All In

The Union of South Africa's aging Prime Minister James Barry Munnik Hertzog, who, with a Bible in his pocket and a bandoleer over his shoulder, fought for three years against Great Britain in the Boer War, guessed that his people would not want to fight for Britain in this one. For the Union is made up of four polyglot provinces, two Crown colonies and controls by League mandate a former colony of Germany's, and the outstanding element in its history has been the internal clash of nationalities--natives, Dutchmen, Britons, Germans--not its interest in Europe's troubles.

When World War I broke out, the Assembly of the Union of South Africa voted unenthusiastically to join on Britain's side --so unenthusiastically that there was a short, angry civil war before South Africa was able to turn on its German neighbor, South West Africa, and conquer it. After the War national lines were sharper than ever. The rise of the Hitler regime in Germany was reflected in South Africa by the outcropping of Nazi cells from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Last April it was rumored the Nazis were ready to seize South West Africa.

South Africa's Boers, however, are passionately anxious to maintain control over South West Africa. They would rather see the world's richest gold and diamond mines, the Rand and Kimberley, exploited by Britain than raped by Germany. The Boer leader who gets on best with Britain is white-bearded old Jan Christiaan Smuts, soldier of the Boer and World Wars, national hero and ex-Prime Minister.

And so the day after Prime Minister Hertzog told the House of Assembly that his Government's policy would "continue as if no war were being waged" he found that he had guessed wrong. Out he went, in went General Smuts. For by another unenthusiastic Assembly vote (80-to-66) the Union scrambled on the Empire war-wagon, hellbent for the precipice.

> Canada also scrambled aboard last week, requested King George VI to proclaim that "a state of war exists between Canada and Germany"--which he promptly did. For the time being, Canada will participate in three ways: ship munitions to England, feed airmen into the Royal Air Force, defend herself. The last of these she was pitifully unprepared to do.

Sworn in as Finance Minister, to take the lead out of Canada's pants and put some silver in, was one of Canada's cleverest financial men, Colonel James Layton Ralston. A corporation lawyer who spends his spare time loafing with dory fishermen on the Nova Scotia coast, fishing and eating lobsters, he has long refused to nibble Cabinet bait. But once in, he was expected because of his bulldog tenacity and narrow partisanship to become the Government's strongest man.

> Northern Ireland was in, and only Eire, of the Empire's major members, was out. But Eire's neutrality was summed up by an official who released the crew of a British seaplane forced down in a remote harbor of Eire. Said he: "Sure, we're neutral, but who are we neutral against?"

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