comparatively less numerous in South Africa than elsewhere,
who cannot, humanly speaking, under any circumstances be
brought to work. The class of incurable idlers is not large
in the Orange River Colony, but it exists, and as long as it
exists destitution will exist. By the institution of relief works
and the curtailment of the free ration list the Government
had made an honest endeavour to deal with idlers. The
scheme was worth a trial, because that trial broke new ground.
To say that it failed is merely to point out that the character
of the idler is much the same in the Orange River Colony as
in other parts of the globe. But the idlers may be left out of
the account.
There was a larger class of men who were anxious to work,
but in their own way. Here, again, the department had done
its utmost. Finding that it was impossible to reverse a life's
order — in other words, to convert the agriculturist into a navvy
or an artisan — every effort was made to assist the people to
help themselves in their own way by working on their own
land.^ Whether the true interests of the colony were served
in thus bolstering up the bijwoner class is a wider issue, and
is not here in question. The Government relief was a purely
temporary department, formed with the object of helping the
people to tide over their immediate difficulties, and questions
of future policy did not properly fall within its scope. Its
^ In some districts the administrators went even further, ' I am
endeavouring as far as possible to bring the employer of labour and the
unemployed together by means of the ploughing conductor, who inquires
from farm to farm what white labour is required and what wages are
offered. Applicants for assistance are then referred to those who require
their services. Several landless families have been placed in this way '
(extract from Kroonstad District Report). See also Appendix D., p. 272.
THE DROUGHT 195
action was consequently limited to the immediate needs of
the agricultural population, and to aiding that population to
work out its own salvation in its own particular way. The
distress was not acute, and every endeavour had been, and
was still being, made to meet it ; it was due to natural causes,
and not to any neglect on the part of the Government. In
fact, the solicitude of the Government for the people's welfare
was, if anything, excessive, and, like the monasteries of the
Middle Ages, it ran the risk of creating the poverty which it
sought to relieve.
The situation was admittedly sufficiently serious, but not
bad enough to satisfy certain critics of the administration
both in South Africa and at home, who were anxious to lose
no opportunity of ascribing some fresh calamity to the policy
of the Government. They consequently embarked on a
campaign of misrepresentation, with the object of keeping
alive racial feeling, and disparaging the Repatriation and
Government Relief Departments. General Louis Botha set
rolling the ball of discontent by addressing to Lord Courtney,
who took care to have it published in The Times, a letter in
which repatriation was described as ' a complete and dismal
failure.'^ This was followed by a series of harrowing letters
contributed to the Manchester Guardian by Miss Emily Hob-
house.- The cry was taken up, not only by certain sections of
^ T7^e jTw^es, July 15, 1903. ' The hand may be the hand of Louis Botha,
but the voice sounds like the voice of our own little Bethels obediently
echoed back from the veldt ' (ibid.).
2 ' A week or two ago Miss Hobhouse showed premonitory symptoms of
an outbreak of Anglophobia in a letter published in the Manchester
Guardian, one of the few provincial papers of standing which maintained
an ultra Pro-Boer attitude from the beginning to the end of the war.
Sequential effects are seen this week in the appearance in the Manchester
Gtiardian and the Daily News of a whole batch of letters from Miss
Hobhouse, in which she tries to rend our hearts with what she imagines
to be piteous stoi-ies of Boer suffering and British callousness. . . . These
letters were not originally written for publication — oh dear no ! A lady
of such a retiring disposition as Miss Emily Hobhouse would not dream of
seeking publicity for the wails of her friends ; besides, is it not preposterous
to suppose that, desiring publication, she should write to members of the
South African Distress Relief Conamittee, also very retiring, when there is
a chance of inducing their dear old friends the Daily Neivs and the
Manchester Guardian to publish stories of alleged Boer suffering ? Clearly
13—2
196 THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
the Pro-Boer press at home, but also by the Bond party in
the Cape House of Assembly.
These critics did not hesitate to part company with truth in
drawing vivid pictures of universal destitution which they
ascribed to official ineptitude and to the maladministration of
the relief funds granted under the Terms of Vereeniging.
