TREATMENT OF LOYALIST REFUGEES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11825, 30 November 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

TREATMENT OF LOYALIST REFUGEES.

—. —<» — — Miss Nina Boyle writes to 3 London paper from Doornfontein, Johannesburg, under date of August 20, to protest against the unequal treatment meted out to Boer and loyalist refugees. The following are some extracts from a letter too long for public** tion in full: —

An " ordinary woman" from Home, who devoted some months to the task of trying to mitigate the distress among our poor, I have marked with increasing indignation the indifference of the authorities to the privations and indignities heaped by friend and foe alike upon our own people, on behalf of whose starved and dying children, weary, hunger-worn women, and wrecked and scattered homes no voice was raised at Home until the provision made for the families of the enemy bade fair to become a scandal by contrast- I have seen with aching heart train after train leave the Rand with truckloads of women and children—terrified women fleeing from the brutal threats, echoed by the Boer press and never repudiated by the Boer authorities, of what would be done once war was declared. I have heard of men and women having their faces slapped and spat into by armed ruffians on the platform of Tree State stations, of women having their babies snatched from them, and not restored until a sufficiently abject state of terror had been reached by the parents, of helpless unarmed people marshalled in gangs like so much cattle over the border with every species of indignity; and I see no reason to doubt the bona fides of my informants. Who has not heaial of the block on the line near Standerton, when several refugee trains had to stand aside for days to facilitate the passage of trains taking burghers down to the invasion of Natal? Exposed to a pitiless sun by day, drenching thunderstorms by night, no shelter save under the waggons, no dry clothes, no food, no privacy, no decency, men, women, and children, Kaffirs, coolies, and Chinamen all huddled together without distinction, l:ho horrors of that journey baffle description; or 1 would paint them in the most glaring colours' for the benefit of those maudlin sentimentalists who shed tears at the idea of a Boer family not being provided with separate sleeping apartments. And what has been done for these our people to wipe out the memory of such intolerable griefs'.' Passed over with callous indifference by the Government and slighting mention in the House of Commons, they linger on in dreary exile, their erstwhile comfortable homes occupied by Boer families or looted to the bare walls. No State allowance, no well-organised camps for them, with rugs to keep the damp from their feet, with bathrooms, reading-rooms, schools, hospitals, shops, chaplains, doctors, and nurses, storage for their grain, live stock, and furniture, soldiers and Kaffirs to do the sanitary work, and hot water served out three times a day to save them the trouble of so much as boiling a kettle ; none of this for our people. Our loyal refugees boil their own kettles, clean and do the sanitary work of their own camps while the surrendered burgher loafs in idleness and is waited on. He boasted that after the' war the rooinek should be put to do the sanitary work for him, and it looks as if his boast were being made good. I hear of children with shoeless, bleeding feet— cares? I bear of delicately-nurtured women living month after month in tents with barely the means to keep themselves clean; I know of women in this town who have to tramp for their miserable dole from the further, ends of Troyvillc and Jeppestown to Krause's buildings, Marshall-street, women whose husbands have fought for our cause, women with no soles to their boots, with heavy babies to carry, sick women and infirm, in one caso suffering from cancer in the stomach. But what does it matter? They are not Boer women. And while the utmost private benevolence can compass is the barest pittance and the scantiest accommodation for our own people the Government is spending millions oh. those others, and supplying them with hot water three times a day, the committee of Englishmen in Pretoria is advertising for more comforts for the burgher camps, and ladies at Home are beseeching people to send funds for the same mistaken object. . . The British Government has got so used to the silent loyalty and self-effacement of its subjects that it seems to feel they need no longer be looked upon as a factor in the settlement. Britishers, home or colonial born, must stand back while Germans, Boers, and blacks have their claims attended to. The pity lavished on the Boers is hardening other hearts and awakening with intense bitterness the memory of cruel wrongs and injuries that find no tender echo at Home. Are the

Boer woman homeless? So are the Johannesburg Uitlander women. Are these burnt and desecrated homesteads? Ask in Newcastle, in Dundee, in Natal farms of the ruin wrought there by the gentle Boer.' What of our prisoners stripped to the naked skin, kicked, and turned loose on the veldt; what of our prisoners Hogged; what of our sick prisoners at Waterval; what of the thousand desolate English hearths and the good men and true who strew the veldt, sacrificed to fever and fatigue in this lengthened campaign that the Boer may be gently dealt with? And when foolish chatterers prate of sickness and overcrowding in the Boer camps let us tell them of the Boer home as we know it. with its constant shadow of sickness or death from foul air and dirt, and ignorance and carelessness in the feeding and tending of their children, and the spreading of infectious diseases. . . . There can be but one opinion in the minds of thinking people, and it is time that opinion s be loudly voiced. The Boers have had far too much, the loyalists far too little consideration ; and the seeds have been sown of a distrust and dissatisfaction that will ba found to be more deep-seated and difficult to deal with than a Bond intrigue. If our protest fall on unheeding ears the Government will find itself confronted with a reckoning such as it little dreams of.