r -l 



oo] "Free Labour" in South Africa 367 



their blacks, and consequently forbade it, leaving them to hire labour 

 as they could, which cost them a good deal more. The ' compound ' 

 system of ' free labour,' as practised at Kimberly and elsewhere in 

 Rhodesia is an ingenious substitute for slavery. The negroes are re- 

 cruited with promises of very high wages, and the wages are actually 

 paid, but once inside the walls of the compound they are permanently 

 prisoners and have to spend their wages there. To prevent their leav- 

 ing with a show of legality, a rule is enforced that each negro before 

 going out must be dosed. This has the double motive of preventing 

 them from swallowing and carrying away diamonds and, as the dose 

 is an immense one, of frightening them from undergoing it. The dose 

 plan was invented by the Jew Porges, who is now a millionaire at 

 Paris. Such negroes as, having saved money, face the dose and are 

 allowed to depart, are waylaid on their way back to the Zambezi, from 

 beyond which many are recruited by Boers in league with the mining 

 authorities, and stripped of all they have. The Government, he says, 

 is making itself very unpopular in Ireland and he thinks also in 

 England, but I cannot agree with him that there is the least chance 

 of their being turned out at the General Elections. 



"21st May. — The streets of London are decked with flags for a 

 foolish victory, the relief of Mafeking, and even the cottages in Sus- 

 sex flew their Union Jacks. This war has been so little glorious that 

 our patriots are thankful for the smallest of small mercies. One would 

 think that Napoleon and all the armies of Europe had been defeated 

 by the British arms. 



22nd May. — The Poet Laureate has published an absurd effusion 

 in the ' Times ' about the relief of Mafeking. 



" Called in the afternoon on Keegan Paul, who is still confined to 

 his room and chair, and learned the details of Mivart's death, which 

 are dramatically terrible. 



" 23rd May. — Called on Father Tyrrel, the Jesuit, at Farm Street. 

 Keegan Paul had shown me a letter from him about my poem, ' Satan 

 Absolved,' in which he had said, amongst other approving things, that 

 my account of the Incarnation was precisely the one he had always 

 had in his mind and he had suggested my calling on him, so I went. 

 I found Father Tyrrel very sympathetic, a thin, somewhat ascetic 

 figure, with a nervous, imaginative face, his age perhaps forty-eight. 

 We talked of Mivart, for whose ideas he clearly had much sympathy, 

 but he blamed him for having lost his temper in the quarrel. He spoke 

 strongly against the Roman Congregations, thought Vaughan had 

 been unfair in denying to Mivart an answer to his questions, but all 

 the same he was severe on Mivart for the final quarrel. It could only 

 be excused by the failure of his mental balance through ill health. I 

 asked him what really was the theology of Mivart's position, especially 



