al
of the soldier's comrade. I not only never saw any outrage, but in many
confidential talks with officers I never heard of one. I saw twenty Boer
prisoners within five minutes of their capture. The soldiers were giving
them cigarettes. Only two assaults on women came to my ears while I was
in Africa. In each case the culprit was a Kaffir, and the deed was
promptly avenged by the British Army.

Miss Hobhouse has mixed with a great number of refugees, many of whom
are naturally very bitter against us. She is not reticent as to the
tales which they told her. Not one of them all has a story of outrage.
One woman, she says, was kicked by a drunken soldier, for which, she
adds, he was punished.

An inmate of the Springfontein Refugee Camp, Mr. Maltman, of
Philippolis, writes: 'All the Boer women here speak in the highest terms
of the treatment they have received at the hands of soldiers.'

Here is the testimony of a burgher's wife, Mrs. Van Niekirk:

'Will you kindly allow me to give my testimony to the kindly treatment
of the Dutch women and children by the British troops? As the wife of a
Transvaal burgher, I have lived in Krugersdorp since 1897, until three
weeks ago. The town was taken in June last, and since then there has
always been a fairly large force of men in, or quite near it; indeed, on
several occasions the numbers have amounted to ten thousand, or more,
and have been of many different regiments, English, Scotch, Irish, and
Colonial.

'At such times the streets and the few shops open were thronged with
soldiers, while, even when the town was quietest, there were always
numbers of them about. The women were at first afraid, but they very
soon discovered that they could move about as freely as in ordinary
times, without fear of any annoyance. During the whole six months I
never saw or heard of a single instance where a woman was treated with
the slightest disrespect; the bearing of both officers and men was
invariably deferential to all women, and kindly to children.

'Last July a detachment of Gordon Highlanders was camped on the veldt
for a week in front of my house, which stands almost alone on the
outskirts of the town. My husband was away during the time, and I was
alone with my young children. The nearest camp-fires were not a dozen
yards from my gate, yet I never experienced the least annoyance, nor
missed from my ground even so much as a stick of wood.

'I could multiply instances, but after this