For the men who fall in battle we can flush our tears with pride, and though our hearts may ache for those we love, yet is there an undercurrent of hot joy to know they fell as soldiers love to fall, face forward to the foe.  But for those who die, as more than half of Britain’s dead have died in this last war, stricken by pestilence brought about by ignorance and indolence, we have only sorrow and tears and prayers, blended with hate and contempt for the triple-dyed dandies and dunces who robbed us of those who should have been alive to-day to be the bulwark of the Empire, the pride of the nation, and the joy of many homes.

Why did they die, these strong young soldiers of our Queen?  Was it because their hearts failed them in the presence of hardship and danger?  I tell you, No.  The hardships of the campaign only roused them to greater exertions.  Bravely and uncomplainingly they answered every call of duty, ready by night or day to go anywhere, or do anything, if only they were led by men worthy of our Queen’s commission, worthy of the cloth they wore.  Why did they die?  Was it because of poisoned or polluted water, left in their path by the enemy whom they were fighting?  Not so.  No, not so.  The Boers left no death-traps in our path.  Why did they die?  Was it because the country through which we marched lent itself climatically to the propagation and dissemination of fever germs?  No, England, no!  In all the world there is no finer climate than that in which our gallant soldiers died like rotting sheep.  Wherever else the blame may lie, no truthful man can lay the blame of those untimely graves upon the climate or the country of our enemies.

I will tell you why they died, and tell you in language so plain that a wayfaring man, even though a fool, cannot misunderstand me, for the time has arrived when the whole Empire should know the truth in all its native hideousness.  Those men were done to death by wanton carelessness upon the part of men sent out by the British War Office.  They were done to death through criminal neglect of the most simple laws of sanitation.  Men were huddled together in camp after camp; they were allowed to turn the surrounding veldt and adjacent kopjes into cesspools and excreta camps.  In some camps no latrines were dug, no supervision was exercised.  The so-called Medical Staff looked on, and puffed their cigarettes and talked under their eye-glasses—­the fools, the idle, empty-headed noodles.  And whilst they smoked and talked twaddle, the grim, gaunt Shadow of Death chuckled in the watches of the night, thinking of the harvest that was to follow.

Then the careless soldiers passed onward, leaving their camp vacant, and later came another batch of soldiers.  Perhaps the men in charge would be men of higher mental calibre; they would order latrines to be dug, and all garbage to be burnt or buried.  But by this time the germs of fever were in the air, the men would sicken and die, just as I have seen them sicken and die upon a score of mining fields away in the Australian bush; and all for the want of a little honest care and attention, all for the want of a few grains of good, wholesome, everyday common sense.  Had proper care been taken in regard to these matters, four-fifths of those who now fill fever graves in South Africa would be with us, hale and hearty men, to-day.