1 Matjesfontein
2 Cape Colony
3 Feb 19 / 09
4
5 Dear Edward
6
7 You are an absolutely wicked boy! I did send those two photographs to
8Bob. - I paid 5/- each for them as they are large ones, & I had I had
9only a couple. I did send you a copy of my article. It wasn’t a
10pamphlet it was a news paper. I suppose you are so superior at
11Millthorpe, you just throw news papers into the wastepaper basket
12without troubling to look at them! (Had him there!)
13
14 Con Lytton cabled to me yesterday that she had made arrangements for
15its coming out in the form of a small book so I’m writing her to
16send a copy to you. I could send you another newspaper with it do in.
17But no doubt you wouldn’t deign to open it!
18
19 I’m still at Matjesfontein oh so glad, so thankful to be here.
20It’s so peace-ful & rest-ful. I can’t write about the Closer Union.
21 It distresses me too much. If the plans of this miserable convention
22are carried out we stand at the beginning of a long steady downward
23course of 20 or 20 years. There is no hope of even that little shred
24of justice to the natives there has been in years past. The Rant
25capitalists & the retrograde Boers are going to dominate the country.
26We shall have native wars which for injustice & horrors will make the
27Boer war seem an innocent little game: & we have no working class to
28fight with because our working class is the natives themselves who
29will have no votes, & who if they strike or move in any way will be
30shot down like dogs.
31
32 It is all depressing me so I can’t work just now. And you see one
33has to be so careful how one moves or what one says lest one makes
34matters worse. When one thinks one is dipping one’s pen into ink one
35may so easily be dipping it into blood in this country.
36
37 Olive
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