SOUTH AFRICA ACTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1939, Page 7

SOUTH AFRICA ACTS

GERMAN SHIP SEIZED AT DURBAN REPORTED ENEMY PLOT. FOILED BY GENERAL SMUTS. LONDON, September 9. The first war action of the Union of South Africa took place when armed police seized the German ship Hagen lying in Durban harbour, states a Durban message. The London corespondent of the “New York Times” says that when General Smuts squelched the neutrality proposals of the pro-German group and carried the Union into the war he did better than has been realised, states a New York message. It is reported that the neutrality proposals were a veiled German plot to acquire South Africa’s entire gold output and establish submarine bases and reconnaissance air bases in sparselysettled coastal districts. South Africa would have been isolated from the Empire and controlled by the pro-German group, which planned the requisition of gold, paying for it in South African currency, and to cease sending gold to London, sell-

ing it instead to New York, where it could be transformed into dollar credits with which the Reichsbank could buy goods and services, allegedly on behalf of neutrals but actually for the use of the war machine. The extent to which individual South African pro-Germans were cognisant of Germany's ultimate ambitions is doubtful. A Cape Town message reports that South Africa has cancelled the Gorman clearing agreement, involving £6,355,000. and plans to sell elsewhere the wool earmarked for Germany, which is 36 per cent, of the clip.