SOUTH AFRICAN WAR POLICY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21574, 9 February 1940, Page 7

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR POLICY

Passed By Assembly

Smuts Has Majority Of

Twenty

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright

(Received February 8, 6.30 p.m.) CAPE TOWN, February 7.

The South African Assembly reendorsed the war policy of the Prime Minister (General Smuts), by a majority of 20 when the Emergency Regulations Bill passed its second reading.

General Smuts, revealing the activities of the Nazi Auslander organisation, said that it absorbed the bulk of the money collected in South Africa for the relief of Germans. Descendants of Germans were compelled to join it, otherwise they were boycotted and the defaulters’ relatives in Germany were threatened with confiscation of their property and imprisonment. The organisation possessed a secret newspaper, also an arbitrator who usurped the jurisdiction of the regular courts. The Government, operating on the list of Nazi membership, had expelled. | interned or would intern all included in it. Planned Martial Law for Britons The Government had taken over i regulations from Mr O. Pirow, a . former Minister of Defence, who had j planned martial law against his British fellow citizens. Nobody would be commandeered r,u assist countries in the far norrh, but Kenya and Tanganyika would not be left in the lurch. South Africa, which would soon have her own fleet, could not always rely on the British Navy. Meanwhile aeroplanes and mechanical transport had altered the situation The Union must defend herself far from her borders. The Union was not immediately endangered. Its defence force numbered 50,000, while adequate | volunteers were available. Only I volunteers would, in the event of j necessity, leave South Africa.