian Governor-General, which was published in its entirety in the Australian press. It reads as follows: In reply to your telegram, Morant, Handcock and Witton were charged with twenty separate murders, including one of a German missionary who had witnessed other murders. Twelve of these murders were proved. From the evidence it appears that Morant was the originator of these crimes which Handcock carried out in cold-blooded manner. The murders were committed in the wildest parts of the Transvaal, known as Spelonken, about eighty miles north of Pretoria, on four separate dates namely July 2, August 11, August 23, and September 7 . In one case, where eight Boer prisoners were murdered, it was alleged to have been done in a spirit of revenge for the ill treatment of one of their officers – Captain Hunt – who was killed in action. No such ill-treatment was proved. The prisoners were convicted after a most exhaustive trial, and were defended by counsel. There were, in my opinion, no extenuating circumstances. Lieutenant Witton was also convicted but I commuted the sentence to penal servitude for life, in consideration of his having been under the influence of Morant and Handcock. The proceedings have been sent home. George Witton was transported to naval detention quarters in England and then to Lewes prison in Sussex. Some time later, he was transferred to another prison and was released after serving 28 months. His release was notified to the British House of Commons on 10 August 1904. On his release he returned to Australia and for a while lived in Lancefield, Victoria, where he wrote his controversial book about the Morant case. He published it in 1907 under the provocative title "Scapegoats of the Empire"; through this book the Australian public first found out about the case. Although it is generally accepted that Morant and others in his regiment were responsible for the deaths of a number of Boer commandos, opinion is still divided over the central questions of the case — how many Boers were killed, by whom were they killed, and on whose orders? Morant’s supporters argue that he and Handcock were unfairly singled out for punishment even though many other British soldiers were known to have carried out summary executions of Boer prisoners. In their view, the two Australians were made scapegoats by the British, who were intent on concealing the existence of the "take no prisoners" policy against Boer insurgents — a policy which, they claim, had been promulgated by Kitchener himself. However, Hamish Paterson, a South African military historian, has pointed out that the Bushveldt Carbineers were a British Imperial unit, not an Australian one: technically, the two "Aussies" were British officers. A 2002 book promoted the "scapegoat" argument. It said that while Morant and the others probably committed some crimes and may well have deserved disciplinary action, there is now persuasive evidence from several sources to show that the Kitchener ‘take no prisoners" order did indeed exist, that it was widely known among both the British and Australian troops and was carried out by many disparate units. It also asserted that the court-martial was fundamentally flawed in its procedures. $1,000–1,500 234 33