The Man in the Brown Suit

Twenty-nine
Johannesburg, March 6th.
There is something about the state of things here that is not at all healthy. To use the
well-known phrase that I have so often read, we are all living on the edge of a volcano.
Bands of strikers, or so-called strikers, patrol the streets and scowl at one in a
murderous fashion. They are picking out the bloated capitalists ready for when the
massacres begin, I suppose. You can’t ride in a taxi—If you do, strikers pull you out
again. And the hotels hint pleasantly that when the food gives out they will fling you out
on the mat!
I met Reeves, my labour friend of the 
Kilmorden
, last night. He has cold feet worse
than any man I ever saw. He’s like all the rest of these people; they make inflammatory
speeches of enormous length, solely for political purposes, and then wish they hadn’t.
He’s busy now going about and saying he didn’t really do it. When I met him, he was just
off to Cape Town, where he meditates making a three days’ speech in Dutch, vindicating
himself, and pointing out that the things he said really meant something entirely
different. I am thankful that I do not have to sit in the Legislative Assembly of South
Africa. The House of Commons is bad enough, but at least we have only one language,
and some slight restriction as to length of speeches. When I went to the Assembly before
leaving Cape Town, I listened to a grey-haired gentleman with a drooping moustache
who looked exactly like the Mock Turtle in 
Alice in Wonderland
. He dropped out his
words one by one in a particularly melancholy fashion. Every now and then he
galvanized himself to further efforts by ejaculating something that sounded like “Platt
Skeet,” uttered 
fortissimo
 and in marked contrast to the rest of his delivery. When he did
this, half his audience yelled “whoof, whoof!” which is possibly Dutch for “Hear, hear,”
and the other half woke up with a start from the pleasant nap they had been having. I was
given to understand that the gentleman had been speaking for at least three days. They
must have a lot of patience in South Africa.
I have invented endless jobs to keep Pagett in Cape Town, but at last the fertility of my
imagination has given out, and he joins me tomorrow in the spirit of the faithful dog who
comes to die by his master’s side. And I was getting on so well with my Reminiscences
too! I had invented some extraordinarily witty things that the strike leaders said to me
and I said to the strike leaders.
This morning I was interviewed by a Government official. He was urbane, persuasive
and mysterious in turn. To begin with, he alluded to my exalted position and importance,
and suggested that I should remove myself, or be removed by him, to Pretoria.

---

“You expect trouble, then?” I asked.
His reply was so worded as to have no meaning whatsoever, so I gathered that they
were expecting serious trouble. I suggested to him that his Government were letting
things go rather too far.
“There is such a thing as giving a man enough rope, and letting him hang himself, Sir
Eustace.”
“Oh, quite so, quite so.”
“It is not the strikers themselves who are causing the trouble. There is some
organization at work behind them. Arms and explosives have been pouring in, and we
have made a haul of certain documents which throw a good deal of light on the methods
adopted to import them. There is a regular code. Potatoes mean ‘detonators,’