The Examiner. Published MONDAY WEDNESDAY, AND FRIDAY. MONDAY. MAY 21. GREAT BRITAIN AND SOUTH AFRICA.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXII, Issue 3876, 21 May 1906, Page 2

The Examiner. Published MONDAY WEDNESDAY, AND FRIDAY. MONDAY. MAY 21. GREAT BRITAIN AND SOUTH AFRICA.

An important article upon the grave question of the future relations of what may be called the British and the Dutch parties in South Africa ap. pears in the National Review from the pen of Lord Milner, The writer of it pleads strongly for the adoption of such a policy by Great Britain as shall attach the majority of the white inhabitants of the group of South African colonies to the Mother Country, and as would constitute a nucleus powerful enough to counterbalance any actively hostile elements, and leaven the more or less indifferent mass; until, in course of time, there might be brought about a temperate recognition on the part of those hostile elements of the advantages of British citizenship, and of the wider outlook and opportunities afforded by the membership of a world-wide Empire. This, Lord Milner considers, could be brought about by treating the Dutch with perfect fahness, while at the same time doing all that is possible “ to strengthen the British element and to envelop South Africa, as far as practicable, in a British atmosphere. But adverse influences are at work in the Mother Country, he alleges, which are calculated to frustrate this object, These are indifference, misrepresentation, and misunderstanding. There has been, he says, a crusade of calumny directed against our kith and kin in South Africa, and more especially in the Transvaal ; and the writer proceeds to enumerate and refute the principal calumnies.' He denies in toto the “preposterous" idea that the capitalists made the Boer war, which “ was in its origin a popular, a spontaneous, and inevitable movement and he denounces as fictitious the statement that British policy since the war has been dictated by mine owners, inasmuch as that policy has been framed—as the 10 per cent, profit tax on the mines seems to show—for the purpose of developing the prosperity of the country in other directions than that of mining. Misrepresentations of this kind, he declares, are losing us friends every day among the British population of South Africa, and everyone of these “is received with open arms by those whose hope, if not their watchword, is separation "; and adds Lord Milner, “ that is, perhaps, the most oerious aspect of the whole bad business."