GERMAN INTEREST

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 133, 2 December 1937, Page 11

GERMAN INTEREST

is not popular in the Union. She it attacked both for her faults and for her virtues. South Africans cannot reconcile themselves to the military training of Africans, which forms such an important part of French colonial policy. On the other hand, the French attitude of hostility to colour bars and the tendency (however little . realised in practice in some of the mandated territories) to treat civilised Africans for political and social purposes as Frenchmen . find little support in segregationist quarters in South Africa. South Africans ar« /

probably not greatly perturbed over the fact that Germany regards negroes, according to a recent pronouncement, in much the same light as Jews —as for ever incapable of German citizenship.

It is a hard saying, and one which perhaps'only a South African can say of his fellow-countrymen, but few South Africans even in office hare a coherent and well-thought-out international policy either for the world at large or for the wider Africa. Inadequate attention is given to these questions in the debates in Parliament, and external affairs seem to remain the preserve of a rather exclusive department very little in touch with Parliamentary opinion. Out of the whole question two facts-stand out—the reluctance :of South Africa to relinquish, its own mandate, and its willingness to see the French mandates transferred to Germany. . Such an -attitude could hardly be justified, but it may be useful to ■understand ife-._ J _^"~'t