A savage attack

IF the Cape Times thinks by its savage attack upon Mrs Sarojini Naidu it has enhanced the reputation of the Whites in South Africa, it will not take long to discover the enormity of its mistake. The attack, in fact, can only do incalculable harm to the already shattered prestige of those for whom the journal speaks. The first impression it is bound to create in all unprejudiced minds is that it is just for want of a good case that the writer has so vilely abused the plaintiff’s attorney. But that is not the only impression it will produce. It will also convince all disinterested men and women of the length of perverse and intolerant absurdity to which these people, maddened by racial prejudice and a sense of their irresponsible power, can go when an attempt is made by someone with the gift of the golden mouth to bring their iniquities to the world’s notice. No one can read the article in the most casual manner without seeing at once where the trouble lies. It is nonsense to say that Mrs Naidu’s speeches “are addressed not to Mrs Naidu’s immediate audience, but to the people of India”. If that were so, the objection to those speeches would come not from the Cape Times but from the extremist Anglo-Indian press in India itself, or from the Tory press in England. It is just because those speeches are only too well addressed to Mrs Naidu’s immediate audience that they have so clearly gone home and have had the same effect upon this journal and others of its way of thinking as the red rag has upon the bull.