seceded from the British Commonwealth nearly half the white population would be faced with the choice of either abandoning their status of British subjects or else living as disfranchised aliens in the country where they have made their homes. It is the same issue which de Valera refused to face when he insisted on his claim for republican status for an undivided Ireland, simply ignoring the fact that at least one third of its inhabitants would die in their tracks rather than surrender their right to be called British subjects. In South Africa all parties, but especially the Boers, are prone to think as though in political matters the whites, who number only some 1,700,000, alone count. In the last analysis, 5,000,000 natives and colored people cannot be ignored in the eyes of the world, and they to a man are passionately attached to their status as British subjects. The secession of South Africa would in fact mean that less than one fifth of the whole population would impose their will on an overwhelming majority. Such a change could be effected only at the cost of a civil war, in which the Government would find itself opposed by a numerical majority with treaties as well as constitutional rights on their side.

The number of Boers on the back veldt who would like independence is very much larger than the die-hard section who are ready to achieve it at cost of bloodshed. În 1924 Hertzog, faced by the prospect of an electoral contest, seems to have realized that he could never have secured a majority on terms like these. His only chance was an alliance with Labor. But a large number of Labor supporters are British-born. The Nationalists, therefore, fell back on the policy of agreeing with Labor that if they could jointly defeat Smuts they would form a coalition government on the understanding

that the Nationalist policy of secession should remain in abeyance. These tactics succeeded, and Hertzog came into power with a ministry in which several leaders of the Labor Party were included. His government, like that which it ousted, includes elements from the two races which fought each other in the Boer War.

Two years of responsible office seem to have softened in General Hertzog that strain of fanaticism which long caused him to be regarded as the stormy petrel of South African politics. He has clearly come to see that the project of separating the South African Union from the British Commonwealth could only lead straight to a precipice. But he has in his cabinet at least one colleague, Dr. Malan, who stands to him in much the same position that he himself stood to Botha in the cabinet of 1910. Instead of allowing the issue to sleep, Dr. Malan revived it by introducing a bill to institute a South African flag which should include neither the colors of the old republics nor those of the Union Jack. The step was not so extreme as that taken by the government of the Irish Free State in substituting the flag adopted by Sinn Fein for the Union Jack. But in all the other Dominions the flag adopted has been that of the Union Jack with a local symbol added, in the case of Canada the maple leaf, in Australia and New Zealand the southern cross. This proposal which Dr. Malan forced on the Government was treated by the South African Party as an indication that secession was merely in abeyance and still remained the cardinal item in the Nationalist creed. It has also made the position of the Labor members in the Government exceedingly difficult.

Public opinion was further agitated by a series of measures for which General Hertzog himself was directly

responsible, affecting the position of the colored population and the natives the question that is at the root of all others in South Africa. Under British rule the policy adopted in the Cape Colony was based on the principle enunciated by Rhodes: 'Equal rights for all civilized men.' The native policy of the Boer republics was indicated by an article included in both their constitutions: 'In Church and State there is no equality between black and white.'

Two opposite and incompatible policies had thus taken root to the south and north of the Orange River. They constituted at once the strongest reason for union under one government and the greatest difficulty in bringing about that union. The difficulty was overcome by a compromise under which the colored people and natives in the Cape retained their right to the franchise while the white population north of the Orange River retained their monopoly of the vote. The ultimate solution of the problem was wisely left to be dealt with in the future by the government and legislature of the Union.

General Hertzog decided to attempt the solution in a series of measures. Of these, one seeks to harmonize the electoral arrangements by allowing natives throughout the Union to vote apart from the whites in constituencies of their own for members who would represent their interests in the legislature on communal lines. It is in principle the system under which the Maoris are represented in New Zealand, though with very important restrictions. The natives and colored people, even those north of the Orange River where they are now disfranchised, are practically united in opposition to this principle. For the reason already indicated, the native controversy is intimately connected with the

question of secession; the natives and colored population look to the British connection to secure them such rights as they have.

The South African Party is officially opposed to Hertzog's measures, but its leaders are painfully aware that considerable sections of their own followers are not out of sympathy with the principles which inspire them.

