THE PRISONERS' CAMPS
I went myself very carefully into the details of whatever information I
was able to gather in regard to the treatment of Boer prisoners in the
various Camps, notably at Green Point near Cape Town, and I always had to
come to the conclusion that nothing could have been better. Is it likely
that, when such an amount of care was bestowed upon the men, the women and
children should have been made the objects of special persecution? No
impartial person could believe such a thing to have been possible, and I
feel persuaded that if the people who in England contributed to make the
position of the British Government more difficult than already it was,
could have glanced at some Prisoners' Camps, for instance, they would very
quickly have recognised that an unbalanced sentimentality had exaggerated
facts, and even in some cases distorted them.
In Green Point the prisoners were housed in double-storied buildings which
had balconies running round them. Here they used to spend many hours of
the day, for not only could they see what was going on around the Camps
but also have a good view of the sea and passing ships. Each room held six
men, and there was besides a large mess-room downstairs in each building
which held about ninety people. Each Boer officer had a room for himself.
When, later on, the number of prisoners of war was increased, tents had to
be erected to accommodate them; but this could hardly be considered
hardship in the climate which prevails at the Cape, and cannot be compared
to what at the present moment the soldiers of the Allies are enduring in
the trenches. The tents were put in a line of twenty each, and each score
had a building attached for the men in that line to use as a dormitory if
they chose. Excellent bathrooms and shower-baths were provided, together
with a plentiful supply of water. The feeding of the prisoners of war was
on a substantial scale, the daily rations per man including:
Bread 1¼ lb.
Meat (fresh) 1 lb.
Sugar 3 oz.
Coal (or) 1 lb.
Wood (or) 2 lb.
Coal and wood 1½ lb.
Vegetables ½ lb.
Jam ¼ lb., or 6 oz. of
vegetables in lieu.
Coffee, milk and other items were also in like generous apportionments.
The clothing issued to the prisoners, as asked for by them, to give the
month of June, 1901, as an instance, was:
Boots 143 pairs
Braces 59 pairs
Hats 164
Jackets 133
Shirts 251
Socks 222 pairs
Trousers 166
Waistcoats 87
and other small sundries.
At Green Point Camp ample hospital accommodation was provided for the
sick, and there was a medical staff thoroughly acquainted with the Dutch
language and Boer habits. There was electric light in every ward, as well
as all other comforts compatible with discipline.
In the first six months of 1901 only five men died in the Camps, the
average daily strength of which was over 5,000 men. As for the sick, the
average rarely surpassed 1 per cent., amongst which were included wounded
men, the cripples, and the invalids left behind from the parties of war
prisoners sent oversea to St. Helena or other places.
The hospital diet included, as a matter of course, many things not forming
part of the ordinary rations, such as extra milk, meat extracts, and
brandy. A suggestive fact in that respect was that though the medical
officers in charge of the Camps often appealed to Boer sympathisers to
send them eggs, milk and other comforts for the sick prisoners, they
hardly ever met with response; and in the rare cases when it happened, it
was mostly British officials or officers' wives who provided these
luxuries.
The spiritual needs of the prisoners of war were looked after with
consideration; there was a recreation room, and, during the time that a
large number of very young Boers were in Camps, an excellent school, in
which the headmaster and assistant teachers held teachers' certificates.
Under the Orange River Colony this school was later transferred to the
Prisoners of War Camp at Simonstown, and in both places it did a
considerable amount of good. The younger Boers took very kindly and almost
immediately to English games such as football, cricket, tennis and quoits,
for which there was plenty of room, and the British authorities provided
recreation huts, and goal posts and other implements. The Boers also
amused themselves with amateur theatricals, club-swinging, and even formed
a minstrel troup called the "Green Point Spreemos."
In the Camps there was a shop where the Boers could buy anything that they
required in reason at prices regulated by the Military Commandant. Beyond
this, relatives and friends were allowed to send them fruit or anything
else, with the exception of firearms. In the Boer laagers were coffee
shops run by speculative young Boers. The prisoners used to meet there in
order to drink coffee, eat pancakes and talk to heart's content. This
particular spot was generally called Pan Koek Straat, and the wildest
rumours concerning the war seemed to originate in it.
