Color Line

The Union of South Africa, home of 2.000,000 dominant whites, 7,000,000 blacks and 250,000 Indians, grappled last week with an ugly racial problem. In Durban, chief port and swank resort of Natal Province, prosperous Indian merchants and farmers (mostly descendants of laborers imported in the 19th Century) had bought $3,000,000 worth of property in the past two and a half years, had moved into new homes in the city's toniest suburbs.

Alarmed by this breach of the Union's rigid taboos, Parliament stood ready to forbid further property acquisitions by non-whites in Natal. Behind the measure stood hardheaded, international-minded Prime Minister Jan Christiaan Smuts. Said he: Durban must remain a "white city," rich Indians should invest in war loans.

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