South Africa's Choice
The calm detached voice of reason has struggle enough at the best of times to get through the crude clangour of South African politics, and in this most crucial of general elections its chances have been more slender than ever. But it is to be hoped that enough of the electors, who are going to the polls at the time of writing, will have heard at least a rumour of it. The choice before them has been brutally simple. Under Dr. Malan and the- National Party white dominance is to be ensured by the continuance of apartheid—a policy, as Dr. Malan himself put it, to make certain of " the purity and guardianship of- the white race "—and an attitude towards the native population generally that can only be called illiberal in all its aspects. Under Mr. Strauss and the United Party, although apartheid would be rejected not on principle_ but because it is impractical, liberalism would have a chance and men with a social conscience and the ability to look -further ahead than the next day would have smaller cause for despair. Political choices are usually of their nature between or among two or more evils and that which has,had to be made in the Union of South Africa is no exception, but unless bigotry and blind self-interest (which amounts in the long run to self- destruction) are to be counted virtues, another Nationalist victory will be no cause for rejoicing among the countries of the Commonwealth. It is as well to say so plainly. Mr. Strauss, for the United Party, has at least conceded that " the Natives are here for good " and so to admit that there are more subtle questions than any the Nationalists have room for in their thinking.- This very awareness may, during the campaign, have deprived the United Party of a simple, blunt absolute to match- that of the Nationalists. By the time this is in print it will be known whether the majority of the electorate has pre- ferred the simplicity of the Nationalists' desperate remedy to the complexity of the United Party's slightly more thoughtful prescription.
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