Such in bare outline was the domestic position by which General Hertzog was faced when he left to attend the Imperial Conference of last autumn. He could not appear at the Conference without in some measure defining the relations his government wished to establish between the Union of South Africa and the British Commonwealth. The admitted success with which he had emerged from a difficult position is due in part to the anxiety of the British Government to help him, but is due still more to the simplicity of his character. As noticed above, the communities of the English-speaking world have exchanged the brilliant figures which brought them through the war for leaders of a less sensational type. With General Hertzog the average human being feels that he stands on an equal footing. He is not disturbed by any symptom of intellectual superiority. The General has no taste for the limelight, and in his riper years gives an impression of sincerity rather than fanaticism. He has, moreover, that perfect courtesy which sometimes springs from a fundamental humility. The British public, which admires reserve, was deeply impressed with his obvious reluctance to play to the gallery or force himself on the public attention. He earned respect by keeping back what he had to say until he had said it to his colleagues in the Conference.

In spite of all his speeches in opposition, he must after two years in the

office of Prime Minister have entered the Conference with a sense that his country had more to lose than gain by drastic changes in its international status. In the British Commonwealth and its component states the King is in fact a president, with executive powers reduced to the vanishing point by the fact that he holds his position by heredity and not by election. The kingly power now rests with the Prime Ministers, who exercise that power subject to the will of their respective legislatures and electorates. The authority which governs each country is in fact that will, and the mutual relations of these several countries in the Commonwealth are maintained by an exercise of voluntary coöperation, aided by the fact that they are physically separated by oceans. All this is a matter of convention and custom, which hitherto has been unwritten. The solution of General Hertzog's difficulty has been met in the Imperial Conference by the simple expedient of writing these conventions down in a declaration couched in language intelligible to the Boers of the South African veldt. Englishmen who argued these things in South Africa could always be confronted with the legal phraseology of the constitution. They could always be met by the argument, 'If these things are really so, why not, then, state it in writing?' A written statement to which General Hertzog is himself a party has had the effect, not only of silencing this criticism, but also of convincing many of the Boers who were doubtful before that they now have not merely the appearance but the very substance of freedom.

In the speeches which General Hertzog has made since his return to South Africa he seems to have frankly abandoned once for all the old mischievous idea of keeping the Dutch and British races in separate and parallel

streams. He, like Botha and Smuts, to whom he paid graceful compliments at Pretoria, now seems to look forward to a future when both will mingle to an increasing degree as one South African nation. Happily there is not, as in Canada, any religious division to keep them apart, and the British stock blends more readily with the Dutch than it does with the French.

IV

The domestic problem of South Africa has long been calling for her undivided attention. Here, as in your Southern States, everything ultimately hinges on the relations of black to white. The European seeks to reserve skilled occupations to himself at a high wage. The unskilled labor is left to be done by Kaffirs at a wage appropriate to the standard of Kaffir life. Inevitably the feeling arises that a white man who earns his living by unskilled labor has lost caste. Drudgery in all its forms is regarded as the badge of an inferior race; the fact is ignored that in most branches of life drudgery is the school in which alone skill can be learned. The result is that a dangerously large proportion of the whites fail to acquire skill either in farming or in handicrafts. Even if a European is prepared to face the social prejudice against doing unskilled labor, he cannot live on the wage which the Kaffir is forced to accept. As in your Southern States before the Civil War, the result is to be seen in the multiplication of poor whites, a class for whom there is no place in the economic system. When the Boer population was returned to the land after the war in 1902, it was found that at least ten per cent were without property and devoid of capacity or desire to earn their own bread.

For two centuries this surplus element

was absorbed in the vast hinterland which lay beyond the settled areas. Toward the end of the nineteenth century this process had reached its limits. There were no further areas in which white men could live by hunting and watching a few degenerate cattle graze on such scanty fodder as the wilderness yields.

At this turning point in the economic life of South Africa the richest gold mines in the world were discovered in the Transvaal. The poor whites were entitled by their color to the vote, and were therefore a political factor with which every government had to reckon. In Kruger's days they were supported by doles in various forms. Since the grant of responsible government, the expedient has been used of giving unskilled labor to poor whites at about five times the wage which would have to be paid to the Kaffir for the same result. The engineering department of the great Johannesburg municipality is a case in point. By a standing order the digging of drains has to be done by the labor of whites paid at 12/6 a day instead of by Kaffirs whose wage would be 2/6 a day. The extra charge which has to be met by the ratepayers on this account alone is about £36,000 a year. The same policy has also been applied by the Provincial Government of the Transvaal to roads. The poorwhite vote is divided between the Nationalist and Labor parties, whose leaders jointly constitute the Union Government now in power, with the result that the policy of displacing Kaffir by white labor on the railways has been applied on a wholesale scale. The cost, estimated at £700,000 a year, is of course reflected in the rates on the carriage of goods and passengers. Anxiety to find employment for poor whites also encourages the maintenance of high tariffs directed to the develop ment of industries for which the country

is not yet ripe. Again the charge is borne by the mining and farming industries, and so operates to check the growth of the productive enterprise natural to the country. High costs limit the mines to the higher grades of ore and delay the development of land which at lower freightage and custom charges could be brought under profitable cultivation.

