The war, which was supposed to win the franchise for Englishmen in the Transvaal, was in reality fought for the advantage of foreigners. Most people honestly believed that President Kruger was aiming at destroying English prestige throughout the vast dark continent, and would have been horrified had they known what was going on in that distant land. Fortunes were made on the Rand in a few days, but very few Englishmen were among the number of those who contrived to acquire millions. Englishmen, indeed, were not congenial to the Transvaal, whilst foreigners, claiming to be Englishmen because they murdered the English language, abounded and prospered, and in time came sincerely to believe that they were British subjects, owing to the fact that they continually kept repeating that Britain ought to possess the Rand.
When Britain came really to rule the Rand the adventurers found it did not in the least secure the advantages which they had imagined would derive from a war they fostered. This question of the Uitlanders was as embarra.s.sing for the English Government as it had been for that of the Transvaal. These adventurers, who composed the ma.s.s of the motley population which flourished on the Rand, would prove a source of annoyance to any State in the world. On the other hand, the importance acquired by the so-called financial magnates was daily becoming a public danger, inasmuch as it tended to subst.i.tute the reign of a particular cla.s.s of individuals for the ruling of those responsible for the welfare of the country. These persons individually believed that they each understood better than the Government the conditions prevailing in South Africa, and perpetually accused Downing Street of not realising and never protecting British interests there.
Amidst their recriminations and the publicity they could command from the Press, it is no wonder that Sir Alfred Milner felt bewildered. It is to his everlasting honour that he did not allow himself to be overpowered. He was polite to everybody; listened carefully to all the many wonderful tales that were being related to him, and, without compromising himself, proceeded to a work of quiet mental elimination that very soon made him thoroughly grasp the intricacies of any situation. He quickly came to the conclusion that President Kruger was not the princ.i.p.al obstacle to a peaceful development of British Imperialism in South Africa. If ever a conflict was foisted on two countries for mercenary motives it was the Transvaal War, and a shrewd and impartial mind like Milner"s did not take long to discover that such was the case.
He was not, however, a man capable of lending himself meekly to schemes of greed, however wilily they were cloaked. His was not the kind of nature that for the sake of peace submits to things of which it does not approve.
This man, who was represented as an oppressor of the Dutch, was in reality their best friend, and perhaps the one who believed the most in their eventual loyalty to the English Crown. It is a thousand pities that when the famous Bloemfontein Conference took place Sir Alfred Milner, as he still was at that time, had not yet acquired the experience which later became his concerning the true state of things in the Transvaal. Had he at that time possessed the knowledge which he was later to gain, when the beginning of hostilities obliged so many of the ruling spirits of Johannesburg to migrate to the Cape, it is likely that he would have acted differently. It was not easy for the High Commissioner to shake off the influence of all that he heard, whether told with a good or bad intention, and it was still harder for him in those first days of his office to discern who was right or who was wrong among those who crowded their advice upon him--and never forgave him when he did not follow their ill-balanced counsels.
Concerning the outstanding personality of Cecil Rhodes, the position of Sir Alfred Milner was even more difficult and entangled than in regard to anyone else. It is useless to deny that he had arrived at Cape Town with considerable prejudice against Rhodes. He could not but look interrogatively upon the political career of a man who at the very time he occupied the position of Prime Minister had lent himself to a conspiracy against the independence of another land. Moreover, Rhodes was supposed, perhaps not without reason, to be continually intriguing to return to power, and to be chafing in secret at the political inaction which had been imposed upon him, and for which he was himself responsible more than anyone else. The fact that after the Raid Rhodes had been abandoned by his former friends harmed him considerably as a political man by destroying his renown as a statesman to whom the destinies of an Empire might be entrusted with safety. One can truly say, when writing the story of those years, that it resolved _itself_, into the vain struggle of Rhodes to recover his lost prestige. Sir Alfred was continually being made responsible for things of which he had not only been innocent, but of which, also, he had disapproved most emphatically. To mention only one--the famous concentration camps. A great deal of fuss was made about them at the time, and it was generally believed that they had been inst.i.tuted at the instigation of the High Commissioner. When consulted on the subject Sir Alfred Milner had, on the contrary, not at all shared the opinion of those who had believed that they were a necessity, although ultimately, for lack of earlier steps, they became so.
