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of South Africa are the most insulting, humiliating and revolting nature, thought fit to make such "nice" speeches on this occasion? When we keep in mind the fact that heavy war clouds are hovering over the East and West, that war has already started in the East in China and Manchuria, we will understand why these jingoists made such speeches on February 21st.

For example, the Mayor of Johannesburg said: "It was not adventure for those natives to go to Europe. They went to South West Africa (the German Territory. T.J.) and endured the extreme heat and thirst of the desert, and they went to East Africa and ran the risks of malaria and other diseases. Perhaps white people forget as the years go by, that natives died for the Empire in the Great War."

White people (read white imperialists) forget, but the experience will be valuable for the Negro workers who don't need to go to France or for that matter China, for their greatest enemies are the very South African capitalists whose spokesman was the Mayor. How did these people meet their death?

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[[caption]] African soldiers - Cannon-fodder for imperialist war]] [[/caption]]

Dr. Lewis E. Hertslet, the medical officer in charge of the Africans on the "Mendi" at the time of the incident say his hypocritical tribute: "Never will I forget the courage and bravery shown by that band of African manhood in the face of death. The men were calm and composed. Each man got his life belt, they all went on deck with an orderliness which might have surprised orderly seamen. The weather was extremely cold. The life boats were small and could not take all those who could reach them."

"The life boats were small and the weather was extremely cold" - 615 Africans perished, drowned like rats for the "greater glory" of the British Slave Empire and capitalist Civilization, or it is - "syphilisation"! Thousands of other Africans perished from cold and exposure in the labour battalions in France, hundreds in the Cape Coloured Corps in the blazing heat of the desert in Palestine. Yet nothing is ever said about them, much less done for their dependents.

Finally, let me quote from the message of Mayor T.E. Leifeldt, D.S.O., a highly placed official of the South Africa Defence Force, whose first duty, by the way is suppression of native revolts. "Exclusive of those who served in Europe, some 40,000 natives served in South West and East Africa. They were unarmed and very often found themselves under the fire of the enemy. Many lost their lives in German East Africa in 1917, when the whole force had to make its way

through many miles of mud and water to Kilwa and the sea coast. Where pluck and daring called for, it was never lacking in these men.

This chief recruiting agent of the Chamber of Mines concludes: "While the loss of these med is today brought to tearful memory we are proud of them. They perished doing their duty, serving King and Country." What hypocrisy!

The imperialists know their ob and their "good boys". For would you believe, the native lickspittles who were present, instead denouncing the cynical speeches of these white exploiters, were moved to tears. Smarting under a sense of humiliation at the daily insults hurled at them and their race in South Africa they would sell their small souls to hear such "nice" speeches from their masters. But for the toiling masses whose fathers, sons and brothers perished in Europe, West and East Africa, deceived by the same imperialists that they were engaged in a war for "democracy" and "to end all wars" such sloppy sentimentalism has not meaning.

The "Negro Worker" has pointed out time and again that the imperialists intend to make even greater use of the Negro workers and peasants as cannon fodder in the coming world war. That all this sudden concern for the "Mendi" victims after 15 years of silence is merely part of the campaign to again mobilize the Africans for slaughter is clear. To expose these maneuvers; to mobilize the masses against an imperialist war of intervention, for the defence of the U.S.S.R., and to intensify the struggle against the South African and British Government of hunger and oppression, against the whole catalogue of slave laws under which the native toiling masses suffer, against treachery and cowardice of the national reformists and "good boys", for national liberation and social emancipation is the task of all sincere revolutionists in Africa.

Down with Imperialist War!
Defend the U.S.S.R. and the Chinese Soviets!
Long live the Federation of Independent South African Native Republics!

Liberia and the Labour Problem
By Kolliselleh Tamba.
(Secretary, Liberia Workers' Progressive Association.)

If ever there is any country wherein the workers, and hence the real pillars of the economic structure, are left wholly unprotected: if ever there is any Government wherein the right of the poor class of the working masses is actually sacrificed upon the altar of bribery; if ever there is a nation whose "leaders" that is to say, the official class, are chronically apathetic, — such a country is Liberia.

Official Strike Breakers.

In the year 1928 the boat crew of Monrovia struck and declared that they would consent to work for the foreign steamship agencies and merchantile firms only upon the condition that they are paid 4/- each per round trip. They held fast for about two weeks — a condition which came nigh being unberable for the firms and steamship agencies who regard the services of the crew indispensable, but who will not pay them the deserved wages. It is strongly believed that the firms would have ultimately agreed to pay the crew the wages thus demanded; but in consequences of certain sinister official activities, these poor and helpless workers were made to feel that the government would not support any such movement,