When the first rumours that terrible things were going on in the Concentration Camps reached England there were found at once amateurs willing to start for South Africa to investigate the truth of the accusations.  A great fuss was made over an appeal by Lady Maxwell, the wife of the Military Governor of Pretoria, in which she entreated America to assist her in raising a fund to provide warm clothing for the Boer women and children.  Conclusions were immediately drawn, saddling the military authorities with responsibility for the destitution in which these women and children found themselves.  But in the name of common sense, how could one expect that people who had run away before what they believed to be an invasion of barbarians determined 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.