over the keys of their safes, which were of massive steel and concrete such as are unknown in normal business concerns, the police were obliged to apply pneumatic drills, the noise of which created no small excitement in the adjoining thoroughfares. Mr. Rosengolz, the Acting Soviet Charge d'Affaires, was equally pained, grieved, and amazed at discovering that there were limits to British supineness, and failing to find the Foreign Minister he naturally rushed off to his friends of the Labour Party, whom he doubtless ordered to order the Home Secretary to stop" this outrage." Equal consternation was caused in Moscow by the tardy turning of the worm. Much merriment was provoked in London by the familiar Zinovieff trick of accusing the police of "forging" whatever documents might be found, than which there could be no more conclusive evidence of a guilty conscience and dread of coming disclosures.

THE Government were evidently in some quandary over the Arcos raid, and, as usual, when questions have to be thrashed out by over a score of trained The Boot dialecticians, they took some time to arrive at any positive decision, and several days before any announcement could be made in Parliament. Fortunately the raid itself had been a mere matter of police that did not concern the Cabinet, and in which the Cabinet was not consulted. Otherwise there would have been no raid, or it would have been a fiasco, as Arcos would have got wind of it and every compromising document would have vanished. Several Cabinet Ministers have the reputation of being unable to keep anything to themselves, and practically pass on everything to outsiders, and being very catholic in their choice of friends, some of those are hostile to the Government and have no hesitation in passing on their information to its political enemies. The Government were also in this difficulty, viz. that the worse the discoveries the worse was their prolonged tolerance of this scandal in our midst, and the more signal the vindication of the campaign to "Clear out the Reds," which Mandarins and Mugwumps had affected to pooh-pooh and which Mugwump newspapers

had boycotted. "So the Daily Mail was right after all," would be the first words that would rise to most people's lips on learning that Arcos and the Soviet Agency in London were centres of subversive activity against the State and Country to which they were accredited, and which afforded them protection and privilege. However, although the worst has probably been withheld from the public because it is such a reflection on the Government, Ministers had no option but to sanction the statement made by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons (May 24th), at the hour of our going to press, announcing the termination of the Trade Agreement and the severance of diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia, which the speaker proved to be a mere cloak for hostile operations. This is the direst defeat yet sustained by Defeatism, and a corresponding victory for virile public opinion as expressed in the undefeated Press.

South
Africa

THE Flag question has brought into the limelight and forced upon the attention of the people of this country the policy of General Hertzog and his colleagues. Their policy has been steady and consistent. It has removed the King's head from the stamps, the Royal Arms from the notepaper in Government Offices, and the Royal cipher from the Mail vans. English Colonials and English born are alike ineligible for Government posts. A steady de-Anglicization has been everywhere pursued. All this was known to the Home Government, but was unknown to the British public, when the whole Imperial Conference was devoted to the task of pleasing General Hertzog, who had already displayed his enmity to the Empire. Two different views were taken as to the result of these efforts on the part of our Ministers. The Public imagined that concession to danger-point must gratify the General. The General, on the other hand, interpreted concessions" as signifying that his policy of cutting the painter would meet with no opposition from Downing Street. During his stay as our guest, General Hertzog never made the smallest pretence at cordiality, nor showed the faintest wish for the continuance of the ties that

unite South Africa and Great Britain. He seemed unconscious of the fact that South African prosperity is the creation of the British, who conquered it from the wild by the efforts of a series of great English Governors and pioneers, backed by British capital. But in spite of his unconcealed hostility, honours were lavished on him which he hardly troubled to pick up. He is even reported to have refused the Privy Councillorship. The great cities and the Government alike showered favours on him, and never once during his stay was anyone so unmannerly as to suggest that he was to behave better in future than in the past. The Public were daily assured by Newspapers of all shades that all South African troubles were over, and that the New Dominion Status would make General Hertzog happy and therefore grateful. This "cranky" periodical was almost alone in its scepticism. But although the public were fed with this fable, some Imperial Ministers must have known better and realized that their folly was precipitating a conflict in South Africa, and for the reason that they were giving General Hertzog greater powers than he had before. He was able to return to South Africa and announce that he had achieved virtual independence, that the King's head, the Royal Arms, and all the rest which had gone, were relegated to the limbo of dead things and would never come back, and that the dawn of a new and entirely Africander day was at hand. A man of less vanity and more sense than the General might easily have had his head turned by the treatment accorded to him in England and the capitulation to his whims of an Imperial Conference.

