Chapter XXIII
European Support
As the number of Europeans of position, who actively sided with the Indians in their struggle, was fairly large, it will not perhaps, be out of place to introduce them here to the reader all at once, so that when their names occur later on in this narrative, they will not be strange to him, and I shall not have to stop in the midst of the narrative in order to introduce them. The order in which the names have been arranged is not the order of the merit of service rendered, nor that of the public estimation in which the bearers of the names were held. I mention the friends in order of the time when I got acquainted with them and in connection with the various branches of the struggle where they helped the Indians.
The first name is that of Mr Albert West, whose association with the community dated from before the struggle and whose association with me commenced earlier still. When I opened my office in Johannesburg my wife was not with me. The reader will remember that in 1903 I received a cable from South Africa and suddenly left India, expecting to return home within a year. Mr West used to frequent the vegetarian restaurant in Johannesburg where I regularly had my meals both morning and evening, and we thus became acquainted with each other. He was then conducting a printing press in partnership with another European. In 1904 a virulent plague broke out among the Indians in Johannesburg. I was fully engaged in nursing the patients, and my visits to the restaurant became irregular. Even when I went, I went there before the other guests in order to avoid any possible danger from their coming in contact with me. Mr West became anxious when he did not find me there for two days in succession as he had read in the papers that I was
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