Now as to the inner organisation of the Camps. The prisoners were allowed
to choose a corporal from their midst and also to select a captain for
each house. Over the whole Camp there reigned a Boer Commandant, assisted
by a Court of "Heemraden" consisting of exlandrosts and lawyers appointed
by the prisoners of war themselves. Any act of insubordination or
inattention to the regulations, sanitary or otherwise, was brought before
this court and the guilty party tried and sentenced. When the latter
refused to abide by the judgment of the Boer court he was brought before
the Military Commandant, but for this there was very seldom need.
The prisoners of war had permission to correspond with their friends and
relatives, and were allowed newspapers and books. The former, however,
were rather too much censored, which fact constituted an annoyance which,
with the exertion of a little tact, might easily have been avoided.
As will be seen from the details, the fate of the Boer prisoners of war
was not such a bad one after all. Nor, either, was life in the
Concentration Camps, and I have endeavoured to throw some new light on the
subject to rebut the old false rumours which, lately, the German
Government revived when taxed with harsh treatment of their own prisoners
of war, so as to draw comparisons advantageously to themselves.
While adhering to my point, I quite realise that it would be foolish to
assert that all the Concentration Camps were organised and administered on
the model of the Green Point Camp, where its vicinity to Cape Town allowed
the English authorities to control everything that was going on. In the
interior of the country things could not be arranged upon such an
excellent scale, but had there not existed such a state of irritation all
over the whole of South Africa--an irritation for which the so-called
English loyalists must also share the blame--matters would not have grown
so sadly out of proportion to the truth, painful though the facts were in
some cases.
This question of the Camps was admittedly a most difficult one. It was the
result of a method of warfare which was imposed upon England by
circumstances, but for which no individual Minister or General was solely
responsible. The matter was brought about by successive steps that turned
out to be necessary, though they were deplorable in every respect. Failing
the capture of the Boer commandoes, which was well-nigh impossible, the
British troops were driven to strip the country, and stripping the country
meant depriving not only the fighting men but also the women and children
of the means of subsistence. Concentration, therefore, followed
inevitably, and England found itself burdened with the immense
responsibility of feeding, housing and clothing some sixty thousand women
and children.
In spite of the British officers in charge of the Concentration Camps
struggling manfully with this crushing burden of anxiety, and doing all
that lay within their power to alleviate the sufferings of this multitude,
cruel and painful things happened. The food, which was sufficient and
wholesome for soldiers, could not do for 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 kind could have obtained credence. But, strange as it may seem, it
is an indisputable fact that the opinion was prevalent all over South
Africa that the Rand was to be annexed to the British Empire just in the
same way as Rhodesia had been and under the same conditions. Everyone in
South Africa knew that the so-called conquest of the domain of King
Lobengula had been effected only because it had been supposed that it was
as rich in gold and diamonds as the Transvaal.
When Rhodes had taken possession of the vast expanse of territory which
was to receive his name, the fortune-seekers who had followed in his
footsteps had high anticipations of speedy riches, and came in time to
consider that they had a right to obtain that which they had come to look
for. These victims of money-hunger made Rhodes personally responsible for
the disappointments which their greed and unhealthy appetites encountered
when at last they were forced to the conclusion that Rhodesia was a land
barren of gold. In time, perhaps, and at enormous expense, it might be
developed for the purpose of cattle breeding, but gold and diamonds either
did not exist or could only be found in such small quantities that it was
not worth while looking for them.
As a result of this realisation, Rhodes found himself confronted by all
these followers, who loudly clamoured around him their indignation at
having believed in his assertions. What wonder, therefore, that the
thoughts of these people turned toward the possibility of diverting the
treasures of the Transvaal into their own direction. Rhodes was brought
into contact with the idea that it was necessary to subdue President
Kruger. With a man of Rhodes' impulsive character to begin wishing for a
thing was sufficient to make him resort to every means at his disposal to
obtain it. The Boer War was the work of the Rhodesian party, and long
before it broke out it was expected, spoken of, and considered not only by
the Transvaal Government, but also by the Burghers, who, having many
opportunities of visiting the Cape as well as Rhodesia, had there heard
expression of the determination of the South African League, and of those
who called themselves followers and partisans of Rhodes, to get hold of
the Rand, at the head of which, as an inevitable necessity, should be the
Colossus himself. No denial of these plans ever came from Rhodes. By his
attitude, even when relations between London and Pretoria were excellent,
he gave encouragement to the people who were making all kinds of
speculations as to what should happen when the Transvaal became a Crown
Colony.
