In spite of the British officers in charge of the Concentration Camps struggling manfully with this crushing burden of anxiety, and doing all that lay within their power to alleviate the sufferings of this multitude, cruel and painful things happened. The food, which was sufficient and wholesome for soldiers, could not do for young people, and yet it was impossible to procure any other for them. If the opinion of the military had been allowed to be expressed openly, one would have found probably that they thought England ought never to have assumed this responsibility, but rather have chosen the lesser evil and left these people on their farms, running the risk of the Boers provisioning themselves therefrom. The risk would not, perhaps, have been so great as could have been supposed at first sight, but then this ought to have been done from the very beginning of the war, and the order to burn the Boer farms ought never to have been given. But once the Boer farms had been deprived of their military use to the enemy, these people could not be turned back to starve on the veldt; the British had to feed them or earn the reproach of having destroyed a nation by hunger. As things had developed it was impossible for Great Britain to have followed any other policy--adopted, perhaps, in a moment of rashness, but the consequences had to be accepted. It only remained to do the best toward mitigating as far as possible the sufferings of the mass of humanity gathered into the Camps, and this I must maintain that the English Government did better than could have been expected by any who knew South Africa and the immense difficulties which beset the British authorities.