If ever a Concentration Camp was mismanaged, Irene was, and the six volunteer nurses, not being paid servants, but having taken up their work for love and at no small sacrifice to themselves, left no stone unturned to bring about the necessary improvements.
How futile their poor little efforts were! How powerless they found themselves against the tide of wilful misunderstanding, deliberate neglect, unpardonable mismanagement!
The number of deaths in the Camps increased every day, and Hansie, wiping the hoar-frost from her hair when she woke, half-frozen, in her tent, wondered how many of her little patients had been mercifully released by death that night.
For always, when she resumed her work, there were childish forms stretched out in their last sleep.
One morning, when she found that there had been five deaths during the night, in her ward alone, she took the train to Pretoria, straight to General Maxwell's office.
"Come and see for yourself, General. The people are starving, and they lie on the cold ground with little or no covering. Fuel they have nothing to speak of, medical comforts are always out of stock——"
With a heavy frown he asked:
"Why are these things not reported to me?"
"I don't know," she answered miserably. "We thought you knew. We can do nothing with the Commandant——"
A great deal more was said on both sides, revelations, not to be repeated here, made by the unhappy girl, and the Governor's sympathetic face grew stern with righteous indignation as she proceeded.