BRITISH HUMANITY.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4637, 16 April 1902, Page 2

BRITISH HUMANITY.

THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS. REPORT OF THE LADIES’ COMMITTEE. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, February 18. No sane Britain can read the report on the concentration camps by Ladies’ Committee, of which Mrs Fawcett was the president, without being convinced that had. the 100,000 Boer women and children whom we maintain in South Africa been our own people, instead of our enemies, we could not have done more for them. The report is a sensible, straightforward one, and the ladies are to bo congratulated on proving themselves far more practical than the men who composed the Commission that inquired into the BurdettCoutts charges. The committee visited every camp save one at Port Elizabeth, made practical recommendations, and saw that they were carried out. Ihe committee was not a_ white-washing one; where we made mistakes, it pointed those mistakes out, and where it found on incompetent superintendent, it said so, and insisted on his removal. No reasonable person expected that in the housing, feeding and tending of 100,000 individuals in a country ravaged by war errors of judgment would not bo made, or that hero and there iuoompotency would not bo revealed, or that room would not be found for improvement, especially as at the outset so many of the arrangements had to bo hurriedly improvised. The report, however, shows that in the main the goodwill of the officials towards those committed to their care was accompanied by energy and efficiency, and a readiness to carry out any suggestion made by competent critics for the improvement of the camps or the health of the inmates. The committee reports that, considering the ample provision of necessaries for the healthy and necessaries and luxuries for the sick which has 'eon made, it is rather difficult to find a suitable channel into which to direct the flow of private charity. The indiscriminate distribution of clothing has done more harm than good, sucb_ articles as boots and dress materials given in charity having been sold by the Boers at the nearest town. The committee, therefore, has recommended the main body of the Victoria League’s Fund to bo used for tho promotion of education. The committee considers tho organisation of the camp hospitals and the provision of medical comforts reflect the greatest credit on the authorities, and in regard to the general organisation of tho camps the committee desires to bear testimony to tho devotion to duty, practical ability, vigilance, firmness and kindness of tho camp superintendents. The committee felt it its duty on a few occasions to recommend the removal of a camp superintendent, not on the ground of harshness, hut from such reasons as ago, feeble health, or natural lack of governing and organising capacity. Tho necessity of restriction of intercourse between the camps and the outside world the committee exemplifies by the case of a woman leaving a camp with her goods and chattels packed on a waggon. Challenged by a sentry, the waggon was searched, and found to contain 2401 b flour, 401 b salt, 281 b rice, 221 b coffee, tea, candles, soap and milk intended for the Boors in the field. The committee recommended a more thorough control of ingress and egress. As regards morals, the committee heard no complaint against tho soldiers, and found that military Camps were out of bounds for concentration camps and vice versa. In several oases, under the specious guise of philanthropy, the local committees have aimed at tho political control of the camps, and have endeavoured to overthrow the authority of the superintendents. The committee recommends that no locus standi should be allowed a local committee in any camp without the consent in writing of tho superintendent. The committee found that the British sense of justice and fair play made tho Englishman, generally speaking, more successful as a camp superintendent than the man of Dutch or Boer parentage; the bitterest complaints against superintendents were directed against men of Dutch origin. The people would say they preferred a “Vordomned Rooinek” to a “ Schelm ” of a Boer, For positions of authority in the camps, _ especially where the distribution of gifts or favours of any kind was concerned, the people decidedly preferred an Englishman or Englishwoman to one of themselves. Constant charges of favouritism, in such positions, were preferred against their own people.

