THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 1909. SOUTH AFRICA FEDERATES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9566, 12 August 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 1909. SOUTH AFRICA FEDERATES.

The passing of the South African Union Bill by the House of Lords narks the birth c f the third great colonial British federation and symbolises that tendency toward national partnership and enlargement which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of our time. Here and there a nation splits itself off from an ancient alliance, as Norway has done and Hungary has threatened, r but generally the old sayinsr that union is strength sways the public counsel. What South African union is to mean, how it will work out, and what permanence in spirit as well as in word it will have, are questions for the iuture, and in a very special sense. It is not to be supposed that Boer and Briton will incontinently fall into each other's arms because the politicians have succeeded in framing a Constitution. The rivalry between the two races is too inveterate and too acute to be brought to an end in a moment by the mere pronouncing of the shibboleth of union. Necessarily, a federation is born to trouble. It may have arrived rather soon, owing to the difficulty of adequately providing centralised government for a big, strangling country, or rather late because the partners have been so long accustomed to managing their own affairs that they will chafe over an administration which itself may be inclined toward over-centralisation. Human wisdom is not equal to choosing just the right ripe time for political union, and must take the chances involved in doing the best it can. In South Africa, however, to ordinary risks of this kind are superadded that of harmonising peoples who so recently were enemies in a long and bitter war, and States which have not all had any real experience of representative Government. Certainly the conditions suggest no ground for alarm, but quite the reverse. It is only seven years since thß peace was made, yet here are the Boers whose names were must portentous in war figuring among the federal delegates in England in charge of a Constitution; under the Crown. The Boer Com-mander-in-Chijf, General Botha, actually dssires that Dr. Jameson, the leader of one of the least justifiable raids in history, shall be South Africa's first Prime Minister! As it is to-day, the position is universally unique. It is true that two races federated in Canada with the happiest results; but they had already lived long together in amity, and the test of racial compatibility had been undergone and triumphantly survived. No such experience justifies South African federation. Yet there is one analo.-y between the two instances which may be aignally potent in binding ths new Union. A

prime incentive to > Canadian unity ■ t was the presence across the border J: of a nation always technically j i foreign, and then much more literally I so than it has been Bince or seems ; likely to ever be. South Africa also has its warning against dissension, none the less formidable because it is coloured. In Cap 3 Colony, the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, Natal and Rhodesia, there were, according to the last census, nearly five million coloured people and less than a million and a quarter whites. There is ground enough for unity, and that its significance is well understood may be gathered from the l fact that Natal, the most British of th.ise colonies, and therefore presumably the least favourable to federation, on referendum endorsed tho Constitution by a heavy majority. For Natal has to deal with about ten coloured people to one white. Whether recognition of common danger will outweigh whatever racial prejudice may remain, and whether "the seeds of harmony," having been sown by the federal convention, will "grow in strength," as Mr Abraham Fischer predicted in the Orange River Assembly, is what has to be seen. In the meantime, just how much lack of racial affinity lies behind the fine promise of the visible circumstances is a matter of guess work. The South African federation is a movement for white political rule. The worst to be imagined in South Africa is separation, under the influence of Africanderism. There has always been more or less, and often more than less, tendency in that direction. The present current of events does not suggest it, and it is ! not a3 conceivable as it was when Imperial statesmen were more negligent or more meddlesome colonially than they are nowadays.; Still, if it , should come earlier than is conson- ' ant. with approximate notions of the time when each of the greater - British colonial countries must grow up arid get from uider the parental roof tree, while holding it filially dear, South Africa ought to remain ardently pro-British in the wor.d'e alignment of national forces, gauged as such things are by benefits re- ' ceived and in sight.