12 JUNE 1926, Page 10

Speakin g on the estimates for the Prime Minister's department at

Cape Town, General Hertzog referred to South Africa's international status as follows :--" We say that a free nation must recognize only one authority— the will of its own people. As far as I am concerned, it , must be Clearly understood that this country takes its place in the affairs of the world as a nation free and on an equal footing with the rest of the world." General Smuts thus. sets forth his views :—" I regard the British Empire as an organic combination of equal States, and the Prime Minister will find that that is the attitude of every Domin- ion 'Prime Minister and British Prime Minister. There is no super-State; no super authority It is a meeting of equals under one Sovereign." The international status of the Dominions will doubtless be one of the many sub- jects discussed at the Imperial Conference in the autumn. It is well to reassure the Dominions in advance that there is no desire in this country by any important section of opinion to infringe the status already granted to the Dominions. The real problem, as The Round Table remarked in its last issue, is not between a dependent status and independent nationhood, but between "a nationalism which sees its fulfilment in isolation and ,a nationalism which sees it in an active participation in the world's affairs."