Their whole motive was clearly political — an endeavour to
keep alive racial antagonism in South Africa and to resuscitate
Pro-Boerism at home. In the Orange River Colony the move
was not successful, because it was well known to be based on
untruth, and its object was too apparent ; in England and on
the Continent it served to create a false impression.^
it is absurd to suppose that the letters were ever intended to reach the
public eye ! No doubt Miss Hobhouse will be very angry with Lady
Hobhouse for having sent them to the press, especially as it is by no
means the first occasion on which she has offended in this way ' {Birming-
ham Daily Mail, September 2, 1903).
^ ' The story originated by Miss Hobhouse respecting the alleged
"terrible distress" in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony has met
with prompt and indignant refutation. So far as can be ascertained, any-
thing resembling poverty, as it is understood in England, is very rare
amongst the Boers of whom Miss Hobhouse writes and Mr. Merriman
speaks. Men and women are not shelterless, neither do they lack a
sufficiency of the necessaries of life. The poorest are cared for, supplied
with food, building materials, seeds, clothing — everything, m short, that
they can possibly require, and no genuine case of distress is allowed to go
unrelieved. Able-bodied men can procure employment at relief works at
a living wage ; and in many districts there is an actual dearth of white
labour, for which high rates of pay are offered. The suggestion, not too
delicately conveyed, that many people in the Orange Eiver Colony are
destitute is hotly resented by the people themselves. They are nothing of
the kind. They are for the most part working hard, maintaining them-
selves by honest and sustained effort, and we can only sympathize with
them in the indignation with which they have repudiated the accusation
of pauperism. The people who are working the agitation are not prompted
by any sort of regard for those whose imaginary sufferings they pretend to
pity. They are animated solely by a desire to foster racial hatred, and to
delay that real union of interests between the British and the Boers which
alone is wanted to insure the prosperity of South Africa. As Sir Lewis
Michell indicated in a speech which we reproduce in another column,
they enlisted the sympathies of the Cape Parliament by false pretences,
with the result that " the poor distressed people " of the Orange River
Colony told the Cape House of Assembly to mind its own business. Mis-
representation could not have gone further, but it has fortunately resulted
in the complete discomfiture of those who initiated it ' {South Africa^
September 19, 1903).
' Je ne sais si I'Angleterre a tenu toutes les promesses qu'elle leur a
THE DEOUGHT 197
In considering the statements of critics of this kind it
is well to bear in mind their antecedents, in order to decide
whether the allegations are impartial and made by unpre-
judiced observers, or whether they are something different.
Miss Hobhouse was a very well-meaning, very susceptible,
but very misguided lady, who had gained an unenviable
notoriety during the war in connection with the concentration
camps. The egregiously misleading statements with regard
to the working of those camps which her so-called enthusiasm
for the Boers prompted her to make induced the authorities —
rightly, in the opinion of most South Africans — on the occasion
of a second visit to prevent her landing. She retired, imbued
apparently with the determination to be even with the Govern-
ment later on. She came out a third time, with the object,
more or less avowed, of showing up the administration. Her
statements were calculated to do a vast amount of mischief,
but they may possibly be partly ascribed to ignorance.
The following are taken merely as specimens of untruth
from a letter addressed by Miss Hobhouse to the South African
News : ' Throughout Frankfort, Keitz, Lindley, Heilbron, and
other parts, people are starving indeed. . . . Oxen were
scarce, so in many cases women and children were yoked to
the plough. . . . On June 1 the Eepatriation Boards closed
their food-supplies, except for cash payments. . . . Men
tramp hither and thither in search of work, which is rarely to
be found. . . . The very existence of these relief camps is
an outward and visible sign of the failure to repatriate the
people. . . . Only in rare instances have military receipts
been paid, and compensation is but a ghostly shadow in a
future which never draws near.' And Miss Hobhouse was
kind enough to suggest what form relief might take. ' There
are two ways,' she wrote, * in which to give help. Money for
a sufficient supply of meal to maintain life until the Govern-
faites; mais leurs souffrances restent grandes comme le montrent les
extraits de lettres que j'ai reyues d'une noble femine, une Anglaise
desireuse de reparer les maux faits par la politique conquerante de son
pays ' {L'Europeen, October 17, 1903).
