ed to burn down and
destroy all their belongings--how could one expect that these people in
their flight would have thought about taking with them their winter
clothes, which, in the hurry of a departure in a torrid summer, would only
have proved a source of embarrassment to them? More recently we have seen
in Belgium, France, Poland and the Balkans what occurred to the refugees
who fled before foreign invasion. The very fact of Lady Maxwell's appeal
proved the solicitude of the official English classes for the unfortunate
Boers and their desire to do something to provide them with the
necessaries of life.

Everybody knows the amount of money which is required in cases of this
kind, and--in addition to America's unstinting response--public and
private charity in Britain flowed as generously as it always does upon
every occasion when an appeal is made to it in cases of real misfortune.
But when it comes to relieve the wants of about sixty-three thousand
people, of all ages and conditions, this is not so easy to do as persons
fond of criticising things which they do not understand are apt sweepingly
to declare. Very soon the question of the Concentration Camps became a
Party matter, and was made capital of for Party purposes without
discrimination or restraint. Sham philanthropists filled the newspapers
with their indignation, and a report was published in the form of a
pamphlet by Miss Hobhouse, which, it is to be feared, contained some
percentage of tales poured into her ears by people who were nurtured in
the general contempt for truth which at that time existed in South Africa.

If the question of Concentration Camps had been examined seriously, it
would have been at once perceived what a tremendous burden the
responsibility of having to find food and shelter for thousands of enemy
people imposed on English officials. No one in Government circles
attempted or wished to deny, sorrowful as it was to have to recognise it,
that the condition of the Camps was not, and indeed could not be, nearly
what one would have wished or desired. On the other hand, the British
authorities were unremitting in their efforts to do everything which was
compatible with prudence to improve the condition of these Camps.
Notwithstanding, people were so excited in regard to the question, and it
was so entirely a case of "Give a dog a bad name," that even the
appointment of an Imperial Commission to report on the matter failed to
bring them to