Emily Hobhouse: Beloved Traitor. Elsabé Brits
South Africa as mainly due to the bad policy of the Government – a policy which has already cost in killed, wounded and missing over 20 000 of our bravest soldiers and the expenditure of millions of money drawn from the savings and toil of our people, while to the two small States with whom we are at war, it is bringing utter ruin and desolation.
2:That this meeting protests against the attempts to silence, by the disorder and violence, all freedom of speech, or criticism of Government policy.
3:That this meeting protests against any settlement which involves the extinction by force of two Republics whose inhabitants, allied to us by blood and religion, cling as passionately to their separate nationality and flag as we in this country do to ours.
4:That this meeting desires to express its sympathy with the women of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and begs them to remember that thousands of English women are filled with profound sorrow at the thought of their suffering, and with deep regret for the action of their own Government. God save the Queen.91
It was significant that the last resolution had been drafted by Emily and was read out by her at the meeting. It contained words that were to gain new and concrete meaning in her life in the coming years: “sympathy”, “women”, “sorrow”, “suffering”, “regret” …
She felt strongly that these views had to be placed on record as proof of the attitude of many of her compatriots towards the war.
The meeting attracted widespread attention, especially on the part of the jingo press which, according to Emily, “excelled itself in virulence and inaccuracy” in its reports. Pro-war people wrote the names of the Boer leaders in big, white chalk letters on the pavement outside her flat.92
In July Emily went with David Lloyd George to Liskeard to propagate the objections to the war at a meeting in the town. Lloyd George, a Liberal MP, was also passionately opposed to the war.
The town hall was packed that evening, with many of Emily’s childhood friends in attendance,93 but the rowdy “patriotic” pro-war contingent disrupted the meeting to such an extent that neither of the speakers could deliver a speech.
At least Emily managed to get a few words in: “I think you will agree with me that if her majesty the Queen to whom you have sung, were present now, she would be heartily ashamed of her Cornish subjects. I have a great deal that I am anxious to say to you. Will you sit down for a few minutes and listen to me? It seems a strange thing to me that Cornishmen will not listen to a Cornishwoman.”94
The majority of the audience became even more disorderly, however, and when chairs and other objects where hurled at the stage, Emily and Lloyd George had to beat a hasty retreat.
It was sleeting as I walked towards the hall in Liskeard where Emily and Lloyd George had to face a barrage of insults. It looks like a typical school or church hall which can seat about 800 people. The stage is big and suitable for a town concert.
Up the narrow steps to the stage where Emily sat listening to the jingoes’ songs, chants and shouts … To the side door through which they fled to escape from the riotous mob.
This was the beginning of the end of many of Emily’s friendships. After this day in July 1900 in this hall some of her closest friends and relatives ostracised her.
“There followed a storm of abuse from relatives and acquaintances, some of whom even attacked me in the press. I lost the majority of the friends of my girlhood and it was a great loss. There was a divergence of principle at that time which broke many a bond, and taking up the work publicly I would not escape a painful severance of old ties.”95 Emily increasingly learned from reports out of South Africa that her country’s troops, “contrary to the recognised usages of war, were guilty of the destruction by burning and blowing up with dynamite of farm houses”. The news reached a few newspapers in England, but the Britsh public were still in the dark about the extent of the destruction,96 she wrote. Some letters from soldiers that appeared in the press described the “horrible scenes which, to their honour, they for the most part found most distressing”.97
She was deeply upset about these events, and realised that they confronted her with an inescapable choice. “Thus the constantly renewed picture of women and children homeless, desperate and distressed formed and fixed itself in my mind and never once left me. It became my abiding thought. The thought deepened to torture and by a kind of second-sight such as had often visited me in my life the whole became a vision of vivid reality wherein I saw myself amongst the sufferers bearing relief. I never doubted then that I should go and that, be the obstacles what they might, they would be surmounted.”98
She knew that some might ridicule this “vision”, but she had read in the work of George Eliot that this “second-sight” was a kind of profound knowledge that eventually crystallised into an image of a new, alternative reality.
“Anyhow, explain it as you will, it was a curious and most solemn feeling that possessed me and nurtured in the quiet of the country, it grew into a definite plan when I returned to the solitude of my Chelsea flat. No one yet knew of my intention nor exercised any influence upon me. I thought out my plan.”99
And the plan was to be there – in South Africa. To make a difference there.
To achieve her aim she needed money, and she resolved to start a fund for this purpose. Leonard and Kate Courtney were the first people Emily told about her plan. Courtney paced the room, went to stand in front of the window and expressed his reservations: There was too little information about what was really happening in South Africa. How would the money be raised? How much would be sufficient? Would the government allow it? How would the money be distributed?
Emily tried to answer all the questions. Relucantly, Courtney gave the project his blessing; this was all that Emily wanted at this stage. She was in search of information – the facts about the war – so that she could present it when approaching people for money.
The hardest for her was to finally gain the approval of Uncle Arthur and Aunt Mary. Armed with letters of support from prominent people from the Cape and London, she visited them in Mayfair. While they were sceptical, they supported her nonetheless. They would not prevent her from going, but they did not feel strongly enough about the cause to support her financially. Though Emily had not expected such a response, she resigned herself to it; just as long as she could rely on their emotional support.100
Aunt Mary, who nonetheless agreed to serve on the committee of the fund, used her influence and wrote to Joseph Chamberlain to obtain official approval for the fund. The fund, known as the South Africa Women and Children Distress Fund, was non-political, philanthropic and national in nature, and its object was to feed, clothe, shelter and rescue women and children, both Boer and British, who had been rendered destitute by the war. The membership of the fund included both men and women, she informed him.101
While Emily was working on this project, the first surrendered burghers – members of the Boer commandos who had decided to lay down their arms – and their families were placed in so-called “protection camps” in Bloemfontein and Pretoria in September 1900. According to the British military authorities, this was done to ensure their safety and to make provision for their livestock. Women and children who had nowhere else to go as a result of the destruction of the farms were sent there as well. To the British, therefore, there was no material difference between the protection camps and the concentration camps.102
The British also referred to the camps as “refugee camps” because the term implied that the wives and children of men who were still in the field went there voluntarily, but this was not the case. In reality, they were taken there by force so that they could no longer support their fighting menfolk. Another reason was that the British believed the Boers would lay down their arms once they realised that their families were interned in the camps.103
Emily worked for six months to solicit support for her project among influential people in Britain and South Africa. She wrote as follows about the reaction of some: “The chilling attitude of some accounted most saintly, the lack of imagination in others whose known gifts pre-supposed imagination – the feat of those with big reputations lest those should be marred – all left an indelible