This policy is having the effect of attracting the poor whites, who are mainly of Boer origin, from the land to the towns. The register of a district nursing association in Johannesburg shows that ninety per cent of their cases have Dutch names. The great majority of these cases are entirely dependent for subsistence on the Rand Aid Association, the substitute for a poor-law authority in that area, which derives most of its funds from the public revenues.

The Union was based on an agreement that the two languages should stand on a footing of absolute equality, since interpreted to mean that every public official must be able to speak Afrikaans as well as English. This means in practice that the older population can obtain public employment more easily than the later Englishspeaking settlers, who grudge the time necessary to learn a language of less general utility to them than a knowledge of English is to the Dutch. The older population is thus learning a dangerous habit of looking to the Government for employment. The Englishspeaking settlers, on the other hand, tend to regard the Government as a necessary evil which has to be reckoned with like droughts or pests. As a member of the legislature said, South Africa is afflicted by three curses: tick, ticks, and politics. Thrust back on themselves, the newcomers are forced to depend on their own energies. The result is that while the Dutch are

leaving the land and crowding to the towns, where they can subsist on the public revenues, the land is more and more falling into the hands of enterprising immigrant farmers. If the present process continues, the time is not distant when the strength of the British element will be found on the land, while the great towns have become strongholds of Dutch political

power.

The growth of public expenditure since the union is indeed startling. In 1911 and 1912 the Union and Provincial Governments together spent close on £25,000,000. In the present year they are spending close on £59,000,000. The expenditure per head of the population has in this period risen from £2 to £4.2. The pressure of the older population on the Government for employment is largely responsible for the rise.

The South African farmer has always regarded the mining industry as the American farmer regards Wall Street. In South Africa the feeling has been greatly accentuated by racial antagonisms, for, while the farmers were mainly Dutch, the mining industry was the work of Uitlanders. For the reasons sketched in this article, there is good prospect that racial antagonism may now begin to decline; and if it does, the Dutch as well as the British farmer will begin to realize that his industry, as well as that of the mines, is seriously hampered by the rapid growth of public expenditure. And this tendency is likely to be helped in the immediate future by a sharp decline in the output of gold, which seems to have now reached the highest point it is likely to touch. The forecast of Sir Robert Kotze (the Government Mining Engineer, an official of acknowledged ability) for the next fifteen years is as follows. Taking the output for 1925 as represented by 100, he predicts that in

1930 it will have fallen to 76.8, in 1935 to 52.1, and by 1940 to 17.9. If, as is said, one half of the public revenues are directly or indirectly derived from the mining industry, the municipal and provincial authorities as well as the Central Government will presently have to consider whether it is possible, as well as just, to replace black laborers by white, irrespective of the comparative value of the service they render. Such a policy is in the long run more fatal to the dominant than to the subject race.

Economic problems and the color question are thus inseparable. In the past the natives and the handful of whites who have championed their claims have looked to the Imperial Government to safeguard the rights of the subject race. With the recent declaration of the Imperial Conference before them, they can do so no longer, and the natives feel that England has left them in the lurch. Yet, when once the principle of responsible government was accepted, British intervention could do practically nothing to improve the position of the native. Such improvement can only come from a growing feeling of responsibility in the white electorate of South Africa, a growth which the mere possibility of British interference has tended to check. In considering the far-reaching proposals of General Hertzog, the electorate of South Africa now knows that it has to decide the grave issues involved without let or hindrance on the part of the Imperial Government. It must feel its own way to the principles which ought to govern the relations of a subject to a dominant race. A rapid exhaustion of the buried treasures which have helped to maintain artificial conditions may hasten the process. For the next generation South Africa is likely to retain its character as a place of absorbing interest to the student of social problems.