The South African Commonwealth. By Manfred Nathan, K.C. (Johannesburg and
Cape Town : Specialty Press. London : Hodder and Stoughton. 30s. net.)—Mr. Nathan, a South African by birth and a member of the Transvaal Provincial Council, has written an instructive book on the working of the Union Constitution, and on the political and social problems which South Africa has to solve. He deals very fairly with the rival parties, pointing out, for example, that none of them has a definite policy in regard to the natives, and that their programmes must not be taken too literally. Ho remarks on the difficulty of finding trained politicians with private means among a small white population in a vast country, but he adds that South Africa has seen little, up to the present, of the professional politician or carpet-bagger. He reproves the South African Party for its negligence, and the Unionists for their want of tact in "failing to make sufficient allowance for time natural sentiments of the Dutch people in regard to such matters as language, while some of them affect a social superiority wh;ch is extremely galling." On the other hand, he tells the Nationalists that "in no circumstances can the system be brought back which existed before the Anglo-Boer War," as the Dutch arc no longer in a majority in the Transvaal. It is a useful and timely book.
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