THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1927. SOUTH AFRICA'S FLAG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19778, 27 October 1927, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1927. SOUTH AFRICA'S FLAG.

The prospect of a settlement of what is known as "the flag issue" in South Africa is very welcome. It seemed to be interminable. ' It has been very bitter. Round it have whirled controversies of far-reaching implications. Its continuance has been so disastrous to political amity that it was suggested some time ago that the only satisfactory course would be to postpone the whole question indefinitely. v Yet . this could not very well be. Instead, a compromise has been reached, according to authoritative r\ews, between the contending parties. Private negotiations between General Hertzog, the Nationalist Prime Minister, and General Smuts, the leader of the South African party, have led to an agreement by which the Union shall recognise both an Imperial and a domestic flag. The former is to be, of course, the Union Jack, as the Empire's national flag is called in ordinary parlance; the latter is to be a new flag, in which the Union Jack is given prominence along with the two devices used respectively by the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. As to the acceptance of the Union Jack as the flag to be flown in token of South Africa's membership in the commonwealth of British peoples, the decision is thoroughly satisfying. It would have been wholly wrong to express the fact of that membership by the mere inclusion of this symbol in a flag peculiar to South Africa. Whatever the designs of their own domestic or sub»Empire flags, the other units in the world-wide commonwealth have all employed _ the Union Jack as their common national flag. They have not thought of doing anything else. This is by law the national flag of every British subject. He has the right to fly it anywhere on land. At sea it is universally acknowledged as the symbol of British rule. Other nations pay it respect as such. It carries everywhere an assertion of British sovereignty, over dependent peoples, trusting in Britain's care, no less than over the immediate subjects of the realm. To have this flag flown in all circumstances where an acknowledgment of British fealty is desirable is South Africa's duty and privilege. This part of the decision, therefore, has obvious justification. Any other decision would have been a departure from universal British practice and would have aroused regret, even resentment, elsewhere in the Empire. It would have been tantamount, indeed, to a flouting of British sentiment . and even of British law as embodied in Admiralty regulations. For this flag is not merely "the flag of England," however Kipling may have sung it so, but the flag of all the Empire. In the Flag Bill previously promoted by General Hertzog there was provision for the Union Jack's use officially on the King's birthday , and other, selected days. This limit was a miserable concession to the Afrikander's .prejudice against the Imperial bond. better far is the official flying of this truly national flag in token at all times of South Africa's place in the F.mpire. So far General Smuts has succeeded in pressing the case for full Imperial loyalty. This result is not a compromise, but a triumph for straightforward statesmanship. It is about South Africa's domestic symbol that the compromise has been effected. This also marks an advance on the Flag Bill's proposals. The Government was then bent on having a flag with a green ground and a St. George's cross, a narrow white fimbriation separating its red from the green in the four cantons. Subsequently an alternative design was approved by the Cabinet —a flag of three equal horizontal stripes, respectively orange, white and blue, with a shield central in the white stripe. The shield in this design contained the Union Jack in its upper staff quarter, the old Transvaal and Free State flags occupying two of the other quarters. The Union Jack thus was given no more than l-68th of the whole flag, and was rather blatantly described by an Afrikander advocate as ' a little incrustation of an old sore which would soon drop off. The' compromise design follows this general plan, save that the shield is displaced by a triple arrangement of the Union Jack and the Free State | and Transvaal vierkleurs, in that order. It may be regretted that the main element in this flag is not the Union Jack, as in the ensigns used by other Dominions, but it is given more honour than in the flag previously proposed. In this vexed question there has been much more than a quarrel about a bit of bunting. Longstanding animosities have used it as an occasion of partisan strife. In the Nationalists' earlier objection to any inclusion of the Union Jack as part of the domestic flag was a reassertion of the animus against Britain that it was hoped would

speedily die down. The opposition to full official use of the Union Jack as the acknowledged emblem of British rule in South Africa was prompted by the Afrikanders' desire to see the Union severed from the Empire. This campaign against the Empire's national flag—as distinguished from a so-called "national" flag possessed by South Africa alone —was a dangerous thing. It bore particularly on the menacing native question that calls for careful hand ling. Were the Union Jack to be relegated to such occasional and diminished use that it would have but scant honour, the Afrikanders' boast that the Empire is breaking up and that South Africa is soon to be an independent nation would seem to millions of African natives, now unde r British sovereignty, to be in course of fulfilment. How detrimental this might be to British rule beyond the Union's bounds, in India as well as in Africa, is apparent. It is well that an agreement is in prospect which materially reduces that peril, besides promising to * set at rest a divisive wrangle in the Union itself.