The idea of a South African Federation had not at that time taken hold of
public opinion, and, if Rhodes became its partisan later on, it was only
after he had realised that the British Cabinet would never consent to put
Johannesburg on the same footing as Bulawayo and Bechuanaland. Too large
and important interests were at stake for Downing Street to look with
favourable eyes on the Rand becoming only one vast commercial concern. A
line had to be drawn, but, unfortunately, the precise demarcation was not
conveyed energetically enough from London. On the other hand, Cecil
Rhodes, as well as his friends and advisers, did not foresee that a war
would not put them in power at the Transvaal, but would give that country
to the Empire to rule, to use its riches and resources for the good of the
community at large.
The saddest feature of the South African episode was its sordidness. This
robbed it of every dignity and destroyed every sympathy of those who
looked at it impartially or from another point of view than that of
pounds, shillings and pence. England has been cruelly abused for its
conduct in South Africa, and abused most unjustly. Had that feeling of
trust in the justice and in the straightforwardness of Great Britain only
existed in the Dark Continent, as it did in the other Colonies and
elsewhere, it would have proved the best solution to all the entangled
questions which divided the Transvaal Republic from the Mother Country by
reason of its manner of looking at the exploitation of the gold mines. On
its side too, perhaps, England might have been brought to consider the
Boers in a different light had she disbelieved a handful of people who had
every interest in the world to mislead her and to keep her badly informed
as to the truth of the situation.
When war broke out it was not easy for the Command to come at once to a
sane appreciation of the situation, and, unfortunately for all the parties
concerned, the unjust prejudices which existed in South Africa against Sir
Alfred Milner had to a certain extent tinctured the minds of people at
home, exercising no small influence on the men who ought to have helped
the High Commissioner to carry through his plans for the settlement of the
situation subsequently to the war. The old saying, "Calumniate,
calumniate, something will always remain after it," was never truer than
in the case of this eminent statesman.
It took some time for matters to be put on a sound footing, and before
this actually occurred many mistakes had been made, neither easy to
rectify nor possible to explain. Foremost among them was this question of
the Concentration Camps. Not even the protestations of the women who
subsequently went to the Cape and to the Transvaal to report officially on
the question were considered sufficient to dissipate the prejudices which
had arisen on this unfortunate question. The best reply that was made to
Miss Hobhouse, and to the lack of prudence which spoiled her good
intentions, was a letter which Mrs. Henry Fawcett addressed to the
_Westminster Gazette_. In clear, lucid diction this letter re-established
facts on their basis of reality, and explained with self-respect and
self-control the inner details of a situation which the malcontents had
not given themselves the trouble to examine.
"First," says this forceful document, "I would note Miss Hobhouse's
frequent acknowledgments that the various authorities were doing their
best to make the conditions of Camp life as little intolerable as
possible. The opening sentence of her report is, 'January 22.--I had a
splendid truck given me at Cape Town through the kind co-operation of Sir
Alfred Milner--a large double-covered one, capable of holding twelve
tons.' In other places she refers to the help given to her by various
officials. The commandant at Aliwal North had ordered £150 worth of
clothing, and had distributed it; she undertook to forward some of it. At
Springfontein 'the commandant was a kind man, and willing to help both the
people and me as far as possible.' Other similar quotations might be made.
