NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE debate on the Indemnity Bill in South Africa has been remarkable for a most spirited and powerful defence of the policy of the Union Government by General Smuts. We have dealt elsewhere with the subject, but must mention here the chief points in the speech, which lasted for more than three and a half hours on Wednesday and was con- tinued on Thursday. General Smuts traced the growth of the Syndicalist movement during the last eighteen months, his intention being to show that the deportation of the strike leaders was the natural close of a policy which circumstances had forced the Government to pursue in order to save the country from anarchy. After describing how the strikers created a reign of terror in the Benoni district last June, and how they showed that they intended to use a general strike as an instrument of social and political rather than of industrial policy, General Smuts described Bain, one of the deported leaders, in the following terms "I had known Bain as a secret service agent of the Republican Government. A more desperate character I have never known." With a touch of real pathos, General Smuts declared that it was one of the hardest moments of his life to sign the document settling the strike in the summer with Bain, "but I have found in life that humiliation and disgrace are sometimes necessary to effect great public service." Later General Smuts described Mr. Poutema, another of the deported men, as "a more sinister figure than Bain."
