young people, and yet it was
impossible to procure any other for them. If the opinion of the military
had been allowed to be expressed openly, one would have found probably
that they thought England ought never to have assumed this responsibility,
but rather have chosen the lesser evil and left these people on their
farms, running the risk of the Boers provisioning themselves therefrom.
The risk would not, perhaps, have been so great as could have been
supposed at first sight, but then this ought to have been done from the
very beginning of the war, and the order to burn the Boer farms ought
never to have been given. But once the Boer farms had been deprived of
their military use to the enemy, these people could not be turned back to
starve on the veldt; the British had to feed them or earn the reproach of
having destroyed a nation by hunger. As things had developed it was
impossible for Great Britain to have followed any other policy--adopted,
perhaps, in a moment of rashness, but the consequences had to be accepted.
It only remained to do the best toward mitigating as far as possible the
sufferings of the mass of humanity gathered into the Camps, and this I
must maintain that the English Government did better than could have been
expected by any who knew South Africa and the immense difficulties which
beset the British authorities.

It must not be forgotten that when the war began it was looked upon in the
light of a simple military promenade; and, who knows, it might have been
that had not the Boers been just as mistaken concerning the intentions of
England in respect of them as England was in regard to the Boer military
strength and power of resistance. One must take into account that for the
few years preceding the war, and especially since the fatal Jameson Raid,
the whole of the Dutch population of the Transvaal and of the Orange Free
State, as well as that of Cape Colony, was persuaded that England had made
up its mind to destroy it and to give up their country, as well as their
persons, into the absolute power of the millionaires who ruled the Rand.
On their side the millionaires openly declared that the mines were their
personal property, and that England was going to war to give the Rand to
them, and thereafter they were to rule this new possession without any
interference from anyone in the world, not even that of England. Such a
state of things was absolutely abnormal, and one can but wonder how ideas
of the