Sargant, the Educational Commissioner, are open for boys and girls.
Children have been reunited to parents, except that some girls, through
Miss Hobhouse's kind efforts, have been moved away from the Camps
altogether into boarding schools. Even in this Bloemfontein Camp,
notwithstanding all that Miss Hobhouse says of the absence of soap and the
scarcity of water, she is able to write: 'All the tents I have been in are
exquisitely neat and clean, except two, and they are ordinary.' Another
important admission about this Camp is to be found in the last sentence of
the account of Miss Hobhouse's second visit to Bloemfontein. She describes
the iron huts which have been erected there at a cost of L2,500, and says:
'It is so strange to think that every tent contains a family, and every
family is in trouble--loss behind, poverty in front, privation and death
in the present--but they have agreed to be cheerful and make the best of
it all.'

"There can be no doubt that the sweeping together of about 68,000 men,
women and children into these Camps must have been attended by great
suffering and misery, and if they are courageously borne it is greatly to
the credit of the sufferers. The questions the public will ask, and will
be justified in asking, are:

"1. Was the creation of these Camps necessary from the military point of
view?

"2. Are our officials exerting themselves to make the conditions of the
Camps as little oppressive as possible?

"3. Ought the public at home to supplement the efforts of the officials,
and supply additional comforts and luxuries?

"The reply to the first question can only be given by the military
authorities, and they have answered it in the affirmative. Put briefly,
their statement is that the farms on the veldt were being used by small
commandoes of the enemy as storehouses for food, arms and ammunition; and,
above all, they have been centres for supplying false information to our
men about the movements of the enemy, and correct information to the enemy
about the movements of the British. No one blames the Boer women on the
farms for this; they have taken an active part on behalf of their own
people in the war, and they glory in the fact. But no one can take part in
war without sharing in its risks, and the formation of the Concentration
Camps is part of the fortune of war. In this spirit 'they have agreed,' as
Miss Hobhouse says, 'to be cheerful and make the best of it.'

"The second questio