The committee found all medical authorities agreed that the normal deathrate in the Transvaal and Orange Free States had been very high, but ixo statistics had been kept under the Boor regime. The high rate in the camps the Commission attributes ■ to three groups of causes:— 1. The insanitary condition of the country caused by the war. 2. Causes within the control of the inmates of the camps. 3. Causes within the control of the administrations, 1. The whole country had been poisoned by war. The heavy part of the death-rate in the camps is that of children under five. It is not because they are in camps, but because the war has exposed them to poisonous conditions of water and atmosphere, and has deprived them of the food suitable to their tender age. More is being done for them in camp, ton times more in the way of skilful doctoring, feeding and nursing than could have been done for them had they remained on their fathers’ farms. But in the one ease every death is known and recorded, and in' the other no one except their own families would ever have heard of it. 2. In estimating the causes of lad health in the camps it is necessary to put on record that every superintendent has to_ wage war against the insanitary habits of the people. However numerous, suitable, and well-kept may be the latrines provided, the fouling of the ground, including river banks and slopes and trenches leading to the water supply, goes on to an extent which would probably not be credited except by those who have seen it. So bad was this fouling, that one clergyman devoted a sermon to it. The Boers concealed illness and objected to hospital treatment. They had such an abhorence for fresh air that “stinking” was the only word to describe the atmosphere of the tents. The Boer women would not lift up their tent flaps. Boer cures of the most horrible nature have caused a large number of deaths. Reckitt’s Blue was used as a cooling drink. The chest and stomach of a child suffering from pneumonia were varnished by its mother. Another pneumonia patient, on whom a nurse put a linseed poultice, ate it. That deaths were largely due to the noxious compounds given by Boer women to their children is substantiated by the fact that the children of English parents caught measles, but were nursed successfully through them by intelligent and careful parents, who kept the children clean. ‘

3. Causes within the control of the administrations. At first the military did not realise sufficiently tho difference between tho treatment of women and children and that of soldiers. Henco there was at the outset overcrowding and sufficient caro was not always exercised to select good sites for permanent camps. In some cases water supply and sanitation were bad and better provision should have been made for apparatus for boiling drinking water and filters to filter it. Merchant the committee coucousidcred had the worst chosen site, but on this point a subsequent medical board differed from the committee, and retained the camp, abandoning part of it. and breaking it up into three sections! In some cases there was a tendency on the part of the officials to sink to a low standard of order, decency or cleanliness in sanitary matters rather than face the constant wear and tear involved in insisting on a high standard. All camps ought tp be raised to tho level of the best cainjis. A more determined effort should have been made to secure fresh moat, however thin, and limejuico, jam and vegetables of some land addon to tho dietary would have been a reasonable precaution to have taken, in view of'tho danger of scurvy. When the formidable character of the measles epidemic made itself evident, more strenuous and earlier exertions should have been made to sccuro the services of an adequate supply of efficient doctors and nurses to copo with the outbreak. A reserve of doctors anil nurses should have boon formed ready to bo thrown quickly into any camp requiring. extra help. While offering these criticisms the committee recognises that it is “easy for those who come in as wo do, in tho attitude of critics, after others havo homo tho heat and burden of the day, to say that in this or that the work would have been bettor dono otherwise.-* Tho committee found, however, all tho authorities ready to carry out its suggestions and grudging neither labour nor money to improve the health of-tho camps. Lord Milner it found “not a partisan anxious only to hear what told in favour of a particular view, but a statesman desirous of hearing the truth, whether pleasant or unpleasant, in order, that he might the more effectually grapple with tho difficulties of tho situation, with all its vastly important bearings on the future.” After recommending the removal of certain camps and the reduction of all camps to not more than 3000 inmates, tho oomittoe observes that no one who knew tho conditions of South Africa could make suggestions for tho disbanding of tho camps, and fortho boarding out of tho women and children now, in tho camps with loyalist families in Natal or Capo Colony. “Even in tho camps it is frequently necessary to plaoo physical obstacles in tho way of personal conflict between tho families of those Boers who have surrendered and those still in the fields. To board tho womenfolk of ouo of tho combatants with tho womon-folk of tho other would bo to re-enact, in thousands of families, tho fights which have boon already fought, and would surely intensify race-hatred, which all well-wishers of South Africa should desire to allay.” Tho report concludes with the following summary of tho definite results achieved by tho Commission up to tho present;— I. Tho appointment of travelling inspectors of camps in the Orange River Colony and Transvaal. . 2. The revision of tho ration scale, including fuel. 3. Tho provision of boilers for drinking water, and other sanitary precautions against the spread of enteric. 4. An increase in the supply of qualified doctors and nurses. 5. The moro general appointment of suitable women as camp matrons._ 6. Tho appointment of water engineers to visit camps and advise about water supply. 7. The larger provision of kartels, or bedsteads, so as to reduce to a minimum tbo number of people sleeping on the ground. . . . 8. The more general provision of soupkitchens.

9. 1 The reorganisation of four camps, and tho dismissal of incompetent offi--10. The increase of hospital accommodation and staff in a large number of camps. In history tho concentration camps will figure as one of England’s greatest achievements in tho cause of humanity and chivalry.