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Letter ReferenceHRC/OliveSchreinerLetters/OS-JohnHodgson/74
ArchiveHarry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
Epistolary TypePostcard
Letter Date19 February 1917
Address From19 Adam Street, Portman Square, Westminster, London
Address To23 Rothersay Road, Luton, Bedfordshire
Who ToJohn Hodgson
Other Versions
PermissionsPlease read before using or citing this transcription
Legend
The Project is grateful to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin, for kindly allowing us to transcribe this Olive Schreiner postcard, which is part of its Manuscript Collections. The date of this postcard is provided by the postmark; the addressee and the address it was sent to are on its front. Schreiner was resident in Adam Street from late December 1916 to March 1917.
1I wrote a card to you last week to tell you how much I had enjoyed the
2play, & hoped you were feeling better; but I dropped it in the street.
3I hope some one picked it up & put it in the post. Miss Molteno says
4she saw an article of yours on the Native Question somewhere. Thanks
5for the pamphlet you sent me.
6
7O Schreiner
8
Notation
A laudatory article on racial policy in South Africa in the New Statesman in December 1916 concluded under the heading of "General Botha's Native Policy" that "Given these conditions, we may hope that South Africa will enter upon a period of great industrial and social development, for the inauguration of which, upon humane and statesmanlike foundations, the whole Empire will owe thanks to General Botha." New Statesman 16 December 1916 vol 7 no 182 pp.561-562. Anonymously published, it was in fact authored by J.H. Harris of the Aborigines Protection Society. Hodgson's response took the form of a letter signed with a non de plume based on his middle name; this meant well, but also revealed some views likely to be unpalatable to Schreiner: "The native cries: 'We do not ask for social equality between white and black; only the right to make a living in the open market; only the right to develop and improve ourselves.' And also the whites in South Africa probably cannot - with safety to themselves - grant in its fulness even this simple request, it should not be beyond the wit of man to devise a safe policy which is less harsh than that so recently inaugurated." See Lawrence Hodgson New Statesman 30 December 1917, vol 7 no 195, pp.300-2. Insufficient information is provided for the pamphlet Hodgson sent Schreiner to be traced.