A NEW SISTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 218, 12 September 1923, Page 4

A NEW SISTER.

Two interesting events concerning British Dominions are reported in our news to-day. The Irish Free State has been unanimously admitted into the League of Nations, which is proof as impressive as the world could well have of the new status of Southern Ireland. The Free State is received before all men as a nation. The other comes from Africa. To-day Southern Bhodesia formally passes out of the control of the Chartered Company, and after the proclamation of the new Constitution the system of self-government will come into operation on October 1. The white people of Southern Rhodesia were given the. choice of having self-government as a .separate colony or of joining the South African Union, and decided, against the persuasiveness of General Smuts, to keep clear of their neighbour. It is a small white community in a large territory that sets out on this new voyage, for in the 149,000 square miles of this southern division of Rhodesia there are only 34,000 people. There is to be a responsible Ministry in a single-chamber Legislature, with the possible addition of an Upper House later on. The list of measures reserved for the consent of the Imperial Government includes certain special reservations considered necessary from "the peculiar history of the country," so that the new colony will not be quite so free as the other Dominions. The political and economic reactions of the colonists' decision may be far-reaching, for the "Round Table" remarks that the erection of a separate State may make more difficult relations with other European Powers established in Africa, and '-the same conflicts and cross-purposes over ports, railways, and Customs that marked the intercolonial life of pre-ITnion days may again be repeated." There remains the question of the future of Northern Rhodesia, a much larger territory, which stretches from the Zambesi to Tanganyika and Xyassa, and has a white population of only 3500 among a million blacks. There the rule of the Chartered Company comes to an end in a year's time. Had Southern Rhodesia joined the Union, before long the authority of the Union Government might have extended right up to Tanganyika, but the colonists' decision puts a limit for an indefinite time to southern ambition in that direction.