OUR Ministers, no doubt, wished to cut a dash during the
Conference as great constitutional reformers, changers of
the King's title, in fact, little Lord Durhams.
Hauling Down They underrated the intelligence of the Public
the Flag
here, and they miscalculated several matters,
notably the pace which General Hertzog would set. The
Public in England, ill served by the Press, could only
suppose that British Ministers were effectively conciliating
old enemies without damaging our own people. Hardly

any voice was raised to tell them the crude and disagreeable facts of the case. They were not reminded of General Hertzog's past or his openly expressed hopes. It must always be remembered that General Barry Hertzog's father was a German, his mother of Irish Burgher descent. He has very little Dutch blood, but he was reared in implacable hatred of England. He quarrelled with Generals Botha and Smuts because they kept the oath, he also had taken, to serve the English King. His whole sympathy during the Great War, frequently avowed, was with Germany. He owes his position with the Nationalist Dutch, who form nine-tenths of the Dutch population of South Africa, entirely to his unyielding hostility to everything English, except the money and goods they make for South Africa and which the Dutch Nationalists think they will somehow get in other ways. His supporters are either animated by this spirit or in other cases have a lively desire to benefit by the "spoils " system. The scandal of recent South African appointments, and of the conduct of examinations for the public services, where everyone, except candidates with Dutch names, were rejected, shows that this party is gaining in influence in all internal affairs. If the inquiring Englishman asks why, after all the immense benefits conferred on South Africa by British rule, the Dutch should be so hostile to this country, he must be referred to the amazing history of that country, which is not sufficiently studied here. General Hertzog and his supporters could have carried out their policy in two ways. The first would have been by gradual and not too dramatic steps such as had already been taken, i.e. the elimination of the King's head from stamps, of the Royal Arms from Government paper, etc., coupled with the steady dismissal of English Officials of all kinds from posts in the Dominion service. Or they could do something sensational such as hauling down the Union Jack, the flag of the Empire. There is some evidence that General Hertzog himself would have preferred the first course, in which case the public here would never have realized what was happening. But some of his colleagues felt, thanks to the new Dominion

Status, granted at the last Imperial Conference, that they were strong enough to get their Independence more boldly,

and they have prevailed in the Cabinet and the challenge is now thrown down.

Ousting the
British

THE Dutch, who watched with undisguised hostility while the English made South Africa, are now going to say to their British fellow-subjects: "We are going to haul down your Flag, and if you don't like it, you can leave your homes, the towns you have built, the Railways you have made, the Mines you have sunk, the Harbours you have dredged, the Forests you have planted, the Orchards and Fields you have redeemed from the wild. You can leave your schools and universities and go away. That is the present situation. The Flag Bill, after many manœuvres, intended for eyewash on the part of the Government, will be forced through Parliament, and it is then proposed to have a "referendum" of electors with a bare majority to decide the result. The home Press is almost tearful in its remonstrances about " creating fresh racial trouble.' The fact is that since self-government was given to the Transvaal and Orange Free State, and since the Union of South Africa was created, the whole effort of successive Dutch Prime Ministers (and owing to the gerrymandering of the constituencies at the time of the Union, there has never been able to be an English Prime Minister) has been to "out" the English. Their language is not taught in the schools, except in the overwhelmingly English Districts; hatred of England is preached in every Dutch History-book and every Sunday in Dutch Reformed Churches. We have got back to the Zarps and back to the Kruger tyranny. Our Government here will, no doubt, prefer to turn a blind eye to the South African conflict. If Mr. Amery knows the facts, and it is incredible that he should not, it only shows that knowledge-by itself—is useless. Our Ministers are walking their own tight-rope, and have no time for such affairs. The English in South Africa are

up against it once more, and they are on their own, with the dice loaded against them by the last Conference.

VOL. LXXXIX

33