Olive Schreiner Letters Online

Letter Reference	The Standard / Saturday 9 January 1887, page 5
Archive
Epistolary Type	Letter
Letter Date	6 January 1887
Address From	na
Address To
Who To	The Editor, The Standard
Other Versions

Copyright transcription: © Olive Schreiner Letters Project. This transcription can be freely used as long as copyright is acknowledged and it is referenced using the following citation: ‘Olive Schreiner to The Editor, The Standard, 6 January 1887, , Olive Schreiner Letters Project transcription’. Please also supply letter line numbers for specific quotations.


1:  THE POLICE AND THE PUBLIC
2:  TO THE EDITOR OF THE STANDARD
3: 
4:  Sir, -
5: 
6:  In reply to the courteous letter of your Correspondent “B.,” I would
7:  note two points.
8: 
9:  He inquires why, instead of making the matter public, the facts were
10:  not privately reported to the Inspector. I would answer that it was my
11:  desire to make the matter as little as possible a personal one. Had I
12:  done as he suggests, the probability is that the man would have been
13:  dismissed, and nothing further would have been heard on the matter by
14:  the public. I should much regret that any individual should suffer for
15:  an insult offered to myself; and if this case were an isolated one it
16:  might most suitably be allowed to drop. But it appeared possible that
17:  it was not so.
18: 
19:  The important point in the case is this: Of two individuals alighting
20:  from a cab and pursuing an exactly similar course of action, the older,
21:  stronger, and apparently more responsible was treated with a
22:  deference which might be well described as reverential; the smaller,
23:  weaker, and apparently more helpless with a brutality which it would
24:  not be very easy to transfer to paper. The suggestion then arises – in
25:  those cases in which the stronger members of our community come into
26:  relationship with the most helpless class, does something of the same
27:  kind never occur? Is there no trembling in the cool, evenly-balanced
28:  hand of the law? Is the woman never taken and the man left? This
29:  appeared to me to be a question to be put to the general public, and
30:  not to the Police Inspectors.
31: 
32:  Your Correspondent suggests that “enthusiastic action and a warm
33:  feeling about the defence of women” have blinded the writer of the
34:  letter. What my personal views are appears of no importance. To woman
35:  as woman I am indifferent. The line which divides humanity into two
36:  parts is not the line of sex; but that which divides the strong from
37:  the weak. In feeling and sympathy I am a man.
38: 
39:  I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
40:  Olive Schreiner
41:  January 6.
42: 

Notation
This letter was the second of two Schreiner send to the Standard. For the first letter and the reply to it by ‘B’, see The Standard / 5 January 1887, page 5, col 6.