on to correspond with their friends and
relatives, and were allowed newspapers and books. The former, however,
were rather too much censored, which fact constituted an annoyance which,
with the exertion of a little tact, might easily have been avoided.

As will be seen from the details, the fate of the Boer prisoners of war
was not such a bad one after all. Nor, either, was life in the
Concentration Camps, and I have endeavoured to throw some new light on the
subject to rebut the old false rumours which, lately, the German
Government revived when taxed with harsh treatment of their own prisoners
of war, so as to draw comparisons advantageously to themselves.

While adhering to my point, I quite realise that it would be foolish to
assert that all the Concentration Camps were organised and administered on
the model of the Green Point Camp, where its vicinity to Cape Town allowed
the English authorities to control everything that was going on. In the
interior of the country things could not be arranged upon such an
excellent scale, but had there not existed such a state of irritation all
over the whole of South Africa--an irritation for which the so-called
English loyalists must also share the blame--matters would not have grown
so sadly out of proportion to the truth, painful though the facts were in
some cases.

This question of the Camps was admittedly a most difficult one. It was the
result of a method of warfare which was imposed upon England by
circumstances, but for which no individual Minister or General was solely
responsible. The matter was brought about by successive steps that turned
out to be necessary, though they were deplorable in every respect. Failing
the capture of the Boer commandoes, which was well-nigh impossible, the
British troops were driven to strip the country, and stripping the country
meant depriving not only the fighting men but also the women and children
of the means of subsistence. Concentration, therefore, followed
inevitably, and England found itself burdened with the immense
responsibility of feeding, housing and clothing some sixty thousand women
and children.

In spite of the British officers in charge of the Concentration Camps
struggling manfully with this crushing burden of anxiety, and doing all
that lay within their power to alleviate the sufferings of this multitude,
cruel and painful things happened. The food, which was sufficient and
wholesome for soldiers, could not do for