What is that policy? That now that we had got the men we had been fighting against down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate the… - Henry Campbell-Bannerman

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What is that policy? That now that we had got the men we had been fighting against down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate their country, burn their homes, break up their very instruments of agriculture.. It is that we should sweep – as the Spaniards did in Cuba; and how we denounced the Spaniards! – the women and children into camps...in some of which the death-rate has risen so high as 430 in the thousand. I do not say for a moment, because I do not think for a moment, that this is the deliberate and intentional policy of His Majesty's Government...at all events, it is the thing which is being done at this moment in the name and by the authority of this most humane and Christian nation. Yesterday I asked the leader of the House of Commons when the information would be afforded, of which we are so sadly in want. My request was refused. Mr. Balfour treated us with a short disquisition on the nature of war. A phrase often used is that "war is war", but when one comes to ask about it one is told that no war is going on, that it is not war. When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.

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About Henry Campbell-Bannerman

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman GCB (September 7, 1836 – April 22, 1908) was a British Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister from December 5, 1905 until resigning due to ill health on April 3, 1908. No previous First Lord of the Treasury had been officially called "Prime Minister"; this term only came into official usage after he took office. In the 1906 general election he led the Liberal Party to their biggest ever majority.

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Alternative Names: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
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Additional quotes by Henry Campbell-Bannerman

I rise to move, "That, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail."

Now, everybody was a "pro-Boer" who did not agree to everything Mr. Chamberlain did, and who said "Here is a people fighting gallantly for the independence of their own country; for goodness sake do not attribute every sort of evil to them while you are fighting them; when you have got them down, treat them with the respect and honour that such a people ought to receive—a people who, though they may be mistaken and entirely wrong, are conscientiously fighting for the independence of their own land." For taking this view he was called a pro-Boer. That again was a gross slander and falsehood, and that newspapers and politicians should stoop to a mean artifice of that kind was a scandal and a disgrace to the political life of to-day.

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Now, Sir, even supposing—which many may doubt—that it is advisable to supplement at the University the religious training which is better received at home, and at an earlier period of life, I venture to submit that this so-called "religious education" has no substantial value.

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