"Further, the expenditure on the Burgher camps which, since the conclusion of peace, have to a great extent been transformed into organisations for enabling the people to return to their homes, and the cost of which has been about £200,000 a month, is being borne by his Majesty's Government, and constitutes in effect a very considerable addition to the free grant. "The cost of the camps since their establishment has exceeded £3,000,000, and there is no room for reasonable doubt that they have been the means of preserving the lives of thousands of women and children, and of providing the latter with a better education than they ever had the opportunity of enjoying before. "I observe that in an article signed by you in this month's _Contemporary Review_ you make it a complaint that the concentration camps are still being maintained. "It must be self-evident that, on the score of expense alone, it is the interest of his Majesty's Government to abolish these camps at the earliest possible moment, and it is only in the cause of humanity that they continue to maintain this costly organisation. "If they were to accept the inferences to be drawn from your statement they would turn out into the veldt thousands of men, women, and children whom it has been impossible to return to their farms immediately on the termination of the war, owing to the absence of sufficient transport and the scarcity of stock. "They have, however, already provided for the return of large numbers of the population of the camps which had been reduced from 116,000 at end of May to about 34,000 in the last week of October. "I observe that you are reported in the Press to have suggested in a speech at Paris that the British military authorities deliberately used the sufferings of women and children to induce their relatives in the field to lay down their arms, and in the resolution passed at Vereeniging on the 31st of May the sufferings of the women and children were given as a reason for surrender. "No one deplores more than the British Government the high mortality in the camps during the epidemic of measles and pneumonia, but nothing was spared that money or science could afford to reduce it, and for the last six months the average total death-rate in the camps has been about 21 per 1000 per annum, a rate which must be much lower than any which obtained before the war in normal conditions.