SOUTH AFRICA AND REPUBLICANISM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 222, 19 September 1928, Page 6

SOUTH AFRICA AND REPUBLICANISM

JENERA!/ HERTZOG, Prime Minister of South Africa, is now definitely on the side of Empire. Though a Dutchman born, he realises that under British suzerainty all men have a fine liberty and equal opportunities,for peaceful progress. Lately there has been spread in the Orange Free State the propaganda of a definite republicanism, which has been fostered by the Dutch clergy—the predikants who have remained bitterly hostile to Britain and the British, and who even now preach from their pulpits the doctrine of racial hatred. Theirs has been a bad influence on South African unity, and sadly needed the opposition of a Dutch-born Prime Minister. General Hcrtzog has warned the clergy against the danger of preaching republicanism, which he declared was quite unnecessary, as South Africa had sovereign freedom. There are some Dutch people well enough satisfied with life under the flag of Empire. Only recently some hundreds of Boer families trekked from Portugese East Africa to the British territory that was formerly German South-West Africa. They had spent a few years under Portugese rule. It was enough. They petitioned to be re-admitted to British territory. There could be no better lesson to the discontented.