THE RACE ISSUE.

Northern Advocate, 20 September 1910, Page 5

THE RACE ISSUE.

On the general racial question, Sir J. H,. de Villiers, Chief Justice, at a recent banquet in memory of Cecil Rhodes, said: "The truth is that although much is said about racialism there does not exist any radical antagonism between English and Dutch. It so happens that,our politcal parties are divded broadly into the town party and the country and that' townsm »n are mainly Dutch, but, except during the v unhappy interval of the war and two or three years afterwards, the relations between individuals have always been friendly. Dutch and English, as we all know, freely intermarry, they intermix socially, they have similar political aspirations, and if only newspapers and the party politicians would leave the newly-coined word out of their vocabulary the thing itself would scon entirely disappear. No Dutchman in South Africa will withhold his regard for an Englishman who has meant well by this country merely because he is an Englishman. The name of Sir George Grey still remains a household word in many a home in South Africa, and I entertain the confident hope that as the years roll on my fellow-country-men will prefer to dwell upon that side of Rhodes's character which was of pure gold rather than upon that which was partly of iron and partly of clay. His admiration for the Dutch remained with him to the end, although they sometimes thwarted h'm in his schemes, and South Africans of Dutch descent will not withhold their tributes to his memory merely because they cannot approve of every part of his career."