Mr. Richard Harding Davis, the American novelist and war correspondent,
recently published in Scribner's Magazine' an article accusing the British officers imprisoned in the Model School at Pretoria of wantonimischief and ungentle-, manly and unchivalrous conduct. A very effective and, as it seems to us, convincing rejoinder is made in Monday's Daily Mail by another American war correspondent, Mr. Barnes, who has been for some months in Pretoria, and conducted—on his own account, unprompted by the military authorities—a careful investigation into the charges made by Mr. Davis. As regards the damage done to the school, Mr. Barnes declares that it could be covered by £20, that the caricatures on the walls were " of a harmless and wholesome nature,' while he was unable to find the slightest substantiation, though he met and questioned many Boer ladies point-blank, for the charge that the British officers had insulted women. and girls as they passed the school.
Previous page
