A West Pointer with the Boers /

by John Y. Fillmore Blake

Now the reader has a typical concentration camp, in which the women and children are packed like sardines, the very women and children that the English once told the world were refugees, but now acknowledge as their prisoners. Once one of these camps was established and filled with women and children, but a few days passed before they began to die, and such was the death rate, that special details of men were employed daily to dig graves for the burial of the dead. When one considers, that within a period of six months, more than 12,000 of these women and children died, he must begin to think that something is wrong. In the camp at Irene, near Pretoria, I know of one mother and six children, all healthy and strong, who were all dead within seven days after being confined there. The children were not sick, but would refuse food, their feet would swell, their stomachs bloat, and in a few days they would pass away. This looks very much like poison of some kind; and the Boer women who were not in the camp, assured me that poison was discovered in their food. I believe this, because I have heard the English say that they could never hope to hold the country as long as there were Boer women and children. The Boer women in Pretoria, begged for permission to take food which they had cooked themselves, to the sick women and children in the camp, and in every instance they were refused, and told that the authorities would furnish the food.

As surely as I live this moment, I firmly believe that the English made use of poison in the food to destroy those women and children, and many Englishmen are as convinced as I am, only they have not the nerve to say so.

I know the Apache Indians, and particularly one of their great war chiefs, the notorious old Geronimo. He was an Apache General, without education, without training, utterly unacquainted with all ideas of civilization, but shrewd and cunning, and, when on the war-path, would murder every man, woman and child he could lay hands on. I have travelled with him hundreds of miles, and followed the path along which lay his many victims, and therefore am acquainted with his method of doing away with his enemy in time of war. I know of Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, and their orders and proclamations. I know that both are highly educated, trained soldiers who are thoroughly acquainted with all the teachings of civilization and humanity, both in peace and in war. I have fought against them in South Africa, and I therefore am thoroughly acquainted with their method of fighting their enemy, and of doing away with men, women and children.

ONE OF KITCHENER'S VICTIMS
A Boer child dying either of starvation or of poison in one of the English prison-camps. Taken by a young Boer spy in the English prison-camp at Irene near Pretoria.

Those who were unfortunate enough to fall into Geronimo's hands, were killed outright, and without any ceremony or excuse, and his victims are numbered by the hundreds. Those unfortunate Boer women and children, who fell into the hands of Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, were doomed to slow death by torture, and the victims are numbered by the thousands.

The old savage chief showed far more humanity in his way of waging war than was shown by the two civilized lords. The one was open in his every act, while the others strove to keep all in the dark, by false reports and deliberate misrepresentations.

Had the war lasted another twelve months, I firmly believe that every Boer woman and child confined in the English prison camps of the Transvaal and Free State, would have died a slow death, and the Boers so believed when they consented to surrender. Three or four hundred Jews are deliberately murdered in Russia, and the civilized world is struck with horror. The Government of the United States sends in a petition of protests and is snubbed.

Thousands of women and children are murdered in South Africa, and the civilized world is undisturbed. The Government of the United States refuses to send in a huge petition of protests, and receives English thanks. I don't know who is Secretary of State for the United States, but I am sure it is either John Hay or Joe Chamberlain, or possibly both.

I will now drop the subject of the suffering Boer women and children, and take the reader to other parts, that he may see how the prisoners of war were treated on some of the English Islands.