HERTZOG’S MOTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 January 1940, Page 5

HERTZOG’S MOTION

DEFEATED BY SUBSTANTIAL MARGIN

STATEMENT AFTER VOTE WAS TAKEN.

GENERAL PEACE WANTED BY EX-PREMIER.

By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. CAPE TOWN, January 27.

General Hertzog's motion to end the state of war with Germany was defeated in the House of Assembly by 81 votes to 59.

General Hertzog in a statement after the vote said he did not want a separate peace with Germany but a general peace among all the belligerents. A dissident section in General Hertzog’s party has reached an agreement with Dr Malan’s Nationalist Party to form a united opposition in the House of Assembly. The galleries were packed when the House of Assembly continued the debate on General Hertzog's war motion. There were bitter oppositionist attacks on the Prime Minister, General Smuts, and a spirited defence by Major Van Der Byl, who accused General Hertzog of a paltry party manoeuvre which lowered the Union’s status abroad. South. Africa, he said, should support the Government and the motto “My country, right or wrong.” There had been a real danger of a German attack on South-West Africa, declared the Minister of Mines, Colonel Stallard.

Colonel Stallard added that the former Defence Minister, Mr O. Pirow, had actually asked him to command a force to combat an imminent attack.

General Hertzog should have indicated what would be the fate of SouthWest Africa, Tanganyika and other parts should Germany be triumphant. Mr Havenga, who was Finance Minister in General Hertzog's Government, said no reason had emerged for the Union’s participation in the war. It was a mockery for General Smuts to say it was the Union’s duty to enter the war. The same reason was advanced in 1914, and it showed that constitutional developments since the war had been ignored. No account was taken, said Mr Havenga, of the Union’s history of population problems when it was asserted that South Africa should go to war because Australia and New Zealand had done so.

Mr Havenga hoped the nations would end “the foolish and futile war before too much blood and treasure had been spilled.”