The General Election in South Africa on Tuesday next should
clear the air. General Smuts has made the issue plain between steady development within the Empire and secession, and in his speech at Cape Town on January 27th he professed himself confident of victory. The South African party has remained staunch, the Unionists have thrown in their lot with him, and the English-speaking voters who did not go to the polls last March have been roused from their apathy by a consciousness of the grave danger inherent in General Hertzog's Dutch Repub- lican programme. It is significant that the Nationalists have begun to suggest that they do not want to secede at once ; evidently they have found even their own supporters reluctant to accept a policy which would mean a financial panic and perhaps a civil war, followed by a native rising. The English- speaking voters in the mining districts are unfortunately dis- tracted by the claims of the Labour Party, which is hostile both to secession and to General Smuts. But it may be hoped that most of them will realize the supreme importance of the constitu- tional issue.
