“ The Lord rave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.”—job i. 22.
To draw in outline the character and disposition of the Boer women would have been comparatively easy, if they had not been so systematically reviled, imputations made in heated moments have come to be widely believed, and must be stripped off to judge them impartially. The Boers themselves, formerly brutal brigands, marauders, robbers, murderers, and rebels, are now better understood as brave and gallant men, dignified and sensible, with very proper views of self-defence. It may be found that their wives, those dirty, lazy, lying women, so heedless of their children as to neglect or even to poison them deliberately, are after all a civilised, industrious set of people, as truthful as the rest of the world, and capable of bringing up large families with love and care. It may come to be acknowledged that they are more than this; that they are capable of unflinching loyalty at whatever personal cost; that they understand self-restraint, endurance, and other fine qualities which belong to high breeding.
To stigmatise them as dirty, is both unfair and untrue. It is unfair, because we had placed them in conditions where all the things that go to help cleanliness were scarce or altogether lacking. Water, soap, towels, brooms, utensils, all were hard to obtain or unobtainable in camp. For many months there was no soap at ally except what the women made from the fat of their rations. It is untrue, because, in spite of these drawbacks, the bulk of the women were quite wonderfully neat and clean. I remember Mr. Selous, who perhaps knows the Boer people more intimately than any other Englishman, telling me that he did not consider them a dirty people in normal times. He has stayed with them on their farms continually during many years. Two doctors who have worked in the late Free State, one for twenty the other for ten years, both supported this view, the older man saying he thought it would be hard to find a cleaner community. Probably the back veld Transvaalers ranked lower in this respect. In the abnormal circumstances in which they were living, their cleanliness was striking. There were in each camp, as would be found in every town of equal size in all countries, a few thriftless and dirty families. These have been quoted as if their habits were universal.
This view is endorsed by Mrs. Dickenson, who has been already quoted. She remarks—
“ Having last year stayed at farms and visited others occupied by Cape Colonial Dutch, I was able to judge of the way they lived, and their habits and modes of thought. In the first place, I am often asked, ‘ Are they not so extremely dirty, that sitting in a tent with them would be most unpleasant?’ To this I can certainly emphatically answer, 1 No; they are as clean as any average Australian or English working-woman would be under the same circumstances.’ There are, of course, great differences in education and position among the families in the various camps. From the back veld Boer, who is really a peasant farmer, to the wealthy inhabitant of the luxurious and beautiful homes in Pretoria, there is a great gulf. Of course, it is the actual Boer of the remote country districts of whom it has been said that the mortality amongst their children is caused by their dirty habits. All I can say is, that had their tents been infested with insect life, I should certainly have carried away some specimens, as I have often done in visiting cottages in England !"
The Boer view of English cleanliness would be dangerous to depict. Their horror at the frightful sanitary arrangements of many of the camps, and at the ill-kept condition of latrines in other camps, was very real. Above all did they shrink from the habit which frequently prevailed, of packing men, women, and children into trucks and carriages, and absolutely forbidding them to leave these for any purpose whatever.
Of the carelessness of their children of which they are accused, I saw nothing, for there was no sign of it. The accusation resolves itself into this, that, mother-like, they thought they knew and understood better how to deal with their children than strangers, who for long months had but the very roughest hospitals, doctoring, and nursing to offer in place of the mother’s care.
The preliminary state of those hospitals and that nursing was such as wholly to justify the people in retaining their sick. They had no right to send their little ones where the wants they expressed could not even be understood. With the improvement of the hospitals and staff, and the certainty that their sick would have personal attention, the objection to the hospitals gradually waned. It was fatal to their success that many nurses, generally half trained, were deliberately chosen from the political enemies of the people, and supplemented by wholly untrained Boer girls, most of whom were drawn from the surrendered and distrusted class amongst themselves. Had the authorities been able to take a large view of the situation, and to be guided by common sense and humanity only instead of politics, these added difficulties need never have arisen. Lord Milner has complained of the want of personnel. Of this there was never any lack. What he meant was of political personnel. Abundant persons were forthcoming who would voluntarily have nursed in, and reorganised the camps, and have stemmed the great tide of distress; but they were refused. Kindness was what was wanted. Every one was too ill to care for politics. Such kindness, given unstintingly by people who had a wider grasp than that possessed by half-educated loyalist refugees, of the real breadth of English generosity and humanity, would have had an indirect but wholesome political effect.
It would be hard to find a people more true or more reliable in their dealings with those who have won their respect and their trust. But it must first be won. Towards all others they maintain an attitude of uncertainty and suspicion. Lately their position was fraught with difficulty, for they were made rebels in their own country. Unfortunately, those with whom English officials were mostly brought in contact, were those weaker vessels, the surrendered burghers, who generally obtained the plums of the camps, in the shape of paid employments. Men who are untrue to their own kith and kin, as some of these had been, are likely to be found untrue also in other relations of life.
Stripping off these and other accusations, and approaching the Boer women with unbiassed mind, we find a very simple womanhood, calm and composed in manner, but always brimming over with hospitable impulses. They possess shrewdness and mother-wit in abundance, and they are wrapped in suspicion like a coat of mail. Once succeed in piercing that armour, and the trustfulness below is complete as a child’s. Betray that trust, and it will never be forgotten; win it, and you will be accepted and confided in as a friend. The women have a natural and homely dignity, which becomes them well, and commands respect Beneath all, one is conscious of underlying depths stored with reserved power, which will one day express itself in various ways. In these dark days that reserve has been largely drawn upon to furnish endurance for their own trials, and endless encouragement for their men in the field. Now and again strange flashes light up the calm, unruffled surface, and reveal those hidden depths with their reserve of unknown power. They love their country passionately.