Miss Hobhouse acknowledges that the Government recognise that they are
responsible for providing clothes, and she appears rather to deprecate the
making and sending of further supplies from England. I will quote her
exact words on this point. The italics are mine. 'The demand for clothing
is so huge that it is hopeless to think that the private charity of
England and Colonial working parties combined can effectually cope with
it. _The Government recognise that they must provide necessary clothes,_
and I think we all agree that, having brought these people into this
position, it is their duty to do so. _It is, of course, a question for
English folk to decide how long they like to go on making and sending
clothes._ There is no doubt they are immensely appreciated; besides, they
are mostly made up, which the Government clothing won't be.' Miss Hobhouse
says that many of the women in the Camp at Aliwal North had brought their
sewing machines. If they were set to work to make clothes it might serve a
double purpose of giving them occupation and the power of earning a little
money, and it would also ensure the clothes being made sufficiently large.
Miss Hobhouse says people in England have very incorrect notions of the
magnificent proportions of the Boer women. Blouses which were sent from
England intended for women could only be worn by girls of twelve and
fourteen; they were much too small for the well-developed Boer maiden, who
is really a fine creature. Could a woman's out-out size be procured? It
must be remembered that when Miss Hobhouse saw the Camps for the first
time it was in January, the hottest month in the South African year; the
difficulty of getting supplies along a single line of rail, often broken
by the enemy, was very great. The worst of the Camps she saw was at
Bloemfontein, and the worst features of this worst Camp were:
"1. Water supply was bad.
"2. Fuel was very scarce.
"3. Milk was very scarce.
"4. Soap was not to be had.
"5. Insufficient supply of trained nurses.
"6. Insufficient supply of civilian doctors.
"7. No ministers of religion.
"8. No schools for children.
"9. Exorbitant prices were demanded in the shops.
"10. Parents had been separated from their children.
"Within the Report itself, either in footnotes or in the main body of the
Report, Miss Hobhouse mentions that active steps had already been taken to
remedy these evils. Tanks had been ordered to boil all the water. She left
money to buy another, and supplied every family with a pan to hold boiled
water. Soap was given out with the rations. 'Moreover, the Dutch are so
very full of resources and so clever they can make their own soap with fat
and soda.' The milk supply was augmented; during the drought fifty cows
only yielded four buckets of milk daily. 'After the rains the milk supply
was better.' An additional supply of nurses were on their way. 'The Sister
had done splendid work in her domain battling against incessant
difficulties ... and to crown the work she has had the task of training
Boer girls to nurse under her guidance.'
"Ministers of religion are in residence, and schools under Mr. E.B.
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 £2,500, 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 question--'Are our officials exerting themselves to make the
Camps as little oppressive as possible?'--can also be answered in the
affirmative, judging from the evidence supplied by Miss Hobhouse herself.
This does not imply that at the date of Miss Hobhouse's visit, or at any
time, there were not matters capable of improvement. But it is confessed
even by hostile witnesses that the Government had a very difficult task,
and that its officials were applying themselves to grapple with it with
energy, kindness and goodwill. Miss Hobhouse complains again and again of
the difficulty of procuring soap. May I quote, as throwing light upon the
fact that the Boer women were no worse off than the English themselves,
that Miss Brooke-Hunt, who was in Pretoria to organise soldiers'
institutes a few months earlier than Miss Hobhouse was at Bloemfontein,
says in her interesting book, 'A Woman's Memories of the War': 'Captain
---- presented me with a piece of Sunlight soap, an act of generosity I
did not fully appreciate till I found that soap could not be bought for
love or money in the town.' A Boer woman of the working-class said to Miss
Brooke-Hunt: 'You English are different from what I thought. They told us
that if your soldiers got inside Pretoria they would rob us of everything,
burn our houses, and treat us cruelly; but they have all been kind and
respectable. It seems a pity we did not know this before.' Miss Hobhouse
supplies some rather similar testimony. In her Report she says: 'The
Mafeking Camp folk were very surprised to hear that English women cared a
rap about them or their suffering. It has done them a lot of good to hear
that real sympathy is felt for them at home, and I am so glad I fought my
way here, if only for that reason.'
