PRINCE OF WALES

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 25 August 1925, Page 5

PRINCE OF WALES

VISIT TO ARGENTINE. AMUSING INCIDENT. PRINCE ON HUNTING TRIP. BY CABLE —PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. Received August 25. 9.50 a..in. BUENOS AIRES, Aug. 24. The Prince of Wives attended a ‘race meeting in his honour at Palermo. A great crowd cheered him. There was some amusement caused when a number of young women appealed to. the Prince to present them with a. hunch of violets. He acceded to their pleadings and tossed the violets singly among the girls. They renlied by throwing flowers to the Prince, who retired with a hatfu'l. The Prince of Wales left at midnight on Sunday for Puetelle. a night’s journey from Buenos Ayres, for a three days' rest and big game hunting.— Reuter.

THE FRIENDLY PRINCE

RESULT OF AFRIC AN TOUR

LINKING UP THE WHITE RACES

R EPU B LICA NISM DEAD

(By G. Ward Price.) CAPE COLONY, Jun e 20. It has proved fortunate, after all, that the Prince of Wales’s visit to South Africa did not take place, as originally arranged, last year, when General Smuts and the South African Party were i n power. There can be no doubt that the great purpose of his tour —the promotion of Imperial unity—has been greatly advanced by the fact that he is here as the guest of General Hertzog and the Nationalists. Ceremonies and festivities', in which people of both races now join cordially and - without constraint, would, with the Nationalists in Parliamentary Opposition, have been inevitably denounced, as “flag-wagging” and an assertion of the Imperial tie offensive to the spirit of the Dutch race. To the Nationalist leaders themselves, the arrival of the Prince has been, most opportune. It has enabled them, under a pretext of extending official hospitality to retire with dignity from the anti-British position which some of them, in the heat of electoral struggles, had .taken up. EXPRESSIONS OF LOYALTY. The vision of an independent Dutch South African Republic wins votes from Boers of the back veldt," but .becomes dim as soon as those who called it up And themselves in charge of the Government of the Union. The emphatic expressions of loyalty to the British Crown which th e Prince is receiving not only in the large towns, but at every wayside village where he halts, will make it impossible,- until an entirely new conjunction otV circumstances has arisen, foi . any politician to revive republicanism as a positive issue. The Prince’s democratic hearing has pleased the South African Dutch. But what . Inis impressed them even more is his obviously iiiiassurned inability to detect any difference between them and the Spilth Africans of British origin. Since .the Union the Dutch have nursed the imaginary grievance that they were despised bv the rest of the Empire as a captive population brought within its borders by defeat. The Prince’s friendly attitude townrds them, and especially towards their language, t,h e treasured budge of their race, has aroused them to the sudden realisation that, in this respect, they have been suffering from the common malady of persecution mania.

MUTUAL TOLERATION. Amalgamation between the British and Dutch races in South Africa will probably never be complete any more than it will be complete between the English and the Scots. Th e parallel is a close one. There is the same close degreee of superficial resemblance, which only r makes more striking the profound temperamental differences that lie beneath it. But strong forces are at work to bring about mutual toleration and cooperation between the two white races of South Africa. For if they do not combine to strengthen their grip upon the fair inheritance which, by such different ways, has come into their joint posession, it may soon be a ‘ white South Africa” no longer. At _ present, in about equal proportions, md they make up a population of one and m-lialf million, whites. In fifty years, at present rates of increase, the whites may hav e tripled, but the blacks will have increased fourfold. and the relation will be four and a-lialf millions and twenty-two millions. Since the war, moreover, a new ten. dency of consolidation has manifested itself among the native population of South Africa., Previously they were split into mutually hostile tribal areas. Now the idea of their unitv as members of the Bantu race is steadily spreading among them, and their attachment to local chiefs declines. THE ECONOMIC HANGUP. ' Into this mass of primitive population the doctrines of aggressive Communism are being steadily injected, and small native outbreaks, hitherto quite local in different parts of the Union are causing already grave anxiety to those responsible for public order. The form id ability of the native as a possible military danger is increased by the steady training of the black to arms carried on throughout the vast territories of French Equatorial Africa, But the economic danger is even, more pressing. South Africa, an ideal country for the settlement of the surplus population from Europe can never offer them a market for their laboraand skill alone, while the black, with liis cheaper competition based on a far lower standard of living, is available instead. To combat this difficulty in the path of developing South Africa by European stock two schemes are before the country. One is to limit, by' the y Colour Bar Bill, the application of black labour to the lower grades of industry, reserving by compulsion all skilled occupations for the whites. The other is being initiated by the new Wages Board, and consists of fixing minimum rates of pav in every grade, so that the higher skill of the white may obtain a preference for him over his black competitor.