ion. With but a
single line of railway, which half the time was cut in one place or
another, it was but natural that the Concentration Camps were deprived of
a good many things which those who were compelled to live within their
limits would, under different circumstances or conditions, have had as a
matter of course.

Miss Hobhouse had to own that she met with the utmost courtesy from the
authorities with whom she had to deal, a fact alone which proved that the
Government was only too glad to allow people to see what was being done
for the Boer women and children, and gratefully appreciated every useful
suggestion likely to lighten the sad lot of those in the Camps.

It is no use denying, and indeed no one, Sir Alfred Milner least of all,
would have denied that some of the scenes witnessed by Miss Hobhouse,
which were afterwards described with such tremulous indignation, were of a
nature to shock public opinion both at home and abroad. But, at the same
time, it was not fair to circumstances or to people to have a false
sentimentality woven into what was written. Things ought to have been
looked upon through the eyes of common sense and not through the
refracting glasses of the indignation of the moment. It was a libel to
suggest that the British authorities rendered themselves guilty of
deliberate cruelty, because, on the contrary, they always and upon every
occasion did everything they could to lighten the lot of the enemy peoples
who had fallen into their hands.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PRISONERS' CAMPS

I went myself very carefully into the details of whatever information I
was able to gather in regard to the treatment of Boer prisoners in the
various Camps, notably at Green Point near Cape Town, and I always had to
come to the conclusion that nothing could have been better. Is it likely
that, when such an amount of care was bestowed upon the men, the women and
children should have been made the objects of special persecution? No
impartial person could believe such a thing to have been possible, and I
feel persuaded that if the people who in England contributed to make the
position of the British Government more difficult than already it was,
could have glanced at some Prisoners' Camps, for instance, they would very
quickly have recognised that an unbalanced sentimentality had exaggerated
facts, and even in some cases distorted them.

In Green Point the prisoners were housed in double-storied buildings whic