don or with me here all the masses of notes I have
made in my search for the life that is worth while living.... We who are
self-appointed aristocrats, who are not ashamed of kingship, must speak
to one another....

"We can have no organization because organizations corrupt....

"No recognition....

"But we can speak plainly...."

(As he talked his voice was for a space drowned by the jingle and voices
of mounted police riding past the hotel.)

"But on one side your aristocracy means revolution," said White. "It
becomes a political conspiracy."

"Manifestly. An open conspiracy. It denies the king upon the stamps and
the flag upon the wall. It is the continual proclamation of the Republic
of Mankind."

15

The earlier phases of violence in the Rand outbreak in 1913 were
manifest rather in the outskirts of Johannesburg than at the centre.
"Pulling out" was going on first at this mine and then that, there were
riots in Benoni, attacks on strike breakers and the smashing up of
a number of houses. It was not until July the 4th that, with the
suppression of a public meeting in the market-place, Johannesburg itself
became the storm centre.

Benham and White were present at this marketplace affair, a confused
crowded occasion, in which a little leaven of active men stirred through
a large uncertain multitude of decently dressed onlookers. The whole
big square was astir, a swaying crowd of men. A ramshackle platform
improvised upon a trolley struggled through the swarming straw hats to a
street corner, and there was some speaking. At first it seemed as though
military men were using this platform, and then it was manifestly in
possession of an excited knot of labour leaders with red rosettes. The
military men had said their say and got down. They came close by Benham,
pushing their way across the square. "We've warned them," said one. A
red flag, like some misunderstood remark at a tea-party, was fitfully
visible and incomprehensible behind the platform. Somebody was either
pitched or fell off the platform. One could hear nothing from the
speakers except a minute bleating....

Then there were shouts that the police were charging. A number of
mounted men trotted into the square. The crowd began a series of short
rushes that opened lanes for the passage of the mounted police as they
rode to and fro. These men trotted through the crowd, scattering knots
of people. They carried pick-handles, but they did not seem