GENERAL SMUTS MOVES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 61, 6 December 1920, Page 4

GENERAL SMUTS MOVES

FORMATION OF A NEW PARTY,

"The South African election, about half a year ago, created an unstable position which could hardly last," says the Manchester "Guardian." "General Smuts'B power stands on a razors edge with a Parliamentary strength barely equal io that of tho Nationalists, the Dutch Eight; he is dependent' on Lalxmr or the Unionists, or what support ho can obtain from both. Three courses wore open to him. "He might have decided on a second general' election, but without some largo change in tho issue or ihe preliminary pnrly arrangements the result, if our own'double event of 1!>10 is any evidence, would have been pretty much the same. Ho might have tried to find a formula of reconciliation with- the e-ifi-necked Boers under ITertzog, and (his ho recently did without success. He may not liavo had much hopo of compromise with men narrow, zealous, and conservative, but the attempt: had to be made if only to show tho general body of Butch that he had made it before he had recourse to the third expedient, his formal choico of which is now announced, "It amounts to the tiofmite splitting and rending of the Dutch as a political body by the formation of a .new party, in which the' principal constituents would be General Smiits's own South African party, the ' Unionists, and any moderate men on the fruiaes of the Nationalist and l/lie Labour forces. "The racial division which has marked South African politics ■is' frankly abandoned, and the (est becomes devotion to the Union Constitution and aversion from all forms of lawlessness and revolution. "General Smuts may notl have with his own people nil the influence of Lonis Botha, for that great man understood.' the Boer character very intimately, but for a.n appeal to a variety of races and o° intores'H lie has the advantage of a v. ider political experience and a statesmanship oxerted with deserva! applawe on the 'international field."