"Ordinary colonial women who have been through the stress and strain of the last two years are not very favourably impressed by the present stir in England over the assumed privations of the Boer women and children. If looting, flogging, ruining, and train-wrecking can be dignified by such a name as war, they hold that in all matters of supply our fighting men, who, as well as fighting our battles, guard our women-folk or our sick men, injured by wounds or disease in our service, come first and foremost; after them come our own civilian population; and lastly come our prisoners, or those Boers who have surrendered or been brought in." Again she said:-- "Large as was the sum collected in Great Britain by voluntary subscriptions, at no time did the women and children of the loyal colonial refugees of the poorer classes receive more than mere sustenance. Judging, however, by some of the hysterical whining going on in England at the present time it would seem as if we might neglect or half starve our faithful soldiers, and keep our civilian population eating their hearts out here as long as we fed and pampered people who have not even the grace to say 'thank you' for the care bestowed on them. "As we see it, the problem before our military men is, how to manage, feed, and care for large numbers of women and children, and yet not feed the enemy and so prolong the war, or rather existing brigandage. If the women are left on the farms with food, that food will be promptly handed over to the commandos, who would lightly take it all, and trust to British soft-heartedness not to let their women and children die of starvation, but to replenish all the empty larders by means of scattered convoys, which would give them at the same time grand chances of loot and first-rate practice in sniping. To obviate this the military have had to make up their minds either to let the women and children starve on their farms or else gather them into large concentration camps. This war has been remarkable for two things: first, the small regard that the Boers, from the highest to the lowest, have had for their womankind; and secondly, the great care and consideration the victors have had for the same, very often ungrateful, women.