The Government have very quickly realised the depth of the feeling which Mr. Burdett-Coutts's letter has aroused, Tate last is mentary Paper the telegrams wh passed between the War Office and Land Roberts on the subject; and Mr. Balfour, in the House of Commons, had already read out long extracts from Lord Robert's defence. It cannot be said, however, that this defence is very convincing. He confines himself principally to the condition of the hospitals at Kroonstad, while it is to Bloemfontein where the most terrible outbreak of typhoid has occurred, that Mr. Burdett-Courts refers. That even considerations of humanity to the sick wounded must in warfare give military considerations is a truism; and it is of course possible that a tender-hearted civilian may have unconsciously exaygerated the sufferings which he witnessed. But the most appalling passages in his letter are bald statements of facts and figures as to which it seems impossible that Mr. Burdett-Courts could have been mistaken. Moreover the official returns show that rome four thousand men have died from disease. It may be that the sufferings which the member for Westminster has described are inseparable from war, even at the end of the Nineteenth Century but if so he has at Last done gond service in opening people's eyes, as they have not previously been "opened during this campaign, to the horrors of war, It is difficult to believe, however, that with a properly organised War Ottice, Bloemfontein with its railway communica: tions open, could not have been supplied with something like an adequate number of doctors, nurses and orderlies. On this point the enquiry which the Government have ordered, and Lord Roberts has welcomed, will doubtless throw some light.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.