SPEECH BY GENERAL SMUTS.

Colonist, Volume LXII, Issue 15308, 23 February 1920, Page 5

SPEECH BY GENERAL SMUTS.

IDLE TALK BY WHITES

ACTED ON BY NATIVES

Pretoria, Feb. 18. General Smuts, in a speech, referred to the native trouble. He said that between 30,000 and 40,000 blacks were on strike. They had a well organised picketing system, and they were dodnothings that people would "have consid~ ered the natives .incapable of doin^ General Smuts went o"n to say that he had seen portents and signs that a tremendous change was coming over South Africa. Nonsense had been talked about republics and blood and tears. This talk the natives would put into practice, and too late those who had uttered it would find that their idle talk had put these mischievous ideas into the natives' heads.