THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8116, 10 April 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 1906.

Apropos of the reoent cable messages regarding the native trouble in Natal, the Spectator says we chink and speak of the sub-continent as a "white man's country;" and so it is if we look at its capacity for supporting a prosperous white race. But ou the facts at the moment the whites are a small settlement in the midst of a dense native population. If such a population should combine to rise against their white masters, obviously the risk of annihilation would be of the gravest. Natal is

perhaps in the worst position." She has no Imperial trocpg, and her aotive Militia do not exceed three thousand five hundred men. The task of garrisoning towns and villages, quite apart from that of conducting operations in the field would be beyond her power. She hap a purely native population of over nine hundred thousand, exclusive of Indians and coloured people, while the white race does not exceed some ninety-seven thousand, or about one-tenth of the whole. JElsewbere in Sduth Africa the disproportion, if not equally great, is yet most remarkable. In Cape Colony three-fourths are coloured, and three-fifths are pure Kaffirs. In the Orange River Colony the natives are twice the number of the whites. In the Transvaal the proportion is three to one, iu Rhodesia fifty to one. Then we have the uative reserves of Swaziland, Basutolaud, and the Beohuanaland Protectorate, where the white population is about three thousand all told, and the native population more than five hundred and fifty thousand. Nor can we omit in considering the strategical features of the situation, the natives in tie German and Portuguese possessions, who number at least two millions. In South Africa, therefore, south of the Zambesi the natives may be taken as outnumbering the whites by five to oae. If there should arise a leader among this vast people, or if some common grievance against their white masters should coerce them into unity, it is hard to see what could save South African civilisation except a long and terribie war and the extermination of the malcontents.

The growth of, the" German Social Democracy is regarded with undisguised alarm by the governing classes. Count Posadowsky, Secretary of State for the Interior, in a recent speech in the Reichstag, alluding to this subject, s:tid:"There is no country in the world which socially and politically was so well ordßred as Germany, ox where the working classes so fully enjoyed the benefits of the principle suum cuique. Why was it then that in this country there Jhad arisen a party representing three millions of electors auJ professing tp abjure the whole history and the past of Germany so completely that it declared: 'Our political system is so rotten that it must be fundamentally changed.' Foreigners who bad witnessed the outward prosperity and contentment of the German working classes bad confessed to bim with regard to the Social Democracy: 'We are confronted with an absolute riddle.' For bis own parf he was prepared to offer two explanations of this riddle. In the first place, be thought that in German methods of administration, including their local administration, there still survived many petty notions which were inherited from the 'polioe state' of former days. Secondly, he thought that among the propertied classes generosity and self-sacrifice bad not always kept pace with the increase of wealth. The conceptions in which the Social Democratic movement was rooted were altogether materialistic But it was undeniable that amone the propertied classes, too, materialistic conceptions and a materialist love of pleasure had increased in a way whiob be often regretted and deplored. The reason why society as it existed had not the strength to grapple with the Social Democracy was that the propertied classes and the Social Demoorats were alike materialists in their views of life. Sooiety would only overcome the Sooial Democracy when it abandoned this purely materialistic point of view, and when the whole life of the classes bore evidence of greater moral earnestness.

It would writes a correspondent of a London paper, from the curious text of a Natal Chris- | tian Kaffir's letter which reached me by mail, that the rising in the colony had a definite but neglected foreshadowing. The resident magistrate at Pietermaritzburg dealt with the inoideut somewhat drastically at the time, and the authorities paid no further heed to the matter. Three natives were arraigned on a charge of writing a seditions letter. Ail three pleaded guilty, and a sentence of six mouths'imprisonment was passed. ' The letter in question was directed to a fourth native, but fell into the hands of the police. It was as follows:- "Frnust ask you whether my letter did not reach you. If it should have reached you why did you not answer us? Are you a fool? I urge you to return (to the kraal) at once. Do you not hear this matter which is spoken of by the white people? All the natives in this town (Pietermaritzburg) are going home. What sort of fool are you that you should not listen? When we tell you to come baok you should answer us. We are not yet got to know day in which to pay poll tax, but it will be some time during the present moon. When you read this letter read it alone and do not tell anyone else. The army of the white people is close on ua. Do you not see that the country is perishing? I say oome baok and let us go home. The evening is upon us." *