"In what particular way Miss Hobhouse had to fight her way to the Camps
does not appear, for she acknowledges the kindness of Lord Kitchener and
Lord Milner in enabling her to visit them; we must therefore suppose that
they provided her with a pass. But the sentence just quoted is enough in
itself to furnish the answer to the third question--'Is it right for the
public at home to supplement by gifts of additional comforts and luxuries
the efforts of our officials to make Camp life as little intolerable as
possible?' All kinds of fables have been told to the Boer men and women of
the brutality and ferocity of the British. Let them learn by practical
experience, as many of them have learnt already, that the British soldier
is gentle and generous, and that his women-folk at home are ready to do
all in their power to alleviate the sufferings of the innocent victims of
the war. I know it will be said, 'Let us attend to the suffering loyalists
first.' It is a very proper sentiment, and if British generosity were
limited to the gift of a certain definite amount in money or in kind, I
would be the first to say, 'Charity begins at home, and our people must
come first.' But British generosity is not of this strictly measured kind.
By all means let us help the loyal sufferers by the war; but let us also
help the women and children of those who have fought against us, not with
any ulterior political motive, but simply because they have suffered and
are bound to suffer much, and wounded hearts are soothed and healed by
kindness.
"Mr. Rowntree has spoken quite publicly of the deep impression made on the
Boer women by the kindness shown them by our men. One said she would be
always glad to shake hands with a British soldier; it was because of the
kindly devices they had invented to make over their own rations to the
women and children during the long journey when all were suffering from
severe privations. Another Boer girl, referring to an act of kindness
shown her by a British officer, remarked quietly: 'When there is so much
to make the heart ache it is well to remember deeds of kindness.' The more
we multiply deeds of kindness between Boer and Briton in South Africa, the
better for the future of the two races, who, we hope, will one day fuse
into a united nation under the British flag."
I hope the reader will forgive me for having quoted in such abundance from
Mrs. Fawcett's letter, but it has seemed to me that this plain,
unprejudiced and unsophisticated report, on a subject which could not but
have been viewed with deep sorrow by every enlightened person in England,
goes far to remove the doubts that might still linger in the minds of
certain people ignorant of the real conditions of existence in South
Africa.
A point insufficiently realised in regard to South African affairs is the
manner in which individuals comparatively devoid of education, and with
only a hazy notion of politics, contrived to be taken into serious
consideration not only by those who visited South Africa, but by a certain
section of English society at home, and also in a more restricted measure
by people at the Cape and in the Transvaal who had risen. These people
professed to understand local politics better than the British
authorities, and expected the officials, as well as public opinion in
Great Britain, to adopt their advice, and to recognise their right to
bring forward claims which they were always eager to prosecute.
Unfortunately they had friends everywhere, to whom they confided their
regrets that the British Government understood so very little the
necessities of the moment. As these malcontents were just back from the
Rand, there were plenty of people in Cape Town, and especially in Port
Elizabeth, Grahamstown, and other English cities in Cape Colony, ready to
listen to them, and to be influenced by the energetic tone in which they
declared that the Boers were being helped all along by Dutch Colonials who
were doing their best to betray the British.
In reality, matters were absolutely different, and those who harmed
England the most at that time were precisely the people who proclaimed
that they, and they alone, were loyal to her, and knew what was necessary
and essential to her interests and to her future at the Cape of Good Hope
and the Rand. Foremost amongst them were the adherents of Rhodes, and this
fact will always cling to his memory--most unfortunately and most
unjustly, I hasten to say, because had he been left absolutely free to do
what he liked, it is probable he would have been the first to get rid of
these encumbrances, whose interferences could only sow animosity where
kindness and good will ought to have been put forward. Cecil Rhodes wanted
to have the last and definite word to say in the matter of a settlement of
the South African difficulties, and as no one seemed willing to allow him
to utter it, he thought that he would contrive to attain his wishes on the
subject by seeming to support the exaggerations of his followers. Yet, at
the same time, he had the leaders of the Dutch party approached with a
view of inducing them to appeal to him to put himself at their head.
This double game, which while it lasted constituted one of the most
curious episodes in a series of events of which every detail was
interesting, I shall refer to later in more detail, but before doing so
must touch upon another, and perhaps just as instructive, question--the
so-called refugees, whose misfortunes and subsequent arrogance caused so
many anxious hours to Sir Alfred Milner during his tenure of office at the
Cape and later on in Pretoria.