SOUTH AFRICA'S PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 79, 30 September 1924, Page 6

SOUTH AFRICA'S PROBLEM

Birth rates of Nordic and Latin .peoples may decline, but those of the black and mougoloid races persistently increase. The fact has .been borne in upon the Union' of ,South Africa in a startling manuer, as reported in the cables from Capetown to-day, by the statement of the Director of Census.' He estimates .that, unless .the European population is substantially reiuforced by immigration, South Africa in fifty years' time will contain under four million whites .and six times that number of blacks. Indeed, unless steps are taken during the nextien years to safeguard it there is danger of the white civilisation being overwhelmed by the black. The .Union 'of South Africa being a .sister Dominion, such a grave domestic problem as the preponderance of black .races over ,white is not .without interest for New Zealand. Erorn time .to time fantastic stories, not without a substratum of probability, have been written of the ascendancy of the black- over the white. The results of coloured rule, even for the blacks themselves,' in Haiti, San Domingo, and Liberia cannot bo described as encouraging. They may suit the masses of African origin, but not the more enlightened and cultured .men iind women of their race. .The deductions of the Director of Census ior .the Union of South Africa primarily concern that British Dominion, but they must be regarded as an important contribution to the great question, >hich shall rule, whites or coloured jmoplsi I.t ii jb, auestion, jsitji' g.

sinister shadow, now seen cast over South Africa, feared sometimes in Australia, and the cause of some anxiety in the United States.It is .a shadow that does not grow less with the unrest that now seems endemic in Asia.