The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 1937. SOUTH-WEST AFRICA.

Evening Star, Issue 22618, 9 April 1937, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 1937. SOUTH-WEST AFRICA.

Whin General Hertzog speaks there is no mistaking his meaning. Circumlocution and equivocation are entirely absent from his remarks. The Prime Minister has been explaining to Nazi Germany the definite attitude of his Government to South-west Africa. What he says now is a reiteration of previous, announcements. The substance of his statements is that the Union Government is not prepared to allow this territory to fall into other hands—in no circumstances will it be returned to Germany. For years General Hertzog has emphasised this point, and he has been supported by Parliament and Press in South Africa. Yet the intrigues by the Nazis go on. The result is that a proclamation directed against Nazi activities in South-west Africa has been issued by the Union Government prohibiting all but British subjects from participating in the activities of “ declared 1 public bodies or political organisations ” in the mandated territory. This ban created alarm and indignation in Berlin, A Note was presented to General Hertzog denying that Germans were interfering with institutions in Southwest Africa. In view of what has happened there in the last few years it is obvious that the Nazis protest too much. As far back as 1932 the Nationalist-Socialist movement among Germans in South-west Africa was observed, and two years later it had reached such proportions that an ordinance was passed forbidding its continuance. Hast June the report of a commission which had made inquiries into conditions in the territory covered by the mandate was issued. The opinion was expressed that the suppression of the Nazi organisation bad not substantially altered the position. Nazi activities continued in disguise, and practically had concentrated themselves behind the cover of the Deutsche Bund, the official political organ of the Germans of the territory. The report declared that the Bund, which was Nazi in all but name, was pledged to trim its policy according to directions from Germany. There was no room ‘for individual thought or action in the Build. It h?d become a voting machine

pledged to political dictation from foreign sources, to ignore which was to face threats of reprisal and persecution. An impossible situation was revealed, and the essence of the report on this particular matter indicated that the Germans of South-west Africa had been successfully seduced from their allegiance to the mandatory Power. The net result of years of strife is that the German* are arrayed in opposition to those of British and Dutch descent. The Union Government, while firmly suppressing Nazi intrigues, is prepared to afford Germans the same facilities as other individuals. All it asks is that they shall be loyal to the constituted authority. It is prepared to recognise German as an official language in the territory and allow the German-speaking section of the people living there to maintain their cultural life and to establish for this purpose their own societies and organisations, but Ministers will no longer tolerate the persistent and mischievous political intrigues that have rendered the administration of the mandate so difficult in the last few years,

General Hertzog recently expressed the hope that the Germans would see the error of their ways and co-operate with the rest of the community. The Prime Minister’s idea is that when the mandate expires South-west Africa will take its natural place as part of the Union. In the meantime he has promised that the territory will be properly governed. The mandate is costly to the Union. A deficit was an annual feature during the German occupation, and that has continued without interruption. The Hertzog Government, though not bound under the mandate to subsidise its charge, has borne the deficits amounting to an accumulated total of more than £2,500,000. The attitude of the Union is easily understood, for the country borders directly on the Cape Province and across the Kalahari Desert on the other provinces of the Union. In the present state of world affairs it is plain that the Union prefers to subsidise a bankrupt territory rather than see it pass into the hands of a great European Power.