SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1927. SOUTH AFRICAN CONTRASTS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 74, 24 September 1927, Page 8

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1927. SOUTH AFRICAN CONTRASTS

1 Mr. Lionel Curtis, who served his apprenticeship for public life in VarA oUf .P osilions on Lord Milner's staff during the reconstruction of South Africa after tie war of 1399----1902, has recently revisited that country, and one of the results is an illuminating survey of , "South Africa Since the Union" which appears in the August number of die Atlantic* Mbnthly." Eight years after the Peace of Vefeenigen the Union of South Africa, of which Mr. Curtis was one of the principal architects, came into being. Eight years after the World War he returned to the scene of his labours. Marvellous indeed must the changes have appeared, even to one who had followed them as closely as any man can from a distance of six thousand miles, and some of them doubtless more marvellous than comforting, if Mr. Curtis had felt himself free to tell us all that he felt and thought. But in spite of all necessary reservation^ and of the obvious obligation to handle present controversies with caution, he gives us a striking picture of the huge problems that confront the Union today and of the manner in which they are being tackled. The contrast in leadership, which is significant of so many other changes, is not a point which Mr. Curtis could afford to elaborate, but his vivid sketch of the two men whose statesmanship set the whole world wondering when they led a united South Africa into the Great War on behalf of an Empire against which they had recently been in arms will enable anybody to draw the contrast for themselves.

Botha and Smuts wore so powerful in combiriatibn, says Mr. Curtis, that no one doubted that so long as both wore aliyo thoy would jointly rulo South Africa. Botha was a farmer, who could read and -write, but novcr did so unleßS ha was obliged to. A boru loader of men, he ondod by making the British, against whom ho hurt fought, in elections and war, trust and. boliove in him. He divined rather than roasoncd, and. seomed to know what was best to do by a kind ol intuition. Smuts) on tho other hand, waa a lawyer with a first-class in honours at Cambridge His tutors doscribod his mind as ■ tho finest they had over taught. It is difficult to mention a book which ha has not read and remembered. He hns just published a book, "Holism," whifih somo philosophers say will constitute a landmark in metaphysics.

But of the present leader of South Africa Mr. Curtis does not take anything like the unfavourable view which the Flag Bill Controversy has spread in all parts of the Empire. While Botha was endeavouring to ime Boer ahd Briton into a single nation under the Union Jack, it was impossible for him to retain as a colleague a man who favoured the demand of the itreconcilables for secession. Dropped from the reconstructed Botha Cabinet, General Hertzog then became the leader of the Nationalist Patty with secession by constitutional means as its objective. Of that party General Hertzog as Prime Minister is still the leader, but Mr. Curtis believes that two years of office have "softened in General Hertzog that strain of fanaticism which long caused him to be regarded as the stormy petrel of South African politics." The cure was completed, in Mr. Curtis's opinion, by the declaration of equality of status at which the Imperial Conference arrived. -

In tho speeches which General Hertzog hag made since his return to South Africa he seems, says Mr. Curtis, to have frankly abandoned once for all the old mischievous ideas of keeping the Dutch anil British races in separate and parallel streams. He, like Botha aud Smuta, to Whom he paid graceful compliments at Pretoria, now seems to look forward to a future when both will mingle to an increasing degree as one South African nation.

The last word on the subject in the "Round Table" is to the same encouraging effect. The appeal with which General Hertzog concluded his speech at Pretoria is described as "amounting almost to an 'invitation to political parties to eliminate racial differences as a line of division and to come together on a basis of common interests and convictions." It was added that the Nationalists had actually been discussing the amendment of the party programme "so as to exclude anything which could be regarded as conveying the intention of secession." A wholehearted acceptance by the Nationalist Party of the attitude towards the British Commonwealth would, said the "Round Table's" South African contributor, "remove a source of division which for nearly half a century has perplexed and embittered South African politics." This was

written in February; what would the same authority say now? In February he declared that the effect of the Imperial Conference on the political outlook in South Africa "has been little short of revolutionary." Would he how admit that' something like a counter-revolution has since taken place? When Mr. Curtis wrote, Dr. Malan, the Minister of the Interior, was already apparent as the lion in the path of the happy change;. General Hertzog was described by Mr. Curtis as having in his Cabinet ''at least one colleague, Dr. Malan, who stands to him in much the same position that he himself stood to Botha in the Cabinet of 1910." Unfortunately, however, instead of following Botha's lead and getting rid of a recalcitrant colleague, General Hertzog has had to surrender. General Hertzog wanted to drop the Flag Bill, but Dr. Malan did not. The Bill was reintroduced, and the wretched controversy was revived with greater violence than ever. So far as the South African Parliament was concerned, the "Dai^y Telegraph's" correspondent reported the result in a letter dated the 30th June:—

Parliament has been prorogued after the most sinister, the mdst disastrous session in the history of the Union. Of positive achievement in legislation there has been nothing to record. Negative achieveihehts have been manifold. Chief among them must be counted the driving of a wedge between the English-speaking and Dutch-speak-ing sections of the South African community, the undoing of years of patient work by General Botha ana General Smuts in bringing those two sections into harmony and co-operation, and the gloomy prospect of six months of angry contest on the flag issue, an issue which all but a few extremists in either camn detest.

"The most disastrous session in the history of the Union" was accompanied and followed by an agitation of at least equal bitterness in the country. Our cable service has told us very little about it, but how terrible the prospect appears to some at any rate of the British Loyalists in South Africa, and how keen is their sense of betrayal, may be inferred from Mr. L. J. Maxse's statement in the August number of the "National Review"::—

Tho South African Government are said to be making preparations in their own way. They are believed to bo importing arms and ammunition and to have converted the Orange Free Stato into an armed camp. Officials loyal to the Mother Country or the Union Jack are beiug dismissed in a steady stream. "Whether teadhers or engine-drivers, thoy aro marked men .if they show the flag anywhere or attend flag meetings. . . . What is Great Britain doing? "We should very much like to know. The British in tho Union are unarmed, but they aro alive to tho immense danger that confronts them. They have no Milnor, no Rhodes, no Chamberlain, but they are drawing together, and feeling is more intense than at any time -sinec 1899. Now times -will bring new leaders, but they feel, and we in this country know, that tho dice have beon loaded against them by successive British Governments. In the interests of "conciliation" one vital British and Imperial interest after another has beon surrendered, without achieving anything but contempt from tho Boers for poOplo who are so weals that they cannot hold what they have got, and loss of British prestige with the natives at successive Boer encroachmonts.

In a country torn by such passions Mr. Amery was a brave man to refer to the subject at all. If South Africa remains united, she may, ho says, extend her leadership from the Limpopo to the Nile; but if not?—he wisely does not'say.