• THE BOER PRISONERS AT ST. HELENA.
ITO TIIE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—It occurs to me that a brief record of impressions and observations garnered during a visit to the Boer prisoners in St. Helena may be of . interest to your readers. Icannot promise them anything sensational, but then the naked, un• varnished truth has a knack of lacking that pictures element. Nor did I resort to the device of smoking a pies
of Boer " 'buoy " with my Boer friends as an "open sesame" to their inmost feelings. I only happen to have lived amongst them for the last twenty years, and to have had the most varied opportunities of really knowing them in town and country. I have been present at, and even conducted, their simple family worship. I have married a fair number of the prisoners, baptised the children of others, and buried the relations of others. I have a very warm regard for the ordinary simple Boer, apart from politics, and apart from the ruling clique, to which he was but a pawn in a very daring game. At the risk of misunderstand- ing, I will even go so far as to say that I see nothing necessarily dishonourable in the dream of an indepen- dent South African Republic from the Cape to the Zambesi, did it not run counter to the interests, nay the very life, of the British Empire, which I take leave to think are also the interests of civilisation and liberty. It was, then, as an avowed -friend of the Boer from a broadly human standpoint, excluding politics, that I mingled amongst the prisoners, and talked to them in the "Taal," when the rare exceptions were encountered who knew no English. I talked to the casual Boer met on the roads, to the men working for the islanders on parole, to the prisoners in the "Peace party" camp, but spent most of the time in the camp of the men who think it a point of honour to make no sign of submission to the in- esitable while any of their friends are still in the field, and who, I must confess, had my respect, though their cause is as dead as a doornail. It is not too much to say that these men talked freely to me. They knew that I knew that they knew that I knew them. They knew that I had ministered to them or their friends in joy and in sorrow. Now, the testimony was universal to their being supplied by the authorities liberally with everything to satisfy their material wants, and that everything is being done to alleviate their unhappy lot that is consistent with their remaining prisoners. Their statements to this effect were hearty and spontaneous. Sports are encouraged, men are allowed to work at their trades as far as the trades can be exercised on the island, concerts are held weekly in an improvised theatre, ministers of their own religion are supplied to hold services and look after them spiritually. In a word, never in the history of the world have prisoners of war been treated with so much con- sideration and generosity. They know and admit it freely. And yet (1) they are quite ready to "feed up" any green- horn who comes along and whom their shrewdness discovers to be wishful to be crammed with complaints, especially if the complaints are to serve the party purposes of their political friends; (2) they are consumed with homesickness, and so cannot be considered completely happy. Some who have never lived in such clover in their lives are exempt from this heart-wearing longing, but the greater number and the best are pining for -their homes. It would be amazing, if one did not take into account the blinding effects of party feeling, that any one could draw a different picture of the treatment and condition of the Boer prisoners in St. Helena. A very small draft on their knowledge of their countrymen's genius might open their eyes, if they wished them opened. Two factors in that composite character explain the situation,—Boer prisoners and Boer women and children cherished and cared for, refugee loyalists left mainly to their own devices or to private charity. An Englishman's feeling of noblesse oblige towards an enemy is much more lively than his sympathy with his own people in distress. His feeling towards the heterogeneous multitude of loyalists is apt to be rather tepid. And then, again, his sporting instinct invests the little man who is plucky enough to stand up to the big man with special elairns to his admiration and generosity. These characteristics are entirely admirable, but you must not be surprised if the suffering loyalists in their woeful plight find them rather trying at the present time. At all events, it would not be easy to find a greater contrast than the well-cared-for con- dition of the prisoners of war and the miserable state of a large body of the refugee loyalists.—I am, Sir, &c., [We may remind our readers that the writer of the above is an Anglican clergyman, the Rector of Johannesburg, who Writes of what he knows.—En. Spectator.]
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