THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN SOUTH AFRICA I To TRE EDITOR
OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Stn,—The latest statistics concerning the concentration camps in South Africa call for urgent heart-searching and inquiry. Baring September 2,411 persons, mostly women and children, have died in these camps, making the appalling death-rate of 264 per 1,000 per annum. Of these, no less than 1,964 were little children under the age of twelve, making a death-rate for the children of 433 per 1,000 per annum ! The significance of these figures will be understood when it is remembered that the death-rate for London during September, in spite of all its slums and sins, was only 15 per 1,000 per annum, and that the death-rate for the whole of England is only 19 per 1,000 per annum. And these camps, formed, as Lord Miler's private secretary tells us, purely for military reasons, the sooner to end the war, and completely under our control, are growing larger and getting worse, instead of better, month by month. In June 777 persons died in them, making a death-rate of 109 per 1,000 per annum. But in September 2,411 died in them, maid g a death-rate, as already stated, of 264 per 1,000 per annum. This tremendous difference demands immediate and drastic notice. To realise that of these Septem- ber figures 1,964 were children is staggering to our humanity. And when we further understand that since June 5,209 children have died in these camps, it is high time to awake, and, quite independently of all party strife, put this matter right. Whatever may have been our attitudes to the origin and con- duct of the war (and you will please remember that you have some readers who cannot see eye to eye with you), we must be one surely in desiring that innocent women and children Should not needlessly suffer. The idea of " extermination " cannot be tolerated here. They are our " refugees " in our
barbed-wire encampments, entirely under British control, and we are bound by all the laws of war and honour to take care of them. For their health and their lives we are responsible before God and men. However " severely " we prosecute the war elsewhere, " humanity " must be observed here. Every kindness will be remembered, and every life saved will make the future relations pleasanter. That there must be flagrant carelessness somewhere to make anything like this death-rate possible must be apparent to every man of sense. Explain these figures how we will, and blame whom we will, there is no getting away from them. We must not be put off with the lame excuse of an epidemic of measles, when every mother in England knows that a child, decently cared for, does not die of measles, and every doctor in the land is angry when he loses a patient from such a cause. And we must not be made blind to our duty by any thoughts of party. The good name of England is at stake, and if it is to be saved, every man who holds its honour dear must speak out, independently of all party strife, and mast continue to cry till such statistics become impossible. I plead especially for the children, and feel that we have only to understand these ghastly figures to rise and compel a speedy remedy. Five thousand little graves already haunt us, and lift up their silent mounds and make
their dumb appeal.—I am, Sir, &c., J. R. AITKEN. Dunnington Manse, Alcester [We print our correspondent's letter, but we cannot publish answers to it or continue the correspondence in any way. We believe that everything that can be done is .being done for the occupants of the camps. No trustworthy evidence has been produced of callousness or indifference on the part of those in charge of the camps, but a great deal of evidence of self-sacrificing devotion on the part of the British officers who control the camps. We should no doubt have gained a considerable military advantage by not removing the women and children into the camps, but to have left them to starve on the veld would, in our view, have been most cruel. Their sufferings would not have been so visible, but far greater in reality. A good deal of the present mortality is, we believe. not due to the camps, but to the hardships suffered before removal. The children die in camp, but their lives were in reality destroyed by previous privations.—ED. Spectator.]
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