Last Saturday's Times reprints from the Johannesbrerg Star of August
5th a long letter from Mr. R. Floyd Nicholls describing the treatment he received during his recent arrest and imprisonment in Pretoria on the charge of high treason. If his statement of the facts is correct, he was, to begin with, arrested on a false charge. He was then confined with a number of bogus prisoners,—i.e., men who, though nominally arrested under a charge similar to that on which he was arrested, were, to all intents and purposes, secret agents of the Transvaal Government. These men put every sort of pressure upon Mr. Nicholls in order to get him to make a confession which would implicate the officials of the South African League. Two of these agents, whom at the time, Mr. Nicholls thought to be bond .fide prisoners, named Ellis and Tremlett, declared that the British Government, the South African League, and the Rand capitalists were implicated in the affair. They also stated, said Mr. Nicholls, "that I was their agent; that the Boer Government knew all about it ; that my employers would leave me in the lurch, both deny and denounce me; and, therefore, the only chance of saving my neck and effecting the release of my fellow-prisoners was to turn State evidence, and give the whole thing away, as they put it. If I did not I cer- tainly would be hanged and all the rest would be imprisoned, Some for a long term. They both professed great sorrow and anxiety on my aecount, and did their tamest to persuade and to cajole me into taking their advice." They also told him that the South African League, seeing the game was up, had denounced him (Nicholls), and ee cauacd his- arrest.
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