OVERSEAS PRESS COMMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27018, 18 April 1953, Page 7

OVERSEAS PRESS COMMENT

“Bad Choice” Is New York View (Rec. 11.45 p.m.) NEW YORK, April 17. Two New York newspapers said in leading articles today that the Union of South Africa had made a bad choice in returning Dr. Malan and his Nationalist Party to power. The “New York Herald Tribune” said “renewed difficulties with India may be expected over the status of many Indians in the Union,” and said there “might be friction with London over the tribal territories along the South African border, which the Union claims.

“What forms the racial tension within the Union may take cannot be predicted, but mass strikes and boycotts are in prospect. “South Africa has chosen Malan—and trouble.” The “New York Times,” in a leading article headed “A Victory for Evil,” said civilised persons must feel dismay and a sense of shame at Dr. Malan’s victory. The newspaper said the Nationalist Party’s doctrine of white supremacy was a “false and wicked doctrine, which has been rejected by modern civilisations and by religion at all times.

“That the vastly outnumbered white man has a practical problem of enormous difficulty and complexity in South Africa is not denied, but that it should be rationalised into a monstrous doctrine of racism is wicked.” View of “The Times” Dr. Malan’s victory is decisive and leaves little room for misinterpretation, says “The Times” in a leading article, according to a message from London. .“The race question has determined the issues. Dr. Malan appealed to the electors to support the full doctrine of apartheid, and its progressive extension.

“The United Party, as an alternative, offered a policy of social segregation of the races, combined with economic integration.” “The Times” said the electors had been influenced mainly by a deeprooted distrust in both the white races of any advance of the African population towards social or political equality with Europeans. The “Daily Telegraph” says: “Dr. Malan has won because his rigid racial policy inspired greater confidence than the more moderately expressed attitude of the United Party. That is a fact which must now be accepted.”