622 



SOUTH AFRICA. 



the wrecking of supply-trains even when supple- 

 mented by a double line of posts and patrols on 

 either side of the line. There was no point where 

 a Boer could not creep up to set a rifle-lock 

 connected with a dynamite cartridge to derail a 

 train. In Cape Colony and in both republics the 

 commandoes several times fitted themselves out 

 with food and munitions from wrecked trains. 

 In the first six months of 1901 the Boers derailed 

 43 supply-trains. There were many sections so 

 poorly guarded that the Boers could have easily 

 damaged the railroads permanently and cut off 

 all supplies for the British garrisons. The Boer 

 families in the concentration camps were hostages 

 to prevent such a catastrophe. The burghers 

 knew that their own families would be allowed 

 to starve first. After a train was wrecked on 

 Aug. 31 north of Pretoria and the commander 

 and several men of the guard of 45 men shot down 

 by Jack Hinton's commando, Lord Kitchener 

 gave notice that prominent burghers would be 

 placed on trains thereafter, following a precedent 

 set by the Germans in the French war. This 

 precedent, however, was condemned at the time 

 and since by international lawyers, who hold al- 

 most unanimously that the laws of war give no 

 rights over prisoners or hostages except that of 

 keeping them in captivity. The Boers always had 

 accurate information of the movements of Brit- 

 ish troops and the expected arrival of supplies. 

 Many times the rations of the troops had to be re- 

 duced in consequence of the destruction of trains. 

 Information could be conveyed to the enemy only 

 by their friends in the towns. A more careful 

 watch was kept, with the result that many 

 burghers of Pretoria were caught who were in 

 the habit of going out to the Boer commandoes. 

 The head of the Boer intelligence department was 

 believed to be Dr. Broecksma, formerly public 

 prosecutor of the South African Republic. He was 

 tried and hanged as a spy. Other prominent 

 Hollanders and burghers were tried and punished 

 for treachery and spying, and Mr. Nieuwenhuis, 

 the Netherlands consul, was so connected with 

 them that the British Government demanded his 

 recall. Dr. Krause, a Transvaal burgher prac- 

 tising- law in London, was arrested and tried there, 

 although he had always been classed with the 

 pro-English Afrikanders. Some Boers who took 

 the oath of neutrality when Pretoria was occu- 

 pied were caught wh'ile attempting to steal out 

 of the city to join a commando in June. They 

 were carrying arms and wounded a sentry, and 

 by sentence of a court-martial were shot. After 

 that no night passes were allowed, and house- 

 holders in all Transvaal towns were obliged to 

 post on their front doors a list of the inmates of 

 their houses and were held responsible for their 

 presence. 



The inmates of the concentration camps con- 

 sisted of the families of burghers who had been 

 killed in battle or were exiled prisoners, the fami- 

 lies of those still fighting in the field, and burgh- 

 ers and their families who had voluntarily sur- 

 rendered. These last, the " handsuppers," were 

 treated with coldness and scorn by the others, 

 who amid their severest privations and suffer- 

 ings were even more earnest and resolute in their 

 patriotism than their husbands and brothers on 

 commando, as the Boor women have always been. 

 The knowledge which reached these women in 

 the camps of everything that was going on and 

 the secret channels of communication between 

 them and the commandoes puzzled the English 

 intelligence officers and could not be fathomed. 

 Very early the conditions of life in the camps 

 shocked the world and roused in England feelings 



of shame and indignation even in imperialist cir- 

 cles, though some blamed the Boers, who continued 

 their hopeless resistance and who caused British 

 soldiers as well as the refugees to go hungry by 

 robbing provision trains and had caused great 

 loss and suffering to the 50,000 Uitlander refugees 

 from the Transvaal. In the first four months of 

 1901 there were 284 deaths in the Boer refugee 

 camps of the Transvaal, and in the Orange River 

 Colony camps 41 men, 80 women, and 261 children 

 died. Emily Hobhouse, who was sent out by an 

 English charitable society, wrote home of insup- 

 portable conditions in the Orange River Colony 

 camps of overcrowding, of lack of food, water, 

 clothing, bedding, even soap, of medical care 

 and nursing, and told of famished children dying 

 and diseases raging with no organized effort to 

 stop them. She was not allowed to visit the 

 Transvaal camps, and when she came over from 

 England a second time the military authorities 

 expelled her from South Africa. The conditions 

 grew steadily worse as the process of clearing 

 whole districts was carried out by the flying col- 

 umns without provision being made for the re- 

 ception of the people. Filth and hunger diseases 

 and unchecked contagion swept off adults and r 

 above all, children. In June the annual rate of 

 mortality per 1,000 in the camps rose to 159 at 

 Kroonstad, 167 at Kimberley, 162 at Vredefort 

 Road, 178 at Springfontein, and 383 at Bloemfon- 

 tein. At Winburg it was 103, at Brandfort 74, at 

 Norvals Pont 70, at Bethulie 50, at Aliwal North 

 35, at Heilbron, where the refugees were quar- 

 tered in houses, only 26. The average death-rate 

 was 117, and later it was 162. The refugees, 

 sometimes 12 in a tent, slept on the bare 

 ground without covering, saturated with rain and 

 dew, fed with spoiled meat and meal, lacking 

 fuel even for cooking. The military authorities, 

 having shipped back to Europe the Dutch, French, 

 German, and Swiss Red-Cross ambulance doctors 

 who attended the Boers in the field and refused to 

 allow others to come, now refused to allow a 

 Swiss medical mission to come to attend the Boer 

 women and children in the camps where the medi- 

 cal service was insufficient, even to separate the 

 children suffering from measles and scarlatina 

 from the rest. The mortality in the camps in- 

 creased to 264 per 1,000, and among the children 

 It rose in September to 440 per 1,000 per annum,, 

 a rate that would exterminate the ypung genera- 

 tion within two years. The transport facilities 

 being insufficient to feed properly the refugees,, 

 the Government was urged to transport them all 

 to the coast, but refused. The military authori- 

 ties would not at first allow refugee families to 

 go to friends at the Cape who would provide for 

 them. Camps were established later at the coast, 

 where the mortality was little above the normal, 

 and for military reasons, to stop communications 

 between the fighting Boers and their families, it 

 was decided to send the families of Boers on com- 

 mando as they were brought in to Cape Colony 

 and Natal. The insignificant extent of country 

 actually occupied after Lord Kitchener" reversed 

 Lord Roberts's policy of attempting to protect dis- 

 tricts, when he withdrew all troops to the rail- 

 roads and principal towns, afforded no base for 

 the pacification of the country, and therefore he 

 was compelled to extend his lines of blockhouses 

 away from the railroads and enclose districts 

 where agricultural operations could be carried on 

 under the protection of the blockhouses and the 

 South African constabulary. In the districts 

 around Bloemfontein Kaffirs whose farms had 

 been cleared or who had been brought in with 

 the Boer families were released from the native 