The Colony at that time found its effective government vested in the hands of the military authorities, who not infrequently acted upon opinions which were not based upon experience or upon any local conditions. They believed, too, implicitly what they were told, and when they heard people protest, with tears in their eyes, their devotion to the British Crown, and lament over the leniency with which the Governor of Cape Colony looked upon rebellion, they could not possibly think that they were listening to a tissue of lies, told for a purpose, nor guess that they were being made use of. Under such conditions the only wonder is the few mistakes which were made. To come back to the Boers" concentration camps, Sir Alfred Milner was not a sanguinary man by any means, and his character was far too firm to use violence as a means of government. It is probable that, left alone, he would have found some other means to secure strict obedience from the refugees to orders which most never thought of resisting. Unfortunately for everybody concerned, he could do nothing beyond expressing his opinion, and the circ.u.mstance that, out of a feeling of duty, he made no protestations against things of which he could not approve was exploited against him, both by the Jingo English party and by the Dutch, all over South Africa. At Groote Schuur especially, no secret was made by the friends of Rhodes of their disgust at the state of things prevailing in concentration camps, and it was adroitly brought to the knowledge of all the partisans of the Boers that, had Rhodes been master of the situation, such an outrage on individual liberty would never have taken place. Sir Alfred Milner was subjected to unfair, ill-natured criticisms which were as cunning as they were bitter. The concentration camps afford only one instance of the secret antagonisms and injustices which Sir Alfred Milner had to bear and combat. No wonder thoughts of his days in South Africa are still, to him, a bitter memory!
CHAPTER XI.
CROSS CURRENTS
The intrigues which made Groote Schuur such a disagreeable place were always a source of intense wonder to me. I could never understand their necessity. Neither could I appreciate the kind of hypocrisy which induced Rhodes continually to affirm that he did not care to return to power, whilst in reality he longed to hold the reins again. It would have been fatally easy for Rhodes, even after the hideous mistake of the Raid, to regain his political popularity; a little sincerity and a little truth were all that was needed. Unfortunately, both these qualities were wanting in what was otherwise a really gifted nature. Rhodes, it seemed by his ways, could not be sincere, and though he seldom lied in the material sense of the word, yet he allowed others to think and act for him, even when he knew them to be doing so in absolute contradiction to what he ought to have done himself. He appeared to have insufficient energy to enforce his will on those whom he despised, yet allowed to dictate to him even in matters which he ought to have kept absolutely under his own control.
I shall always maintain that Rhodes, without his so-called friends, would most certainly have been one of the greatest figures of his time and generation. He had a big soul, vast conceptions, and when he was not influenced by outward material details--upon which, unfortunately for himself as well as for his reputation in history, he allowed his mind to dwell too often--his thoughts were always directed toward some higher subject which absorbed his attention, inspired him, and moved him sometimes to actions that drew very near to the heroic. He might have gone to his grave not only with an unsullied, but also with a great reputation based on grounds that were n.o.ble and splendid had he shaken off the companions of former times. Unhappily, an atmosphere of flattery and adulation had become absolutely necessary to him, and he became so used to it that he did not perceive that his sycophants never left him alone for a moment. They watched over him like a policeman who took good care no foreign influence should venture to approach.
The end of all this was that Rhodes resented the truth when it was told him, and detested any who showed independence of judgment or appreciation in matters concerning his affairs and projects. A man supposed to have an iron will, yet he was weak almost to childishness in regard to these flattering satellites. It amused him to have always at his beck and call people willing and ready to submit to his insults, to bear with his fits of bad temper, and to accept every humiliation which he chose to offer.
Cecil Rhodes never saw, or affected never to see, the disastrous influence all this had on his life.
I remember asking him how it came that he seldom showed the desire to go away somewhere quite alone, if even for a day or two, so as to remain really tete-a-tete with his own reflections. His reply was most characteristic: "What should I do with myself? One must have people about to play cards in the evening." I might have added "and to flatter one,"
but refrained. This craving continually to have someone at hand to bully, scold, or to make use of, was certainly one of the failings of Rhodes"
powerful mind. It also indicated in a way that thirst for power which never left him until the last moment of his life. He had within him the weakness of those dethroned kings who, in exile, still like to have a Court about them and to travel in state. Rhodes had a court, and also travelled with a suite who, under the pretence of being useful to him, effectually barred access to any stranger. But for his entourage it is likely that Rhodes might have outlived the odium of the Raid. But, as Mrs.
van Koopman said to me, "What is the use of trying to help Rhodes when one is sure that he will never be allowed to perform all that he might promise?"
