92 THE SOUTH AFRICAN INDIAN QUESTION strike work-who were they ? Again, Tamil sisters. Who matched among the women? Tamale, of course. Who lived on a pound loaf of bread and an ounce of sugar? The majority were Tamils: though there he must give their due also to those of their countrymen who were called Calcutta men. In that last struggle they also had responded nobly, but he was not able to say quite so nobiy as the Tamiis; but they had certainly come out almost as well as the Tamile had, but the Tamils had sustained the struggle for the last eight years and had shown of what stuff they were made from the very beginning, Here in Johannesburg they were a handful, and yet, even numerically, they would show, he thought, the largest number who had gone to gaol again and again; also if they wanted imprisonment wholesale, it came from the Tamils. So that he felt, when he came to a Tamil meeting, that he came to blood-relations. The Tamils had shown so much pluck, so much faith, so much devotion to duty and such nohle simplicity, and yet had been so self·eEfaoing. He did not even speak their language, much as he should like to he able to do so, and yet they had simply fought on. It had been a glorious, a rich experience, which he would treasure to the end oi his life. How should he explain the settlement to them? They did not even want it. But if he must he could only tell them that all that they and theirs had fought for had been obtained and obtained largely through the force of character that they had shown; and yet they did ncl Want, they had not wanted to reap the reward, except the reward that their own consciences would offer them `They had fought for the Cape entryr right for Colonial horns. That they had got. They had fought ‘fo1 the just administration of the laws. That they had
