Apr. 2 5
Home newspapers arriving by the last-mail, with details of the recent Red revolt on the South can Rand, depict the most extraordinary and horrible scenes. Nothing like them can be recalled in connexion with any strike. But in its latest phases the rebellion on the Rand had, of course, ceased to be a real strike. It began as such in January and after nearly two months' duration, it was showing signs of a settlement, when suddenly the whole movement was captured by extremists; on March 7 aw general sympathetic strike was called; and from that date to the capture for Fordsburg, the headquarters of the rebellion, on March 14 by the Government, it was accompanied by such excess ses as can only be paralleled in the most brutal outrages of German submarinism, Mine managers and special constables were murdered in cold blood: even unarmed and unresisting men were shot first and' had their heads battered in with clubs afterwards. Worst of all was the treatment of the natives on the Rand. The Johannesburg Star describes these attacks as the blackest events in the history of the country, which have brought infamy on the name of South Africa: and it goes on to speak of the foul spectacle of shrieking, hysterical and debased hooligans, shouting and bludgeoning unoffending natives as though engaged in a rat hunt' as a thing almost too revolting to describe. In view of the general nature of the rebellion, these gratuitous and loathsome attacks on the natives assume a special importance—the obvious intention being to rouse the native population throughout the Union. Tt is but right to add that the natives behaved extremely well and that this part of the plot, as indeed all of it, failed miserably. The overwhelming majority of labouring white men would have nothing to do with the Bolshe-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.