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Hokitika Guardian, 7 June 1928, Page 2

Urn haps some New Zealanders may find it difficult to lK’licve. as a contemporary remarks, that while the “All Blacks” were making their bow to the South African public a more important event had been reached in South African history. The cable messages show that the first hoisting of the new national flag on May 31st. was attended by a good deal of bitterness, but they do not make the situation quite clear. The settlement embodied in the recent Act, which Was passed after a long and heated controversy, was a compromise. It provides that the Union Jack shall be one of the two flags of the Union, symbolising the association of the Union with the Empire; that there shall be n national flag, containing in its centre the Union Jack and the two Republican flags grouped; and that these two flags shall be flown together on Government buildings. Apparently, however, the Government was able to decree that in certain places only one flag should be flown, hence the protests of a section of the British community. Yet wc read also that “the booming of guns and the fanfare of trumpets heralded tho hoisting of the Union Jack and the new national flag on Government buildings.’’ There is still something to be explained. Probably it was too much to hope that in a country with a past .so embittered with racial struggles this inauguration would pass off without friction. "What is most important is that a compromise was reached which recognised the claims of both Dutch and English. “That both sides were able at the last moment to make the sacrifices involved in coining to a settlement,” says the South African correspondent of tho ‘Round Table,” “is a tribute to the strength of that spirit of unity, which young as it is, can in times of stress prevail over our many and distracting political divisions.” The new national flag embodies British and Dutch history and ideals, and there is true statesmanship in General Smuts’ appeal to South Africa to accept it in the spirit of tho highest patriotism.