A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ADEPLORABLE amount of nonsense continues to be written about the King's stay at Botha House during his visit to South Africa. The Observer, having suggested that the King of South Africa should, while visiting that Dominion, stay - with the High Commissioner, who represents Whitehall pure and simple—an unpardonable insult to the Union—now suggests further as an analogy that if Mr. Churchill placed Chequers at the King's disposal the Labour Party might object. Should Mr. Churchill have objected when Mr. Attlee entertained the King at 10, Downing Street ? Another journal speaks of the King's stay " at Dr. Malan's country house." It is no more Dr. Malan's house than it is mine—at- any rate not much more. It belongs to the Union of South Africa—a totally different thing. The failure to distinguish between Dr. Malan (or for that matter Mr. Churchill or Mr. Attlee) acting as Prime Minister, in a way that almost all South Africans, irrespective of party, approve, and Dr. Malan as party leader applying a detestable native policy, is as surprising as it is regrettable. Surely the con- troversy that has most unfortunately, and most unusually, centred round the King can now be dropped. If anything is clear it is that what has been said already would make it utterly out of the question for the King's plans to be changed now. The critics have at any rate achieved that.
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