198 THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
ment undertakes the duty, and further help devoted to a plan
for rekindling hope. It is proposed — and we hope to work
it in some places — to purchase a team of mules or oxen, a
" charity " team, which shall go in turn from farm to
farm, ploughing for all — and they are many — who have no
animals.'
The unbiassed reader who has borne with me thus far may
be relied upon to refute these misrepresentations from what he
has already read. Their most extraordinary characteristic
was, however, that they displayed an absolute ignorance of
local conditions, although Miss Hobhouse alleges that she
travelled far and wide to collect them.^ Some of the state-
ments will be briefly examined. With regard to the universal
destitution and general starvation, the following list gives
some of the issues made by the department up to June 30,
1903 : Live stock to the value of c£800,000 ; building material,
^£29,000 ; seed, etc., .£120,000 ; rations, £200,000. To illus-
trate issues made during the year in particular districts, the
following is taken from the Bethlehem Report for June, 1903
' Horses, 508 ; mules, 178 ; oxen, 774 ; mixed cattle, 612
sheep and goats, 5,906 ; waggons and trolleys, 45 ; harness
459 sets; galvanized iron, 17,154 feet; flooring, 12,000 feet
ceiling, 12,000 feet; deals, 2,800 feet; blockhouses, 227
seed wheat, 124 bags ; oats, 311,000 pounds ; potatoes,
663 cases and 169 bags ; meat, 263,529| pounds ; flour and
meal, 269,561 pounds ; biscuits, 94,229|- pounds ; cash loans
amounting to i£4,792 lis. Id.' The Bethlehem Report has
been quoted because it contains Reitz, given in the list of
Miss Hobhouse's starving districts.'-^
^ ' The story of the farmer who wallied to a village to buy cattle, and
slept on the veldt because he could not afford a bed, is perhaps the moat
absurd of the Hobhouse legends : for a bed in the village and breakfast,
or at least coffee and a roll, could have been obtamed for something
varying from Is. 6d. to 2s. And here was a man prepared to buy cattle
at certainly from ^6 to £12 per beast, according to age ' (Kimberley
correspondent to the Western Morning News, November 5, 1903).
^ ' A correspondent, writing to the Cape Times from Bethlehem, Oi'ange
Biver Colony, joins in exposing the extraordinary misrepresentations of
Miss Hobhouse. That romantic lady asserted that " the Repatriation
Boards closed their food-supplies except for cash payments." " Absolutely
THE DROUGHT 199
The wish is ofttimes father to the thought. The following
extract from a private letter addressed to the author by the
Resident Magistrate at Lindley, an ex-Landdrost of the Free
State Government,will serve to illustrate Miss Hobhouse's mode
of action, and to indicate what she was prepared to believe and
what she was not r^ ' I am amused,' he wrote, ' or rather dis-
gusted, to see Miss Hobhouse's pathetic letter in the So2ith
African News. I had the honour of meeting this good lady on
the market square one Sunday morning, and we had a short
conversation. When I told her that about 1,000 mouths were
fed in June and about 700 in July, she replied, "Yes, for cash."
I told her that not a penny in cash had been received for
rations. She apparently doubted my word, for in her letter she
stated that the department had stopped the supply of rations
since June 1.' In Frankfort and Lindley necessitous cases were
frequent, and before the end of 1902 clothes and blankets to the
value of .i'300 had been distributed gratis in those districts.
These issues, as in so many other instances, were made to
meet special cases, and were exceptions to the general policy
of the department. For all issues personal receipts had been
taken, in accordance with Lord Milner's instructions, and the
untrue," says this correspondent, "Every Eepatriation Board in the
colony is stUl issuing food as before — on loan." "Men tramp hither and
thither m search of work, which is rarely to be found," said Miss Hobhouse.
" For one whole month," retorts this correspondent, " a list of persons
willing to work on railways or other relief works was kept, and every
individual coming to draw rations was asked if he was willing to accept
work. Practically half the district was then drawing rations, yet only
three men out of the whole lot were found willing to work." This
correspondent expresses his astonishment that in the whole description of
this supposed wretchedness not a word was said by this lady agitator in
favour of the natives. " More than .£20,000 was paid to Boers in this
district alone, whilst native receipts are only to be paid in a few days'
time " ' (African Bevieiv, September 26, 1903).
