• But on the whole the prospects of a successful
move against the Government are no more than moderate. The Cabinet after a first impulse of alarm and hesitation has decided • to carry on, and it is doubtful whether Mr. Roos can detach enough Nationalist members to ensure General Hertzog's defeat in the House of Assembly. The speeches delivered on Wednesday evening by Mr. Roos himself at Johannesburg and General Smuts at Germiston do not suggest that an accommodation between the South African Party and the Roos group (whatever that may turn out to be) is going to be the simple matter Mr. Roos imagined. A General Election is due in any case in 1984 and all the signs arc that the Nationalist Party will be completely discredited by then. The future is with General Smuts and the South African Party and an almost certain victory two years hence may well appeal to them more than a compromising alliance now, particularly since the alliance may not fulfil its prime purpose, of ousting the Government forthwith. Moreover, difficulties—the exchange problem, the racial problem, the native problem, the Natal seces- sion movement—are pressing the Cabinet so hard that its capacity to stay its full term of five years is doubtful in any case. Precisely what position is created by the action the Government has been compelled to take regarding the gold standard is still obscure. Notes are to be inconvertible internally (this to prevent lioarding of sovereigns), but international obligations are apparently still to be settled in gold, and no decision has yet been reached regarding devaluation. An attempt is evidently to be made to stay on a gold bullion exchange basis.
