On Wednesday news was received in London that seven men—six--Englishmen
and one Dane—had been arrested at Johannesburg on a 'charge of high treason, and lodged in Pretoria Gaol. The prisoners are described as "a nondescript lot" of " loafer-like " appearance, but some of them are said to have been non-commissioned officers in the British Army. It is alleged that they had enrolled two thousand men, who were to get armed in Natal and then return to the Rand, and at a given signal seize the fort at Johannesburg, and hold it pending the arrival of British troops. If this is the truth, it was obviously a plot pour tire. There seems, however, as yet no authentic news as to the real nature of the incident. In some quarters it is declared that the whole transaction was a "put-up job,"--i.e., a pint manufactured by secret service agents. On the other handl,' the Pall Mall Gazette, often very well informed on South African matters, publishes a state- ment which asserte that the plot, though absurd, was a genuine movement. In any case, it seems certain that neither the capitalists- nor the South African League are' in-any way responsible. As we have said elsewhere, the plot, whether sponta,peous or engineered by secret agents anxious to earn their salaries, his sign of the unsatisfactorST state of things now Prevail in in the Transisal.
