under the Stars and Stripes in France. We have given succor and sanctuary to the oppressed of many lands and these foreign elements, in the main, have not only been grateful but have proved to be distinct assets in our national expansion. We are a merged people.

With South Africa the situation is somewhat different. The roots of civilization there were planted by the Dutch in the days of the Dutch East India Company when Holland was a world power. The Dutchman is a tenacious and stubborn person. Although the Huguenots emigrated to the Cape in considerable force in the seventeenth century and intermarried with the transplanted Hollanders, the Dutch strain, and with it the Dutch characteristics predominated. They have shaped South African history ever since. This is why the Boer is still referred to in popular parlance as "a Dutchman."

The Dutch have always been a proud and liberty-loving people, as the Duke of Alva and the Spaniard learned to their cost. This inherited desire for freedom has flamed in the hearts of the Boers. In the early African day they preferred to journey on to the wild and unknown places rather than sacrifice their independence. What is known as "The Great Trek" of the thirties, which opened up the Transvaal and subsequently the Orange Free State and Natal, was due entirely to unrest among the Cape Boers. There is something of the epic in the narrative of those doughty, psalm-singing trekkers who, like the Mormons in the American West, went forth in their canvas-covered wagons with a rifle in one hand and the Bible in the other. They fought the savage, endured untold hardships, and met fate with a grim smile on their lips. It took Britain nearly three costly years to subdue their descendants, an untrained army of farmers.

A revelation of the Boer character, therefore, is an index to the South African tangle. His enemies call the Boer "a combination of cunning and childishness." As a matter of fact the Boer is distinct among individualists. "Oom Paul" Kruger was a type. A fairly familiar story will concretely illustrate what lies within and behind the race. On one occasion his thumb was nearly severed in an accident. With his pocket-knife he cut off the finger, bound up the wound with a rag, and went about his business.

The old Boer—and the type survives—was a Puritan who loved his five-thousand-acre farm where he could neither see nor hear his neighbors, who read the Good Word three times a day, drank prodigious quantities of coffee, spoke "taal" the Dutch dialect, and reared a huge family. Botha, for example, was one of thirteen children, and his father lamented to his dying day that he had not done his full duty by his country!

Isolation was the Boer fetich. This instinct for aloofness,—principally racial,—animates the sincere wing of the Nationalist Party today. Men like Botha and Smuts and their followers adapted themselves to assimilation but there remained the "bitter-end" element that rebelled in arms against the constituted authority in 1914 and had to be put down with merciless hand. This element now seeks to achieve through more peaceful ends what it sought to do by force the moment Britain became involved in the Great War. The reason for the revolt of 1914, in a paragraph, was Britain's far-flung call to arms. The unreconstructed Boers refused to fight for the Power that humbled them in 1902. They seized the moment to make a try for what they called "emancipation."

To go back for a moment, when the British conquered the Cape and thousands of Englishmen streamed out to Africa to make their fortunes, the Boer at once bristled with resentment. His isolation was menaced. He regarded the Briton as an "Uitlander"—an outsider—and treated him as an undesirable alien. In the Transvaal and the Orange Free State he was denied the rights that are accorded to law-abiding citizens in other countries. Hence the Jameson Raid, which was an ill-starred protest against the narrow, copper-riveted Boer rule, and later the final and sanguinary show-down in the Boer War, which ended the dream of Boer independence.

In 1910 was established the Union of South Africa, comprising the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Natal and the Cape Colony which obtained responsible government and which is to all intents and purposes a dominion as free as Australia or Canada. England sends out a Governor-General, usually a high-placed and titled person but he is a be-medalled figure-head,—an ornamental feature of the landscape. His principal labours are to open fairs, attend funerals, preside at harmless gatherings, and bestow decorations upon worthy persons. First Botha, and later Smuts, have been the real rulers of the country.

The Union Constitution decreed that bi-lingualism must prevail. As a result every public notice, document, and time-table is printed in both English and Dutch. The tie of language is a strong one and this eternal and unuttered presence of the "taal" has been an asset for the Nationalists to exploit. It is a link with the days of independence.

Following the Boer War came a sharp cleavage among the Boers. That great farm-bred soldier and statesman, Louis Botha, accepted the verdict and became the leader of what might be called a reconciled reconstruction. Firm in the belief that the future of South Africa was greater than the smaller and selfish issue of racial pride and prejudice, he rallied his open-minded and far-seeing countrymen around him. Out of this group developed the South African Party which remains the party of the Dutch loyal to British rule. To quote the program of principles, "Its political object is the development of a South African spirit of national unity and self-reliance through the attainment of the lasting union of the various sections of the people."

Botha was made Premier of the Transvaal as soon as the Colony was granted self-government and with the accomplishment of Union was named Prime Minister of the Federation. The first man that he called to the standard of the new order to become his Colonial Minister, or more technically, Minister of the Interior, was Smuts, who had left his law office in Johannesburg to fight the English in 1900 and who displayed the same consummate strategy in the field that he has since shown in Cabinet meeting and Legislative forum. With peace he returned to law but not for long. Now began his political career—he has held public office continuously ever since—that is a vital part of the modern history of South Africa.

In the years immediately following Union the genius of Botha had full play. He wrought a miracle of evolution. Under his influence the land which still bore the scars of war was turned to plenty. He was a farmer and he bent his energy and leadership to the rebuilding of the shattered commonwealths. Their hope lay in the soil. His right arm was Smuts, who became successively Minister of Finance and Minister of Public Defense.

The belief that reconciliation had dawned was rudely disturbed when the Great War crashed into civilization. The extreme Nationalists rebelled and it was Botha, aided by Smuts, who crushed them. Beyers, the ringleader, was drowned while trying to escape across the Vaal River, DeWet was defeated in the field, De la Rey was accidentally shot, and Maritz became a fugitive. Botha then conquered the Germans in German South-West Africa and Smuts subsequently took over the command of the Allied Forces in German East Africa. When Botha died in 1919 Smuts not only assumed the Premiership of the Union but he also inherited the bitter enmity that General J. B. M. Hertzog bore towards his lamented Chief.

Now we come to the crux of the whole business, past and present. Who is Hertzog and what does he stand for?

If you look at your history of the Boer War you will see that