THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1908. FEDERATION OF SOUTH AFRICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9141, 17 July 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age. MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1908. FEDERATION OF SOUTH AFRICA.

The Federation of South Africa was brought into practical politics by a resolution passed on Tuesday, May sth, at the Inter-State Conference at Pretoria. By the resolution the State Govsrnments will recommend their Parliaments to appoint delegates to a National Convention which will meet and frame a Constitution. The details uf federation are about as complicated as a political problem can be, and, with the best of wishes, it may be two or three years before the union is complete. But that the present movement will now have a serious set-back we dp not believe, says the Manchester "Guardian." None of the causes of past failures exists now. Federation, though it owes much to Lord Selbornc's advocacy, is in no sense an Imperial measure, but has bfen taken up by tiie Colonial Governments on their own initiative. The several States have all—thanks to the present Go vernment—attained to full colonial rights. Tha Transvaal, as in Lord Carnarvon's day, is newly annexed,

but it speaks with its own voice, and not with the voice of Downing street. What is more, in three out of the four States a "Dutch" Government is ' in power, and these Governments have an obvious inducement to work together now that the old dream of a united Africander nation is within reach. Lord Milner's theory that an Africander nation would be disloyal to the Crown is now almost everywhere repudiated. It was not true to history, for the Bond was, up to the time of the Jameson Raid, in closest union with Mr Rhodes, and a Dutch Ministry was quite ready only three months before to go to war with the Transvaal over the closing of the drifts. Annexation could not alter geography, and as a sepaiate colony the Transvaal was certain to become increasingly independent of the Cape. Only federation could induce the South African colonies to work together for a common economic advantage, and what has made federation possible is the sentiment of Africanr j der unity, with which Sir E. Grey and Mr Rhodes in his early days sympathised so strongly, and which Lord Milner did his best to destroy. The grant of self-government to the Transvaal, the equalisation of its status with that of the older colonies, and the growing of a common South African nationality, are what have brought South Africa at last within reach of the ideal of the greatest South African Englishmen and Dutchmen. The conflict of railway interests—"this cloud of future strife," as Lord Selborne recently called it—will vanish before South African federation, and the wealth of the Transvaal will be used for the common good of British South Africa. With federation, too, disappears the risk of tariff war between the South African colonies, which is only averted now by the unstable compromises of Customs Conventions. The labour problem will have a fairer chance of solution if all the colonies pursue one common policy; and union, by bringing strength, will place the white man above the fear of the black, which has been responsible for so much cruelty and injus' tice. It is hardly possible to overestimate the material advantages which union will bring to South Africa, but greatest of them all is the proof it will afford that our work in South Africa has at last succeeded, and that after many failures we have made a loyal and united nation there, as in Canada and Australia.