The winter which followed upon the relief of Kimberley Rhodes spent almost entirely at Groote Schuur, going to Rhodesia only in spring. During these months negotiations between him and certain leaders of the Bond party went on almost uninterruptedly. These were either conducted openly by people like Mr. David de Waal, or else through other channels when not entrusted to persons whom it would be relatively easy later on to disavow. Once or twice these negotiations seemed to take a favourable turn at several points, but always at the last minute Rhodes withdrew under some pretext or other. What he would have liked would have been to have, as it were, the Dutch party, the Bond, the English Colonists, the South African League, President Kruger, and the High Commissioner, all rolled into one, fall at his feet and implore him to save South Africa. When he perceived that all these believed that there existed a possibility for matters to be settled without his intervention, he hated every man of them with a hatred such as only very absolute natures can feel. To hear him express his disgust with the military authorities, abuse in turns Lord Roberts, whom he used to call an old man in his dotage, Lord Kitchener, who was a particular antipathy, the High Commissioner, the Government at home, and the Bond, was an education in itself. He never hesitated before making use of an expression of a coa.r.s.eness such as does not bear repeating, and in his private conversations he hurled insults at the heads of all. It is therefore no wonder that the freedom of speech which Rhodes exercised at Groote Schuur added to the difficulties of a situation the brunt of which not he, but Sir Alfred Milner, had to bear.
More than once the High Commissioner caused a hint to be conveyed to Cecil Rhodes that he had better betake himself to Rhodesia, and remain there until there was a clearer sky in Cape Colony. These hints were always given in the most delicate manner, but Rhodes chose to consider them in the light of a personal affront, and poured down torrents of invective upon the British Government for what he termed their ingrat.i.tude. The truth of the matter was that he could not bring himself to understand that he was not the person alone capable of bringing about a permanent settlement of South Africa. The energy of his young days had left him, and perhaps the chronic disease from which he was suffering added to his constant state of irritation and obscured the clearness of his judgment in these post-raid days.
I hope that my readers will not imagine from my reference that I have a grudge of any kind against Doctor Jameson.[D] On the contrary, truth compels me to say that I have seldom met a more delightful creature than this old friend and companion of Cecil Rhodes, and I do believe he held a sincere affection for his chief. But Jameson, as well as Rhodes, was under the influence of certain facts and of certain circ.u.mstances, and I do not think that he was, at that particular moment about which I am writing, the best adviser that Rhodes might have had. In one thing Doctor Jim was above suspicion: he had never dirtied his hands with any of the financial speculations which those about Rhodes indulged in, to the latter"s detriment much more than his own, considering the fact that it was he who was considered as the father of their various "smart" schemes. Jameson always kept aloof from every kind of shady transaction in so far as money matters were concerned, and perhaps this was the reason why so many people detested him and kept advising Rhodes to brush him aside, or, at all events, not to keep him near him whilst the war was going on. His name was to the Dutch as a red rag to a very fierce and more than furious bull, while the Bond, as well as the burghers of the Transvaal, would rather have had dealings with the Evil One himself than with Doctor Jim. Their prejudices against him were not to be shaken. In reality others about Rhodes were far more dangerous than Jameson could ever have proved on the question of a South African settlement in which the rights of the Dutch elements in the Cape and Orange Free State would be respected and considered.
[D] Dr. Jameson died November 26th, 1917.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RT. HON. SIR LEANDER STARR JAMESON]
Whatever might have been his faults, Doctor Jameson was neither a rogue nor a fool. For Rhodes he had a sincere affection that made him keenly alive to the dangers that might threaten the latter, and anxious to avert them. But during those eventful months of the war the influence of the Doctor also had been weakened by the peculiar circ.u.mstances which had arisen in consequence of the length of the Boer resistance. Before the war broke out it had been generally supposed that three months would see the end of the Transvaal Republic, and Rhodes himself, more often than I care to remember, had prophesied that a few weeks would be the utmost that the struggle could last. That this did not turn out to be the case had been a surprise to the world at large and an intense disappointment to Cecil Rhodes. He had all along nourished a bitter animosity against Kruger, and in regard to him, as well as Messrs. Schreiner, Merriman, Hofmeyr, Sauer and other one-time colleagues, he carried his vindictiveness to an extent so terrible that more than once it led him into some of the most regrettable actions in his life.
