Page:Satyagraha in South Africa.pdf/201

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European Support
181

made and who was Chairman of the Committee of European sympathizers with the Satyagraha movement. When the movement was in full swing, direct communications between Satyagrahis and the local Government were obviously out of the question, not because of any objection on principle on the part of the Satyagrahis to deal directly with Government but because the latter would naturally not confer with the breakers of its laws. And this Committee acted as mediator between the Indians and the Government.

I have already introduced Mr Albert Cartwright to the reader. Then there was Rev. Charles Phillips who joined and assisted us even as Mr Doke did. Mr Phillips had long been Congregational minister in the Transvaal. His good wife too did us much service. A third clergyman who had given up orders to take up the editorship of the Bloemfontein daily The Friend and who supported the Indian cause in his paper in the teeth of European opposition was Rev. Dewdney Drew, one of the best speakers in South Africa. A similarly spontaneous helper was Mr Vere Stent, editor of The Pretoria News. A mass meeting of Europeans was once held in the Town Hall of Pretoria under the presidency of the Mayor to condemn the Indian movement and to support the Black Act. Mr Vere Stent alone stood up in opposition to the overwhelming majority of anti-Indians and refused to sit down in spite of the president's orders. The Europeans threatened to lay hands on him, yet he stood unmoved and defiant like a lion, and the meeting dispersed at last without passing its resolution.

There were other Europeans whose names I could mention and who never missed an opportunity of doing us a good turn, although they did not formally join any association. But I propose to close this chapter with a few words about three ladies. One of these was Miss Hobhouse, the daughter of Lord Hobhouse, who at the time of the Boer War reached the Transvaal against the wishes of Lord Milner, and who single-handed moved among the Boer women, encouraged them and bade them