Commonwealth and Foreign
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE COMMONWEALTH
By G. H. CALPIN, Editor, " The Natal Witness "
How far British foreign policy is moulded and fashioned on the will and wish of the British Dominions is still a matter of conjecture. The extent, however, is of less importance than the fact of it. To a degree unknown in the past the Prime Minister of Britain is answerable to the greater whole of which his nation is the central unit, and of that whole it is probable that the Union of South Africa occupies a unique position in all matters of Commonwealth foreign policy. Australia and New Zealand can be relied upon for immediate response to any cause that touches Great Britain. The " homeland " is the touchstone of action. And Canada, exhibiting somewhat similar bi-racial characteristics to South Africa, moves within the geographical and economic orbit of the United States, and is only slightly less influenced by the same spirit. South Africa, however, has a foreign policy peculiar to itself. This is not to suggest that it stands outside the Commonwealth. By no means. It is not pursuing nefarious negotiations with potential enemies of Britain. Rather it is with Britain that its external affairs are con- cerned. In the political sense, as apart from the economic motive that now plays such an important part in foreign affairs, the Union of South Africa is engaged almost solely with those factors and limiting conditions upon which a decision of neutrality or otherwise can be made.
It has been laid down and accepted as a general principle that the Union will decide, if ever occasion arises, where her immediate interests lie ; whether she will follow Britain into war or remain a spectator of it until the thunder of events sweeps her into the fray. The right of choice, however, while unquestioned and no longer debated except by the theorists, does not cover the issues which govern the decision, and it is with them the Union Government is exercised. Mr. Pirow, the Union Minister of Defence, has reiterated time and again what must ever remain the crucial test of South Africa's participation in war. Sixty per cent. of the Union's European population is of Afrikaner descent, holding no sentimental attachment to Britain as " home " and finding no racial impetus in the Empire as a British creation. The call to arms, when it goes out, must be on an issue which will claim the wholehearted support of this 6o per cent. of the population, which means that it must be on a principle so vital to Afrikanerdom that the response would be imme- diate and unanimous. It is easy to understand that what would be interpreted as a just cause for intervention by the majority of English-speaking South Africans would not attract the Africaans-speaking people in the same way. This is the crux of South Africa's attitude to European affairs. She will fight alone if necessary, or with Britain, at the place and time she considers South African independence and political status in jeopardy.
Mr. Pirow conceives possible, and is preparing the land forces for it, an eventuality in which it will be necessary for bush commandos to operate beyond the Union's frontiers, even to the frontiers of Abyssinia. An attack on Tanganyika, Kenya, the Rhodesias, would in the new and developing interdependence of this block and the Union, demand an immediate response from this country. In the same way the Minister of Defence is not slow to recognise that Lourenco Marques in Portuguese East is the Achilles heel of the Union. These are but two of the responsibilities that must be faced by the nation. For the rest of territorial Africa a con- servative estimate of the Union's fighting frontiers would lie in any terrain south of the Equator. A Pax Africana is still a theoretical idea to be approached with what statesmanship is at the disposal of the Powers concerned, but if war is essential to its ultimate achievement the Union will fight for it. These are the undoubted limits on which all political parties, including the Republicans, could and would unite, and towards those limits the size and nature of the fighting forces are being aimed.
The more pertinent question, will South Africa fight for Britain, is less easy of clear answer. It all depends! And it all depends upon what Britain herself fights for. A very broad generalisation would express it once again by declaring that South Africa will fight, not necessarily for, but on the side of Britain, if in doing so she is, in fact and not merely in sentiment, fighting for herself, her own defence and her own independence. This is the common-sense view Mr. Pirow has stated many times. South Africa would not willingly fight, for instance, for Czecho-Slovakia, or for the Ukraine, or for any other nation of central Europe, though, of course, the thunder of events might determine otherwise. " Europe's battles are not ours " is a commonplace attitude. It is an attitude, happily enough, that coincides with the broad principle evolved by Mr. Chamberlain and conse- quently no conflict of Empire opinion emerges from it. General Hertzog is at one with Mr. Chamberlain on this issue and it is an agreement confirmed by Mr. Pirow's estimate of the British Prime Minister that he is " the shrewdest statesman of Europe." This coincidence of opinion is for- tunate and vital. Absence of it, as a result, for example, of the substitution for the Chamberlain Ministry of a more aggressive Government leading to a different conception of British interests would unquestionably raise a problem that no political realism could escape.
There are still in this country numbers of people who delight in academic arguments about the constitutional issues surrounding neutrality. But academics have no part what- ever in the racial composition of the nation, and, faced with a conflict in policy between Britain and the Union, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet must fall back upon the ultimate test of action. With increasing gravity the Coalition Government of South Africa would be faced with the question, " Is this issue, on which Britain will and has declared war, of such imperative danger to the Union that is will obtain the support of a population of two million Europeans, three-fifths of which have no racial ties, language, affinity, or sentimental attachment to Great Britain, and among which an increasing nationalism and, to put it bluntly, republicanism, is obtaining?"
No estimate of the South African situation can be offered that does not start on that basis and lie close to it along the whole length of argument. The politics of the Union—and there is no Africaner who is not a politician by nature, and no English-speaking citizen that is not one by necessity—is permeated by the implications of its dual racial constitution, and the " common-sense " view stressed by Mr. Pirow almost every time he speaks on external affairs expresses a biological historical principle that cannot be denied. Recently General Smuts, the Deputy Prime Minister, and, among other things, champion of the League of Nations, felt constrained to declare in public that South Africa would be found on the side of Britain when the need arose. That view is probably right, but it is not right for quite the same reason that would impel Australia or New Zealand, or even Canada, to similar determination. What makes it right is the recognition, the assumption, the belief that British foreign policy will be so ordered as to obviate the necessity of facing the crucial test with trepidation and doubt ; in other words, that Britain, in her choice of a casus belli, will never over- reach the limits set to South African participation as outlined here.
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