Cecil Rhodes possessed a curious shyness which gave to his character an appearance the more misleading in that it hid in reality a will of iron and a ruthlessness comparable to a _Condottiere_ of the Middle Ages. The fact was that his soul was thirsting for power, and he was inordinately jealous of successes which anyone but himself had or could achieve in South Africa. I am persuaded that one of the reasons why he always tried by inference to disparage Sir Alfred Milner was his annoyance at the latter"s calm way of going on with the task which he had mapped out for himself without allowing his mind to be troubled by the outcries of a mob whom he despised from the height of his great integrity, unsullied honour, and consciousness of having his duty to perform. Neither could Rhodes ever see in political matters the necessities of the moment often made it the duty of a statesman to hurl certain facts into oblivion and to reconcile himself to new circ.u.mstances.
That he did disparage Sir Alfred Milner is unfortunately certain. I sincerely believe that the war would never have dragged on so long had not Rhodes contrived to convey to the princ.i.p.al Boer leaders the impression that while Sir Alfred Milner remained in South Africa no settlement would be arrived at with the British Government, because the High Commissioner would always oppose any concessions that might bring it to a successful and prompt issue. Of course Cecil Rhodes never said this in so many words, but he allowed people to guess that such was his conviction, and it was only after Sir Alfred had I left the Cape for Pretoria that, by a closer contact with the Boers themselves, some of the latter"s prejudices against him vanished.
At last did the st.u.r.dy Dutch farmers realise that if there was one man devoid of animosity against them, and desirous of seeing the end of a struggle which was ruining a continent, it was Sir Alfred Milner. They also discovered another thing concerning his political views and opinions--that he desired just as much as they did to destroy the power and influence of those multi-millionaires who had so foolishly believed that after the war"s end they would have at their disposal the riches which the Transvaal contained, so that, rather than becoming a part of the British Empire, it would in reality be an annexe of the London and Paris Stock Exchanges.
As events turned out, by a just retribution of Providence, the magnates who had let greedy ambition master them lost most of the advantages which they had been able to s.n.a.t.c.h from President Kruger. Whether this would have happened had Rhodes not died before the conclusion of peace remains an open question. It is certain he would have objected to a limitation of the political power of the concerns in which he had got such tremendous interests; it is equally sure that it would have been for him a cruel disappointment had his name not figured as the outstanding signature on the treaty of peace. There were in this strange man moments when his patriotism a.s.sumed an entirely personal shape, but, improbable as it may appear to the reader, there was sincerity in the conviction which he had that the only man who understood what South Africa required was himself, and that in all that he had done he had been working for the benefit of the Empire. There was in him something akin to the feeling which had inspired the old Roman saying, "_Civis Romanum sum._" He understood far better than any of the individuals by whom he was surrounded the true meaning of the word Imperialism. Unfortunately, he was apt to apply it in the personal sense, until, indeed, it got quite confused in his mind with a selfish feeling which prompted him to put his huge personality before everything else. If one may do so, a reading of his mind would show that in his secret heart he felt he had not annexed Rhodesia to the Empire nor amalgamated the Kimberley mines and organised De Beers for the benefit of his native Britain, but in order to make himself the most powerful man in South Africa, and yet at the same time shrewdly realised that he could not be the king he wished to become unless England stood behind him to cover with her flag his heroic actions as well as his misdeeds.
That Rhodes" death occurred at an opportune moment cannot be denied. It is a sad thing to say, but for South Africa true enough. It removed from the path of Sir Alfred Milner the princ.i.p.al obstacle that had stood in his way ever since his arrival at Cape Town. The Rhodesian party, deprived of its chief, was entirely harmless. Rhodesian politics, too, lost their strength when he was no longer there to impose them upon South Africa.
One of the great secrets of the enormous influence which the Colossus had acquired lay in the fact that he had never spared his money when it was a question of thrusting his will in directions favourable to his interest.
None of those who aspired to take his place could follow him on that road, because none were so superbly indifferent to wealth. Cecil Rhodes did not care for riches for the personal enjoyments they can purchase. He was frugal in his tastes, simple in his manners and belongings, and absolutely careless as to the comforts of life. The waste in his household was something fabulous, but it is a question whether he ever partic.i.p.ated in luxuries showered upon others. His one hobby had been the embellishment of Groote Schuur, which he had really transformed into something absolutely fairylike as regards its exterior beauties and the loveliness of its grounds and gardens. Inside, too, the house, furnished after the old Dutch style, struck one by its handsomeness, though it was neither homelike nor comfortable. In its decoration he had followed the plans of a clever architect, to whose artistic education he had generously contributed by giving to him facilities to travel in Europe, but he had not lent anything of his own personality to the interior arrangements of his home, which had always kept the look of a show place, neither cared for nor properly looked after.
