THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, APRIL 11, 1938 GERMANY AND SOUTH AFRICA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23010, 11 April 1938, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, APRIL 11, 1938 GERMANY AND SOUTH AFRICA

Once again South-West Africa is in the news as a location of disquieting controversy. In its Legislative Assembly a German motion, hostile to the present regime, has been rejected, after a debate in which the defiant attitude of German leaders of the insurgence has been unpleasantly manifest. The demands they ineffectually made amounted to a claim that the mandate by which the Union of South Africa holds the territory should be surrendered to Germany. Each item pointed plainly that way. To give the German language official status and to make citizenship attainable by mere migration from Europe, instead of British naturalisation, would be to break down South African control; it was scarcely necessary to add a, proposal for the institution of a German mandate displacing that of the Union. What took place in the Assembly was a frank resumption, by its German members, of the longstanding quarrel between the Government of South Africa and the Nazi Government of the Reich. The latter, a year ago, showed itself determined to take in this territory a bypath toward the recovery of much, if not all, of the colonial territory lost in the Great War. In 1915, it will be remembered, German South-West Africa was captured by the Allied forces under General Botha; four years later, after a temporary administration by martial law, the Union of South Africa accepted a mandate over it, in category C, by the terms of which it was to be administered, like the exGerman Pacific possessions, as an integral part of the mandatory State. This involved the creation of a precise constitution, and the conflict waged in the Assembly last week had this constitution as its battle-ground. By this constitution, devised in 1925, the territory was given an Administrator responsible to the 1 mandatory Government, and he was to bo assisted by a Legislative Assembly, partly nominative and partly elective. An extremist German Bund Party, with a vigour greater than its numerical strength in the territory, soon made trouble. It frankly cherished a hope of the eventual return of German rule and became actively obstructive of the new order. On their part, the members of the Union Party, Dutch as well as British, looked to government as a fifth province of South Africa. Such native troubles as naturally aroste in the area were trifling, compared with the unrest promoted by local German political organisations, which became intensely partisan immediately the Nazi regime was established in Germany, The Nazi leader in SouthWest Africa made no secret of the determined purpose. "Our object here,".he said, "is to drum Hitler's programme into the German boys, to make a fight for the return of South-West to Germany as soon as possible, by calling everyone traitor, and treating as a traitor everyone, who does not think and act similarly. The territorial group keeps in touch with the authorities of the Homeland." This threat was so thoroughly given effect that General Hertzog, as Prime Minister of South Africa, issued- a communique announcing his Government's resolve to deal firmly with Nazi intrigue in the mandated region, and followed this public statement with a ban on specific forms of intrigue. The German Government sent to General Hertzog a protest asserting that it had "repeatedly urged elimination of tension by mutual understanding." Had this policy been honestly urged and obeyed, the trouble would have speedily died away. It has continued.

A judicial inquiry by three commissioners appointed by the Union Parliament took cognizance of these instructions from Germany, which forbade Nazis in the territory to interfere in its internal affairs; but since then there has been reason to believe that they were sent with a view to citing them when intrigue Avas laid bare. It is worth noting that none of the commissioners denied the hampering influence of the Nazi activity. They differed in their recommendations for the future governance of the region—one was for the fifth-province policy, one for a resident commissioner responsible to a particular Minister, and one for the integration of some features only with the general administration of the Union—but they jointly declared that Germans in "South-West" had been induced by deliberate Nazi propaganda to be unfaithful to their obligation of obedience to the mandatory Power. The evidence they produced for this finding was voluminous and detailed. They went further, stating that the subversive Germans had used harsh methods to compel co-operation in the intrigue. Certain testimony heard, by them in denial of this charge they noted, but rejected it as untrue and emphatically recorded their judgment that the interference had originated in Germany. It iis impossible to dissociate the recurrence of illegal opposition from revived Nazi vehemence in Europe. This was bound to incite similar vehemence elsewhere,, in accordance with Nazi principles*.