1 ' Fortunately there is little chance of the pubhc rising to the bait.
The letters are too transparently those of a credulous lady who went forth
to discover evidence of Boer sutfering and hardship, and who was too
ready to believe anything that a Boer with a grievance cared to tell her.
Her attitude of mind is very curiously indicated in one Uttle sentence.
" The clergyman and I," she says, "have been round together seeing some
of the worst cases." It was the worst cases she sought out and the worst
cases she wanted to see ' {Birmingham Daily Mail, September 2, 1903).
200 THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
Boer perfectly understood by this time why this course had
been adopted.^
On June 1, 1903, the Repatriation Boards had ceased to
exist, and they therefore could not ' close their food-supplies.'
The administrative change from repatriation to relief dated
from May 1. The Boer's worst enemy would never accuse
him of ' tramping ' : distances on the veldt are too great.
Waggons were supplied free to all who wished to go to the
relief camps. Work outside those camps was plentiful in
every district.- The Relief Works Department and the
Repatriation Department were started within a month of each
other, and the former could hardly be regarded as ' an out-
ward and visible sign ' of the failure of the latter. Between
May 23 and August 24 the sum of £241,037 12s. Id. was
paid out against military receipts in the Orange River Colony,
and commissions in every district were hard at work ex-
amining claims for war losses. Miss Hobhouse quoted in her
letters several instances of payment being refused or only
partly made. The obvious inference is that the claimants
were capable of misrepresenting facts, although not probably
to the same extent as Miss Hobhouse herself. Miss Hob-
house's idea of a * charity team, which should go in turn
^ ' There is no question of repayment in the sense of their having to
take money out of their own pockets hereafter. The only repaymeiit
which can take place is that the Government, if it assists them now, will
to that extent not give them the assistance a second time later. The
money now given to them will not be repayable except out of other money,
if any, subsequently pavable to them by the Government out of the
^£3,000,000 ' (letter dated July 25, 1902).
' It was impossible to assess straight away the amount of the losses
incurred by each applicant. It was equally impossible to admit as
definitely established the claims put in by each applicant. In these
circumstances the only feasible plan was to take receipts from every
person to whom assistance was given, and to keep an account which
should be balanced as far as possible after the completion of the total
assessment of losses' {The Times, July 15, 1903).
The final distribution of the free grant was based practically on the
assessed claims of all ex-burghers, whether destitute or not.
^ E.g., ' For several months prior to July the South African Constabulary
offered work in connection with the destruction of biurrweed and Scotch
thistle to any man, woman, or child on the farms next to the one they
were living on, but only succeeded in getting six people to work, though
wages of 4s. 6d. a day for a man, and for women and children in propor-
tion, were offered ' (Jacobsdal District Report).
THE DEOUGHT 201
from farm to farm, ploughing for all,' was an excellent one,
but not quite original. The department, it has been seen,
had had hundreds of charity teams ploughing throughout the
colony for more than a year. In the Heilbron district, to
take another of the districts quoted by Miss Hobhouse, there
were 500 of the department's mules devoted solely to plough-
ing at the time she wrote. The department was very far
from perfect, and some of its imperfections will be dealt with
later on, but it was not open to the charges which Miss
Hobhouse in her ignorance thought fit to bring against it.
The Hobhouse letters, written in a style to appeal to the
modern taste for sensationalism, were widely circulated
throughout the Empire,^ and indignant pressmen did not fail
to exaggerate the vivid and harrowing picture already drawn.
' They show,' to quote but one instance, ' that the population
remaining upon the farms throughout the ravaged country is
being systematically left to die of starvation.'- The Boer
Belief Committee in the Cape Colony at once took the matter
up, and the subject of general destitution and starvation in
' the northern colonies ' was introduced by the Bond party
into the Cape parliament.
The Cape Colony, or rather the anti-British portion of it,
showed a keen desire to play the part of the good Samaritan ;
but, unfortunately, it was reminded that charity should begin
at home : its attention was directed to the prevalence in its own
midst of distress acuter than that alleged to exist elsewhere.^
^ For instance, they will be found quoted in the Allahabad Pioneer for
October 29, 1903.
