A COWARDLY POLICY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4219, 4 December 1939, Page 7

A COWARDLY POLICY

SOUTH AFRICA’S RESPONSIBILITY. “Our best friend in a dangerous world is the British Commonwealth. Britain has for a generation extended to South Africa the most conspicuous helpfulness. A sense of mutual feeling has arisen which would deeply and irrevocably be lost if we now, at this hour of danger, assert our separateness. Dissociation from the Commonwealth at present would bring a blot on our fair name; which time would not erase. The intensive policy carried out by Germany since 1933 was but preliminary preparation for what is surely coming. Must we wait until the fire has been kindled inside our territory?: To me it is

clear that the time to defend South Wiest Africa, is not when, after a, few years, it has been singled out for attack, just as Poland now, and Czechoslovakia before; but that the great moment is now, while other nations have undertaken the real task of calling a halt to the German policy of force. The fight for Danzig is but the eve of the fight for South-West Africa. Nobody, taking the future of South; Africa seriously, could approve the cowardly policy of neutrality.”— General Smuts, the South African Prime Minister, in a special message to the people on participation in the war.