which the South African Government is taking. After arresting 156
men and women, they aban- doned charges against sixty-five of them after the year-long preliminary inquiry. Then in Octo- ber the prosecution threw in its hand by abandoning the indictment of the remaining ninety-one. Now the Attorney-General of the Transvaal has selected as his victims the thirty against whom, presumably, he has the most evi- dence. Judging by the indictment, at which I have been looking, the most important result of this third attempt to secure a conviction will be to indict the Nationalist regime. For, high among the allegations is one that the accused took part in a congress at Kliptown on June 25 and 26, 1955, which produced decisions which 'would to the knowledge of the accused necessarily involve the overthrow of the State by violence.' And what were these decisions? (a) Universal suffrage; (I)) public ownership of the mines; (c) .agrarian re- distribution;,and (d) an end of 'ghetto' land laws. If these reforms cannot be secured in South Africa without violence, then it can only be be- cause the present Government intends forcibly to prevent constitutional changes in the law.
I WONDER IF Dr. Summerskill is right? On the face of it, such a possibility may seem remote, but the photographs of Monday's heavyweight championship fight between London and Cooper made her plea for the prohibition of professional boxing a good deal more justified than they had seemed to me hitherto. It is not the smashed and bleeding faces of the boxers which I found nauseating, but the unqualifiedly animal expres- sions on their faces. I can't really believe that the deliberate infliction of pain for the sake of enter- tainment is a good thing, even when those on whom the pain is inflicted are willing to take their chance. But how rarely we see photographs of the aniipal expressions on the faces of the spectators at boxing matches! Dr. Summerskill has gone on too long about the physical dangers to the boxers of death or injury. It is time some- body began to look at the danger to the spectators of something possibly worse. MAROS
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