- Investor's Bevieiu, October 10, 1903.
' One of the organs so willing to place her hj'sterical wailings before the
public gloats over the " spectacle of black ruin and misery," of which she
is said to have been a witness, and speaks of this as a " necessary conse-
quence of a war barbarously waged." Evidently it is now considered to
be less risky than when Sir Henry Canipbell-Bannerman committed his
famous "indiscretion " to accuse one's own country and one's own soldiers
of discreditable conduct ' {Birmingham Daily Mail, September 2, 1903).
' In some cases farmers seemed to have been " starved out " of the
colonies' {Morning Leader, September 11, 1903).
2 ' Distressing accounts have been received from Carnarvon and the
neighbouring districts about the state of the population. Stocks are
depleted, and many families are starving. An insistent demand is being
made on the Government to send prompt supplies of food-stuffs and
202 THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
The people of the Orange River Colony, naturally indignant
at being regarded as paupers, politely requested the Cape to
mind its own business. A Government inquiry was instituted,
and not one case of acute distress could be found. The
Government report was naturally discredited by its opponents.^
The Orange River Colony press, however, sent special com-
missioners to travel round the country districts, and the
reports they furnished corroborated exactly that already
issued by the Government. Not one single case of acute
distress could be found. ^ As a matter of fact, all the reports
furnished both for and against the Government were to this
extent incorrect — that acute distress did exist among the
native population, and in about a dozen cases natives were
found to be living on roots and vermin. Poverty is not always
self-assertive, and the South African natives are peculiarly
reticent when in trouble. As soon as cases of want among
the blacks were discovered by the district administrators on
tour, they were immediately relieved.
medicines. After the interference of the Cape Parliament with the
Transvaal and Orangia, the present revelations of unrelieved distress in this
colony create an unpleasant impression' {Standard, November 24, 1903).
' The Government of the Orange Eiver Colony have dealt with the
allegations made in the Cape Parliament as to great distress among the
Dutch population by instituting a series of inquiries, with the result that
the allegations have been found to be based on no surer foundation than
Miss Hobhouse's tales of dire poverty. . . . The members of the Cape
Parliament would be better employed in looking after the "poor whites"
in their own colony than in making exaggerated statements concerning
another ' (Natal Mercury, September 18, 1903).
1 ' We have to thank the Government of the Orange Eiver Colony for
courteously sending us a copy of the Government Gazette, containing a
summary of the reports received from Kesident Magistrates in reply to a
telegram from the Lieutenant-Governor asking for "a report on the
condition of each district, stating if any general destitution exists in any
part of it." The magistrates were instructed if necessary to institute special
inquiries through the South African Constabulary, Special Justices of the
Peace, and otherwise. Considering the importance of the subject, we
should have been glad to see the full reports, including the signatures. . . .
In general, we should say that Magistrates would be the very last persons
to hear of distress, the last but them would be Special Justices of the Peace,
and the next last would be the officers and men of the Constabulary '
(South African News, September 23, 1903).
- ' Exhaustive inquiries made by travelling commissioners of the
Bloemfontein Post failed to find a single case of unrelieved white distress'
{African Eevieiu, September 26, 1903).
THE DEOUGHT 203
Towards the end of October, 1903, the drought broke, and
rain fell from as far north as Ehodesia to the southern districts
of the Cape Colony. The simultaneousness of this meteoro-
logical change over so vast an area was generally declared to
be just as remarkable as the unprecented drought which it
succeeded. Whether remarkable or not, rain certainly arrived
at a most opportune moment. It washed away the lice which
had attacked the wheat, and enabled farmers in the conquered
territory in some cases to save a quarter of their crops, and
in others to recover the seed sown. The damage done to the
country by the drought had been enormous, but the strain
was now past and ploughing and sowing for the mealie crop
could be resumed. The Cape Colonial farmers who had
trekked with their stock into the Orange Eiver Colony from
the Karoo in quest of grazing and water were now able to
return.
In the Orange Eiver Colony itself, however, the rainfall was
still almost as fitful as it had been during the previous year.
A line drawn roughly from Boshof, in the north-west of the