Major Harold Sykes's (2nd Dragoons) evidence is reported as follows:
He arranged the first of the Refugee Concentrated Camps, and when he left he had a camp of about six thousand women and children under his care. All charges of cruelty and inhumanity were vile and calumnious falsehoods. Nay, worse, they were miserable, despicable concoctions. Both women and children were better off, the great bulk of them, than ever they were in their lives. The only thing approaching cruelty to them was at the authorities insisted upon cleanliness and proper attention to sanitary regulations, which the average Boer, being a stranger to, utterly disliked. He had seen all the workings of these camps. He could give an unqualified denial to all the villainous allegations that had recently been made in public meeting and in the House of Commons.
Under date November 1, an officer of the Kroonstad Camp writes:
'We have cricket, tennis, and croquet for them, and they are all jolly well treated. Besides other amusements, they have a band twice a week, and the other day they got up a concert.'
This is what Mr. Stead calls 'doing to death by slow torture all the women and children whom we have penned behind the barbed wire of our prison camps.' Can a cause be a sound one which is pleaded in such terms!
Now for some Boer voices.
Commandant Alberts writes:
'Major Walter, Boksburg.—Honoured Sir,—I must express to you and the other officers of Boksburg my heartfelt thanks for the great kindness shown towards my wife, and at the same time for the message, and I hope that this kindness may some time be repaid to you.
'May you and I be spared to have a personal meeting.
'I have the honour to be your honour's servant,