Of their conduct since they have been massed together in camps or scattered in exile over many lands, it is difficult to speak, for there is no comparison at hand to help in forming a judgment. Their experience is unique. Never before has the entire womanhood of a white nation been uprooted and placed in circumstances of such difficulty. We do not know how we should have stood the test of such a trial. We can only ask in what spirit and temper it is borne by them, and what its effect upon their character. Should not a nation be judged by its best rather than by its worst? Because the few have been outspoken and bitter; because the few have been dirty, thriftless, or unruly, therefore the whole people have been libelled. The great mass have borne their unprecendented trials with a silent heroism which has astonished many who have witnessed it. Two things have united to produce this endurance. First, the depth of their religious feeling, which took all as from a Higher Power, refusing to blame the human instrument; and secondly, that proper pride which forbade any exhibition of feeling before their enemy. Thus, often they welcomed with hymns of praise every opportunity of suffering for their country. Their quiet endurance is an intimation of strength of character and resolution with which we shall have to reckon.
“ The people do not complain,” “ There are no complaints,” “ They are satisfied and happy,” are remarks reiterated from the camps. It was often just there where no complaint issued that the suffering was keenest. Endurance, theirs by inheritance, developed with the demand made upon it, and their idealism increased under the influence of an enforced detachment from all material advantages. Their minds were set free to dwell upon the spiritual and immaterial, and centred upon the longing for freedom, independence, and the right of self-development. In a very practical way they had learnt that life consisteth not in the abundance of the things possessed. The effect of their attitude was to nerve their men to greater efforts. De Wet told a lady now in exile, that where ten men had encouraged him by their conduct, twenty-five women had done so.
It will probably be found when the women come to speak or write their own tale of the camps, and never yet have we heard their side, that harder to them than the physical suffering were the punishments and political treatment meted out to them. Official curtness and rudeness, borne outwardly in silence, was resented inwardly by women of good positions. Punishments were inflicted, without due investigation, on the accusation of some ignorant or embittered spy; women of high character were shut into wired-enclosed prisons for trivial or imagined offences; solitary guard-tents, denied passes, docked rations, all kinds of irritating and humiliating treatment, reserved chiefly for the women who were regarded as rebels, because husband or son was on commando. This was the sole reason advanced in numerous cases for refusal to such women to leave the unhealthy camps and maintain themselves elsewhere. This policy accentuated resistance and created an abhorrence of English rule, which wiser methods might have obviated.
To Mr. E. B. Sargant the country owes its gratitude for creating what has been the redeeming feature of camp life—the schools—where already many children have learnt a higher side of English character and thought than that which the war seemed to have taught them. Much, very much, may develop from the beginning made in these camp schools.
It is true that some of the people have sunk; the more ignorant, deprived of all those outward trappings which help to maintain self-respect, even of sufficient clothing, abandoned hope and courage, and fell an easy prey to the peculiar temptations of the life.
There have been many dark spots in the fate that has befallen some of the women during the two years and eight months of the war, barely touched upon in these pages, because not yet investigated, but which would look black even against the sombre background of this book. Maybe such things occur in every war. If that is so, there is all the stronger reason for abolishing war, and adopting International Arbitration.
As a whole, the great body of Boer women have come finely out of the ordeal to which we have subjected them. But that is no justification of their having been so subjected. Never before have women and children been so warred against. England, by the hands of Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, adopted the policy of Spain, while improving upon her methods. She has placed her seal upon an odious system. Is it to be a precedent for future wars, or is it to be denounced not merely by one party, but by every humane person of every creed and every tongue, denounced as a method of barbarism which must never be resorted to again—the whole cruel sequence of the burning, the eviction, the rendering destitute, the deporting, and finally the reconcentrating of the non-combatants of the country, with no previous preparation for their sustenance?
It ought to become a fixed principle with the English people that no General acting in their name should ever again resort to measures of such a nature. “ It is a question,” wrote Lord Ripon [Times., June 19, 1901] “ of the fair fame of our country, and of the reputation for manliness, to say nothing of chivalry of our people ... for the system no condemnation is too strong. It is cruel in the present, and inconceivably foolish in regard to the future. ... If we allow it to continue, the full responsibility will be ours. One strong word from the British people will sweep the whole thing away. Have we the courage to speak it ? ”
But the British people had not the courage to speak that noble word. The camps went on and the graves filled till 16,000 children [Up to twelve years in the Transvaal, and up to fifteen years in the O.R.C.] perished, and over 4,000 adults. These are official figures, and they do not account for all.
Now the time is drawing near when these women shall gradually be released and drafted back to their desolate homes. The three millions provided under the terms of settlement may give them shelter and some stock, and implements of labour, but how far will that go ? That sum cannot cover the great extent of the loss, which the Generals estimate at 50 millions. Each house will be empty of furniture. One way of confessing the great mistake that we have made is humbly to help them to begin their simple lives again. Thank-offerings that the war is over, and peace-offerings too, can be fitly made for this object. It will take many thousands of such offerings to meet the needs of a homeless and ruined people. “ We are paupers now, and it is terrible,” writes one woman ; and another, “ Can you form an idea of what it is to have nothing—literally nothing ? ”
N.B.—Any profits arising from the sale of this book will go to the “Refurnishing Fund" for Boer Homes.
TALLOIRES, June 1, 1902.
