it had not kept up a steady supply of labour for the gold mines during the war, and which has been repeatedly lauded and thanked for its services by the Governor-General and by the late Prime Minister of the Union and, in official orders, by Sir Douglas Haig.
No one can be desirous of minimising the tremendous complexities of the racial problem which faces South African statesmen, and which will be intensified when the Union takes over the great native protectorates still administered by the Crown. I once unexpectedly found myself sitting at dinner next to the famous Dr. Jameson, of Matabele and Transvaal raid fame. We talked of the future of South Africa, and I was surprised to hear him express the opinion that the only solution was race admixture. He averred that it had already gone much further than most people would believe or admit. Be that as it may, it is not easy to acquiesce in the view of South African statesmen that the repressive policy they are adopting can in the long run prove racially preservative in the political sense, which is their explanation for it.
Nor is it easy to forecast how the relationship of the Mother Country with the South African Union can preserve its present character if the Union persists in a native policy, which would seem bound sooner or later to involve the whole of the sub-Continent in racial strife. For many reasons the imperial problem in South Africa is the thorniest of the imperial connection. It i* not likely to be rendered less so by the incorporation within the Union of German South West Africa, which is bound to strengthen the Nationalist party and increase the "subversive" elements. On the one hand the Union of South Africa is henceforth recognised as a nation, a nation whose representatives signed the Treaty of Versailles on a parity with the representatives of the Mother State. The link of sentiment is not over strong as it is. There will be a natural reluctance on the part of any British Government which desires to retain the imperial connection, to subject that link to undue strain. On the other hand it would seem to be impossible that Labour influence in British internal and external politics, which is the event of to-morrow, could remain quiescent, even if it desired to do so, before the spectacle of a