Rhodes himself felt happier and more at his ease when rambling in his splendid park and gazing on Table Mountain from his stoep than amidst the luxury of his richly furnished rooms. Sometimes he would sit for hours looking at the landscape before him, lost in a meditation which but few cared to disturb, and after which he invariably showed himself at his best and in a softer mood than he had been before. Unfortunately, these moments never lasted long, and he used to revenge himself on those who had surprised him in such reveries by indulging in the most caustic and cruel remarks which he could devise in order to goad them out of all patience. A strange man with strange instincts; and it is no wonder that, once, a person who knew him well, and who had known him in the days of his youth when he had not yet developed his strength of character, had said of him that "One could not help liking him and one could not avoid hating him; and sometimes one hated him when one liked him most."
Sir Alfred Milner had neither liked nor hated him, perhaps because his mind was too well balanced to allow him to view him otherwise than with impartiality and with a keen appreciation of his great qualities. He would have liked to work with Rhodes, and would gladly have availed himself of his experience of South Africa and of South African politicians. But Sir Alfred refused to be drawn into any compromises with his own conscience or to offend his own sense of right and wrong. He was always sincere, though he was never given credit for being so in South Africa. Sir Alfred Milner could not understand why Rhodes, instead of resolutely a.s.serting that he wanted to enter into negotiations with the Bond in order to win its co-operation in the great work of organising the new existence of South Africa on a sound and solid basis, preferred to cause promises to be made to the Bond which he would never consent to acknowledge.
These tortuous roads, which were so beloved by Rhodes, were absolutely abhorrent to the High Commissioner. When Rhodes started the agitation for the suspension of the Const.i.tution, which occupied his thoughts during the last months of his life--an agitation which he had inaugurated out of spite against Mr. Sauer and Mr. Hofmeyr, who had refused to dance to Rhodes" tune--Sir Alfred Milner had at once seen through the underlying motives of the moment, and what he discerned had not increased his admiration for Rhodes. Sir Alfred had not opposed the plans, but he had never been sanguine as to their chance of success, and they were not in accordance with his own convictions. Had he thought they had the least chance of being adopted, most certainly he would have opposed them with just as much energy as Sir Gordon Sprigg had done. He saw quite well that it would not have been opportune or politic to put himself into open opposition to Rhodes. Sir Alfred therefore did not contradict the rumours which attributed to him the desire to reduce the Cape to the condition of a Crown Colony, but bent his energy to the far more serious task of negotiating a permanent peace with the leading men in the Transvaal, a peace for which he did not want the protection of Rhodes, and to which an a.s.sociation with Rhodes might have proved inimical to the end in view--the ideal of a South African Federation which Rhodes had been the first to visualise, but which Providence did not permit him to see accomplished.
CHAPTER XII.
THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
It is impossible to speak or write about the South African War without mentioning the Concentration Camps. A great deal of fuss was made about them, not only abroad, where all the enemies of England took a particular and most vicious pleasure in magnifying the so-called cruelties which were supposed to take place, but also in the English Press, where long and heartrending accounts appeared concerning the iniquities and injustices practised by the military authorities on the unfortunate Boer families a.s.sembled in the Camps.
In recurring to this long-forgotten theme, I must first of all say that I do not hold a brief for the English Government or for the administration which had charge of British interests in South Africa. But pure and simple justice compels me to protest, first against the use which was made for party purposes of certain regrettable incidents, and, more strongly still, against the totally malicious and ruthless way in which the incidents were interpreted.
It is necessary before pa.s.sing a judgment on the Concentration Camps to explain how it came about that these were organised. At the time of which I am writing people imagined that by Lord Kitchener"s orders Boer women, children and old people were forcibly taken away from their homes and confined, without any reason for such an arbitrary proceeding, in unhealthy places where they were subjected to an existence of privation as well as of humiliation and suffering. Nothing of the kind had taken place.
The idea of the Camps originated at first from the Boers themselves in an indirect way. When the English troops marched into the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, most of the farmers who composed the bulk of the population of the two Republics having taken to arms, there was no one left in the homes they had abandoned save women, children and old men no longer able to fight. These fled hurriedly as soon as English detachments and patrols were in sight, but most of the time they did not know where they could fly to, and generally a.s.sembled in camps somewhere on the veldt, where they hoped that the British troops would not discover them.
There, however, they soon found their position intolerable owing to the want of food and to the lack of hygienic precautions.
The British authorities became aware of this state of things and could not but try to remedy it. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. To come to the help of several thousands of people in a country where absolutely no resources were to be found was a quite stupendous task, of a nature which might well have caused the gravest anxieties to the men responsible for the solution. It was then that the decision was reached to organise upon a reasonable scale camps after the style of those which already had been inaugurated by the Boers themselves.
