However, to continue on the strike, I came back again to Cape Town just before that happened-had I been in Johannesburg the number of deportations might have been increased from nine to ten. The strike being general, of course reached Cape Town, and J happened to be outside the Salt River Works when they were coming out, and a meeting, organised by the Labour Party, was addressing them outside the works' gates. Dr. Hagger, Labour M.P., was chairman. Noting in the crowd he asked me if I would address them. The strike was then hardly complete in that area. Trains were still running, and some workers were reluctant to risk the chance of dismissal; hence, either by instinct or conviction, I was induced to make the following remarks:

"If you cannot maintain your position without blowing up the line, then blow it up, but give special regard to the sacredness of human life. If there are lives at stake-or even one life-then don't blow it up. Material can be replaced, but not human life." I remember very well how I put it. I had good reason to because it was repeated in the court proceedings that followed many times over. These remarks were resented by the members of the Labour Party present, and afterwards I thought it unwise myself, deliberately inciting public violence, think that was the only time of my many persecutions that proof could lie given of me doing so, although every indictment was so named, "Inciting to public violence." Either the Press or some very interested persons who would suppress our propaganda often brought evidence to court to prove the indictment was true, as they did in the case of my address to the Salt River workers.

Following this meeting the Salt River workers marched in proces­sion to Cape Town, and many other speakers, including myself, were again addressing them on the Parade from different platforms. Walter Snow, lunch bag in hand, was one of the strikers on one platform, with W. B. Madeley and others. That finished Snow at Salt River; he afterwards became an active Labour man, and later a member of Parliament for the Salt River constituency. I heard Snow say, when addressing a meeting afterwards, "They told me at the Salt River Works I was to get another job. I have got one, but not quite the sort they meant perhaps-to voice the workers' grievances in Parliament more effectively than at the bench of the workers."

I had not gone very far in my speech on the Parade when two detectives (one afterwards Major Trigger) drove up in a hansom cab for my accommodation. Trigger shouted above the din of the crowd: "We have a warrant for your arrest." After I was comfortably seated there was some question between them as to which way they should go, as they feared the crowd might be sufficiently enthused to demand my release. However, their fears were groundless. I was safely put in one of the Wale Street cells until the "Black Maria" arrived with a few more of my fellow criminals-or victims of Capitalist temptations- to take me into a place of safer custody in Roeland Street, at which place I was detained without trial for a considerable period until they had established what they generally describe as "law and order" amongst the strikers. Then preparatory examination at the Magistrate's Court put me back for Sessions. Here the Crown evidence sought to hang me, for the indictment not only alleged that I advocated the destruction of material, but some interested genius had construed my sacred regard for human life-to say it didn't matter if lives were at stake, they should blow it up. Would I plead guilty? I would not. Then an altercation ensued between Advocate Percival Smith, who defended me, and the judge, and the proceedings were postponed till the following day, when the indictment was altered and the alleged destruction of human life deleted.

Would I plead guilty to advocating the destruction of property? I did. We brought up our witnesses, of course, to show how good I was and how bad all the machinations of Capitalism were to give cause for my presence before the court of justice. And, of course, the crown witnesses reversed the same programme.

It was my first experience at court proceedings and I soon SAW what I was up against. The indictment absorbed almost all the words imputing vice in the English vocabulary. It was worded thus:

"That upon January the 12 th , 1914, at Salt River, he addressed a meeting of persons employed in the South African Railways, to the number of about 400, and did then and there in the course of his address wrongfully, unlawfully, wickedly and maliciously incite, stir up and advise these persons wrongfully and unlawfully; and by force and violence, by the use of explosives to destroy or damage the lines of the railways, and also to do such destruction or damage whether or not the lives of persons (the italics are mine) might be lost or imperiled thereby, and so wrongfully an unlawfully, and by public violence, to disturb the public peace and openly violate and set at naught the laws of good order and government."

After the crowded court had recovered from the shock, which we may also suppose induced some of the sympathetic old ladies attending to take a sniff at their smelling salts to keep them from fainting, the court was adjourned for a day to allow us to recover, and also while they cut those three words "lives of persons" out.

Doctor Robert Forsyth, a Labour Member of Parliament, as one of my witnesses, said I was "a most inoffensive man."

The judge: "If he let off poison gas?"

Doctor Forsyth: "If the gas escaped it would not do much damage."

Mr. A. Ridout, M.P.C., another witness, was asked by the Attorney General, "Do you know him as a public orator?" "I do," said Ridout. "I have listened to him lots of times and been on the same platform."

The judge: "In your opinion is he a violent man?"

"Violent man!" exclaimed Ridout, "Absolutely the contrary. I never heard him advocate violence in any shape or form, more especially against a person. Life to him is absolutely as sacred as to myself. He looks on life as something that cannot be recalled, and that every person should have the opportunity of living his real life." In reply to other questions, Ridout said that violence was, applied in many ways, considered justifiable. "The men would be justified in blowing up the railway lines-they constructed them."

I take these few items from a Press report of the proceedings. The judge asking if any precedent could be found to guide him, etc. On his own judgment he then stated that I would he fined 50 or six months' imprisonment, and the Press reports me as saying: "I have no intention of paying the fine, my lord!"

"Do what you like, I give you the option," said the judge. Hence I descended from the dock to the subterranean passages below until the "Black Maria" came to take me back to Roeland Street, a convict. However, my comrades, who have never failed me in such difficulties, though to my embarrassment, soon found the necessary amount to set me at liberty.

The Government was panic stricken. Botha and Smuts had signed a "peace" document only a few months before which appeared to be only an armistice. Nazi Germany could not have excelled their tactics. They imprisoned everybody who they thought were implicated -even Colonel Creswell, the Labour leader, and Boydell, the member for Greyville, Durban, were among them.

I quote from Labour Organisation in South Africa:

The story of the rounding up, by bands of armed and mounted burghers, of the peaceful citizens of Benoni, their march to gaol and their confinement in a 'black hole' reads like a chapter in a story of Czardom. Never was there such a scandalous disregard of human liberty, or such contempt displayed for the rights of citizenship, as in that evil period of martial law."