ager whilst our wounded men were
brought in, and here I should like to say a word to the people of England.
Our men, when wounded, are treated by the Boers with manly gentleness and
kind consideration. When we left the laager in an open trolly, we, some
half-dozen Australians, and about as many Boers, all wounded, were driven
for some hours to a small hospital, the name of which I do not know. It was
simply a farmhouse turned into a place for the wounded. On the road thither
we called at many farms, and at every one men, women, and children came out
to see us. Not one taunting word was uttered in our hearing, not one
braggart sentence passed their lips. Men brought us cooling drinks, or
moved us into more comfortable positions on the trolly. Women, with gentle
fingers, shifted bandages, or washed wounds, or gave us little dainties
that come so pleasant in such a time; whilst the little children crowded
round us with tears running down their cheeks as they looked upon the
bloodstained khaki clothing of the wounded British. Let no man or woman in
all the British Empire whose son or husband lies wounded in the hands of
the Boers fear for his welfare, for it is a foul slander to say that the
Boers do not treat their wounded well. England does not treat her own men
better than the Boers treat the wounded British, and I am writing of that
which I have seen and know beyond the shadow of a doubt.

From the little farmhouse hospital I was sent on in an ambulance train to
the hospital at Springfontein, where all the nurses and medical staff are
foreigners, all of them trained and skilful. Even the nurses had a
soldierly air about them. Here everything was as clean as human industry
could make it, and the hospital was worked like a piece of military
mechanism. I only had a day or two here, and then I was sent by train in an
ambulance carriage to the capital of the Orange Free State, and here I am
in Bloemfontein Hospital. There are a lot of our wounded here, both
officers and men, some of whom have been here for months.

I have made it my business to get about amongst the private soldiers, to
question them concerning the treatment they have received since the moment
the Mauser rifles tumbled them over, and I say emphatically that in every
solitary instance, without one single exception, our countrymen declare
that they have been grandly treated. Not by the hospital nurses only, not
by the officials alone, but by the very men whom t