The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1931. THE END OF AN ALLIANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 3, 5 January 1931, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

MONDAY, JANUARY 5, 1931. THE END OF AN ALLIANCE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The decision of a majority 'of the South African Labour Party to break off their political association with the Nationalists marks the end of a compact which has, for good or evil, dominated the course of public affairs in the Union for the past six years. But the marvel is not. that the famous pact has broken down after six years' continuance, but that it has lasted so long. For, as the leaders of the two contracting parties have often frankly admitted, the allies had very little in common. The Labour Party, more especially after the forcible repression of the Johannesburg strike in 1922, had tended toward an extremist, not to say Communist, policy, while the Boers and Afrikanders that form the backbone of the Nationalist-group abhor all forms of Socialism. At the same time, while the Nationalists in those days were all for "separation," the Labour Party, as a whole, was bent on maintaining the Imperial connection. But the Nationalists and the Labour Party, though they disagreed on most other questions, were as one in their detestation of General' Smuts and their determination to destroy him politically. Hertzog and the conservative Boers regarded him as a renegade, and hated him as the embodiment of South African Imperialism, and the Labour Party was resolved to take vengeance on the man who had handled the industrial crisis on the Rand so- vigorously and courageously in 1922. It is true that Colonel Creswell, the nominal leader of the Labour Party, has always been.a man of well-balanced and moderate views, and, in spite of the efforts of the Labour "left wingers" to get rid of him, he has retained control of the situation, and is still a member of the Hertzog Cabinet. Even now the pact has been broken against his advice. But there can be little doubt that, even from Labour's standpoint, it has outlived its usefulness.Hertzog and the Nationalists no longer clamour for "separation"—in fact,' Hertzog has, renounced republicanism altogether; and at the same time the moderate section of the Labour Party which Creswell has always represented professes a policy which need not permanently estrange it from Hertzog, on the one hand, or Smuts on the other. It js not likely that the traditional hostility between the Smuts Party and the old-fashioned Boers will die out for some considerable time. But the tone adopted by Hertzog since his return from the Imperial Conference suggests a possible realignment of political parties in South Africa which may conflict most seriously in future with the hopes and aspirations of Labour.