The idea, which was not a bad one, was carried out in an unfortunate manner, which gave to the world at large the idea that the burgher families who were confined in these camps were simply put into a prison which they had done nothing to deserve. The Bond Press, always on the alert to reproach England, seized hold of the establishment of the Camps to transform into martyrs the persons who had been transferred to them, and soon a wave of indignation swept over not only South Africa, but also over Britain. This necessary act of human civilisation was twisted to appear as an abuse of power on the part of Lord Roberts and especially of Lord Kitchener, who, in this affair, became the scapegoat for many sins he had never committed. The question of the Concentration Camps was made the subject of interpellations in the House of Commons, and indignation meetings were held in many parts of England. The Nonconformist Conscience was deeply stirred at what was thought to be conduct which not even the necessities of war could excuse. Torrents of ink were spilt to prove that at the end of the nineteenth century measures and methods worthy of the Inquisition were resorted to by British Government officials, who--so the ready writers and ready-tongued averred--with a barbarity such as the Middle Ages had not witnessed, wanted to be revenged on innocent women and children for the resistance their husbands and fathers were making against an aggression which in itself nothing could justify.
So far as the Boers themselves were concerned, I think that a good many among them viewed the subject with far more equanimity than the English public. For one thing, the fact of their women and children being put in places where at least they would not die of hunger must have come to them rather in the light of a relief than anything else. Then, too, one must not lose sight of the conditions under which the Boer burghers and farmers used to exist in normal times. Cleanliness did not rank among their virtues; and, as a rule, hygiene was an unknown science. They were mostly dirty and neglected in their personal appearance, and their houses were certainly neither built nor kept in accordance with those laws of sanitation which in the civilised world have become a matter of course.
Water was scarce, and the long and torrid summers, during which every bit of vegetation was dried up on the veldt, had inured the population to certain privations which would have been intolerable to Europeans. These things, and the unfortunate habits of the Boers, made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to realise in the Camps any approach to the degree of cleanliness which was desirable.
To say that the people in the Concentration Camps were happy would be a gross exaggeration, but to say that they were martyrs would convey an equally false idea. When judging of facts one ought always to remember the local conditions under which these facts have developed. A Russian moujik sent to Siberia does not find that his life there is very much different from what it was at home, but a highly civilised, well-educated man, condemned to banishment in those frozen solitudes, suffers acutely, being deprived of all that had made existence sweet and tolerable to him. I feel certain that an Englishman, confined in one of the Concentration Camps of South Africa, would have wished himself dead ten times a day, whilst the wife of a Boer farmer would not have suffered because of missing soap and water and clean towels and nicely served food, though she might have felt the place hot and unpleasant, and might have lamented over the loss of the home in which she had lived for years.
The Concentration Camps were a necessity, because without them thousands of people, the whole white population of a country indeed, amounting to something over sixty thousand people, would have died of hunger and cold.
The only means of existence the country Boers had was the produce of their farms. This taken away from them, they were left in the presence of starvation, and starvation only. This population, deprived of every means of subsistence, would have invaded Cape Colony, which already was overrun with white refugees from Johannesburg and the Rand, who had proved a prolific source of the greatest annoyance to the British Government. To allow this ma.s.s of miserable humanity to wander all over the Colony would have been inhuman, and I would like to know what those who, in England and upon the Continent, were so indignant over the Concentration Camps would have said had it turned out that some sixty thousand human creatures had been allowed to starve.
The British Government, owing to the local conditions under which the South African War came to be fought, found itself in a dilemma, out of which the only escape was to try to relieve wholesale misery in the most practical manner possible. There was no time to plan out with deliberation what ought to be done; some means had to be devised to keep a whole population alive whom an administration would have been accused of murdering had there been delay in feeding it.
There was also another danger to be faced had the veldt been allowed to become the scene of a long-continued migration of nations--that of allowing the movements of the British troops to become known, thereby lengthening a war of already intolerable length, to say nothing of exposing uselessly the lives of English detachments, which, in this guerrilla kind of warfare, would inevitably have occurred had the Boer leaders remained in constant communication with their wandering compatriots.
Altogether the inst.i.tution of the Concentration Camps was not such a bad one originally. Unfortunately, they were not organised with the seriousness which ought to have been brought to bear on such a delicate matter, and their care was entrusted to people who succeeded, unwittingly perhaps, in making life there less tolerable than it need have been.