MR. PIROW'S VISIT : SOUTH AFRICA AND THE EMPIRE

Commonwealth and Foreign

By B. K. LONG'

THE arrival, this week, of Mr. Pirow, Minister of Defence in the South African Government, is a reminder that Abyssinia is not the only part of Africa in which we need be interested. A cloud of rather vague but imposing rumour has preceded Mr. Pirow. It will be as well, before paying much attention to talk of vast developments in the naval station and dock at Simonstown, about 30 miles from Cape Town, or the establishment of a great air base at Saldanha Bay, on the coast some 60 miles north, to be at some pains to understand the point of view of Mr. Pirow and his Govern- ment.

He is thought, by no meatts without justiReation, to be the coming man in South African politics. General Hertzog. the Prime Minister, is getting old. General Smuts is well over sixty. Though neither of them is likely to retire yet awhile, there is interest in their probable successors. Mr. Pirow seems to be the first choice. HI!, is young. He speaks well. He has great courage. lie is vital, energetic, athletic. When, some years ago, he became the political head of the South African Police, he initiated a system of rigid physical tests for Officers: Numbers failed to pass them. There were supersessions and resignations and complaints that he was too exacting. Mr. Pirow's reply was characteristic. He told Parliament that police officers must be physic- ally fit for their work, adding that he was asking his officers to do nothing which he could not do himself. He had his way.

This young, tireless man was trained as a barrister, and practised with success in Pretoria before he came to the front in politics. South African born, he descends from a mis- sionary family of German origin. He is a South African of the South Africans, but his views are modern. He sees his country, not (as Dutch-speaking South Africans are apt to do), remote from the world, protected against aggression by its distance ; but as part of a world which air travel has shrunk as washing shrinks a cheap woollen garment. He sees South Africa, too, not as the heel of a vast Continent, with which it has no necessary association, but as an outpost of civilisation among its black, native millions ; as the trustee of white ideals, white methods of government, white justice, white leadership for backward peoples.

South Africa's practice in handling its native population has no doubt lagged lamentably short of these ideals hitherto. That is another question ; though Mr. Pirow may find that it insists on obtruding itself during his conversations here. But the immediate point is that Mr. Pirow's ideas about Africaa are accepted by his Government and are the main influence in South African Defence policy.

It is a novelty for the Union to have any Defence policy worth speaking of. When it came into existence in 1910, the only visible enemy was Germany in South-West Africa. The War gave Botha and Smuts the chance of clearing out that potential hornets' nest ; and after the War South Africa relapsed into a blissful sense of security. It even became the fashion among the young political bloods in Pretoria—of whom, by the way, Mr. Pirow was one—to point out that it was at least as vital for the Empire that South Africa should be in the Commonwealth as for South Africa to be protected by- British sea-power against any possibility of invasion. There is a certain amount of truth in that, too ; the thought of a foreign Power in possession at the Cape, and the Suez route cut by hostile aircraft and submarines in the Mediterranean, sends shivers down the spine.

But- that is by the way. It was Mr. Pirow who shook South Africk out of its fools' paradise about Defence. Not much imagination is needed to see how precarious the position of the white race in the Union really is. It is in a tiny minority among the millions of natives ; but it is committed to stay where it is. It has nowhere else to go. It must survive as the dominant race, or be submerged by the natives, or absorbed

Editor of the " Cape Times," 1921-1935. or exterminated by them. If we in England appr•ciat.ed that elementary fact about the white race in South Africa --and in Southern Rhodesia, as well, by the way, and to sour• extent in KenYa and the other East-Central African terri- tories—we should be in a better position to understand their views about native policy.

So Mr. Pirow's Defence plans really turn mainly north. He wants to garrison white civilisation in the Union against. the possibility of black attack. Every man, he has told his countrymen, will have to be trained to take his share ; and there must be aeroplanes and mobile machine-gun squadron, to leap upon any gathering of potential enemies and dispose of them before they get going. The black enemy that Mr. Pirow has in mind is not within the Union. 'Iliere is no trouble there, or likely to be my worth bothering about.

But in the North. European Powers are ar g, and train- ing black levies ; Italy's war against Abyssinia has roused native Africa as never before ; and British statesmen con- stantly repeat that in the British African territories the welfare of the native must be paramount. No wonder Mr. Pirow feels, and has made his people feel too, that white South Africa is sitting precariously on the lid of an immensely dangerous powder-magazine.

The spectre of invas. , also, is not as remote as it used to be from South Africa. The gold-fields of Johannesburg—whose life-has been prolonged for the best part of a century by the -rise in the price of gold—are a prey rich enough to stimulate the greed of any aggressor. A covettnak Asiatic Power. if there is such a thing, could make the native policy of Smith Africa a resets belli without much call on its ingenuity : and. with the range of aircraft mounting yearly, with co-operation between seaplanes and fleets perfected, the remoteness of South Africa is no longer a reliable protection against invasion.

• Protection against invasion has two sides. Coast defences

are to be brought up to date. regunned and buttressed by as:• Squadrons. One of the reasons for Mr. Pirow's visit is that he must place orders for a great deal of material, which, by the -way, he may not find it so easy to do, with our own air pro- gramme being pushed ahead at extra speed. He is supposed to want to establish a small arms factory in the Union, too. and will try no doubt to interest some armament firm in that project, either here or on the Continent.

But South Africa's real line of defence against invasion is the power of Great Britain, at sea as always. and now in the air. Rumours about Mr. Pirow's hopes of seeing Simonstown turned into a great naval base, the Singapore of the Southern Hemisphere, may not be far from the mark ; and the advant • ages of the southern end of Africa as a great concentration base for aircraft are pretty obvious superficially. though expert analysis may lessen them substantially. Mr. Pirow's visit. perhaps, will bring to a head serious discussion of these matters as part of Imperial Defence policy.

One thing Downing Street and Whitehall should beware of. South Africa, as represented here by Mr. Pirow, wants help from us in various ways : and Mr. Pimw, being a realist above all things, knows that his conversations cannot be wholly one- sided. But the concessions which he may be prepared to make will not go to the length of abating his country's rights as an equal State in the Commonwealth partnership, or of modifying South African native policy in deference to our views. If there is any idea here that that may be possible. it had better be surrendered at once. Equal status and unfettered discretion in matters touching the natives are corner-stones of South Africa's existence. It would be as much as Mr. Pirow's political future is worth to allow either of them to be affected by any- thing that happens here. But that is not the point. They are both vital to South African white citizenship and self-respect ; and Mr. Pirow would not let them be touched by any influence outside his country, however immune from political (arose- quences he might believe that he would be if he did.