'Probably no subject of equal importance to South Africa has ever since engaged the attention of the authorities, for upon these reports was to depend whether the country should be occupied solely by Europeans or whether there was to be a mixture of races in it.'

Unhappily the decision was in favour of coloured labour. Only two men of any weight in the councils of the Dutch East Indies Company pleaded for white colonisation in South Africa. They were Captain de Chavonnes, a brother of the Governor of that name, and Van Imhoff. The former was the first advocate of a White Man Policy in South Africa, and he based his argument on the broad ground that 'cheap labour is bad labour.' He declared that 250 pioneers will be of more use and be more profitable to the Company and the country than 500 to 600 slaves, male, female, and children.' Van Imhoff's report contained these words:

'I believe it would have been far better had we, when this colony was founded, commenced with Europeans and brought them hither in such numbers that hunger and want would have forced them to work. But having imported slaves, every common or ordinary European becomes a gentleman and prefers to be served than to serve. We have, in addition, the fact that the majority of farmers in this colony are not farmers in the real sense of the word, but plantation owners, and many of them consider it a shame to work with their own hands.'

Van Imhoff records the birth of that prejudice which has been the greatest curse of the sub-continent—the idea crystallised into the contemptuous phrase 'Kaffir's work.' Far-sighted statesmen as well as 'poor whites' became the victims of that catch-word. When Sir George Grey visited Natal he alluded to the 'degradation' of white men working on the land like natives. Anthony Trollope found at George, in the 'seventies of last century, white men labouring on a dam for 1s. 7d. a day, while neighbouring coloured men earned 4s. 6d. a day at wool-washing; the white men, he noted, 'wouldn't have trod the wool along with the black man even for 4s. 6d.'

This early reliance upon coloured labour bred two effects which still influence the development of South

Africa. One was the disinclination of the whites to perform any task which custom had allotted to the coloured man. The other was the consequent appearance of a class of poor and unemployed whites, the very presence of which was instantly used as an argument against any strengthening of the white race by immigration. As early as 1750 the Heemraaden of Stellenbosch complained that white children were growing up without any work being available for them, and in consequence they added that they were 'absolutely of opinion that in view of the condition of this country it already has too many inhabitants rather than any suitable facilities for assisting further families to obtain a livelihood.'

Thus there grew up in South Africa from the earliest days a white population which considered itself the aristocracy of the country. Every white man expected to be a landowner, and, indeed, for very many years he could become one merely by moving a little farther into the interior. For the working of his land he demanded coloured labour. The soil being on the whole poor, or good only in patches, and farming methods being indifferent, a large tract was necessary for the support of a white family and its coloured attendants. The white race, therefore, spread far into the interior of the country, and occupied a huge territory, without making it definitely a white man's land or even establishing firmly a white civilisation. The planting of selected white settlers in the eastern part of the Cape as a barrier against the Kaffir tribes which had been forced along the coast by the pressure from the north, and the arrival of the 1820 settlers, were not sufficient to redress the balance of colour in favour of the whites.

South Africa was being slowly developed on the plantation system and not upon the system which was building up Australia and Canada. Even after two hundred years of white colonisation it was regarded as a black man's, rather than as a white man's country. Trollope wrote of it in 1877: South Africa is a country of black men and not of white men. It has been so; it is so; and it will continue to be so. The important person in South Africa is the Kaffir and the Zulu, the Bechuana and the Hottentot-not the Dutchman or the Englishman.' By that time the idea of de Chavonnes

and Van Imhoff that South Africa could be made a white man's land, seems to have been entirely forgotten. Had the placid life of those days continued, the South Africa of recent times would have been a country of a few slowly-growing coast towns and a sparsely peopled interior scarcely entered save by hunters and explorers. It would have remained part of a Crown Colony system rather than have entered the circle of self-governing Dominions. The idea of white nationhood would not have been seriously entertained.

But the whole history and outlook of the sub-continent were altered by the discoveries of diamonds and gold. The new wealth was found far inland. Not only did it bring about an influx of white adventurers from oversea, but it instantly opened up the interior of the country and compelled the construction of railways. Moreover, the English population received a large accession of strength, and, with a richer prize to be grasped, the rivalry of British and Dutch was greatly accentuated. The rapid increase in the white population was not accompanied, however, by any change in the original method of developing the country. The black labour basis remained. The demand for coloured workers grew with the growth of the work to be done. The shortage of labour was not met from white sources. The mine owners attracted Kaffirs from the north. The planters on the Natal coast imported Indians. The farmers, who were left short of labourers because they paid lower wages, also asked to be allowed to import coloured men, and not receiving permission, did their utmost by legislative enactments, taxation, and so on to compel the natives to leave the kraals more freely and work for them.

Then, as time went on, a politico-racial struggle between Briton and Boer completely overshadowed that colour issue which was in reality South Africa's greatest problem. For something like thirty years one heard very little about the future of White South Africa, but a great deal about the supremacy of Dutch South Africa or British South Africa. Imperialism and Africanderism, Bonds and Leagues, and so on, were the favourite subjects of the Press and the platform, and the politics, and the race prejudices, and the ambitions of the rival white

peoples filled the public mind for a dozen years before the clash of war came, and for two decades after the Peace. In all this welter of racial politics much was said and written of the future of the Dutch, and of the future of the British, but little of the future of the white race as a whole. There was a vague assumption that the world was witnessing the building up of a permanent white nation in South Africa, just as it was in Canada and Australia and New Zealand. With the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, the tone of the allusions to the new daughter nation within the British Commonwealth became still more confident. Any questioning of the assumption that a new and virile white nation was growing up in the sub-continent was resented.

Yet the long period of strife had concealed, but had not altered, the colour drift which had marked the development of South Africa from the 17th century onwards. Indeed, when the political tumult died down, it became increasingly plain that the real South African problem not only remained unsolved but had become more difficult of solution. The rapid economic development of 1870-99, plus the Boer war, had in some respects weakened the position of the white race. The new and larger superstructure had merely been erected upon the old foundation of coloured labour. But fresh wealth had been won so easily that it had been possible to conceal the real effects of the labour system on the white population. The cry one knew had been for coloured labour. What one did not know at the moment was that heavy capital expenditure on mines and public works, and the wholesale distribution of doles, implements, and stock, repatriation grants, land settlement loans, and all kinds of advances from the public purse, had given a false appearance of strength and buoyancy to a weakening and sinking white population.

It was suddenly discovered in 1916 that the Union possessed 106,000 poor whites. By 1922 it was estimated that every twelfth white in the country belonged to that class, and that the evil was still spreading. The census reports revealed the fact that the proportion of white to coloured in the Union was decreasing, that in literally dozens of districts the number of resident whites had

actually fallen, and that the country was faced by the evil of the chronic poverty of a large section of the white population. The South African problem remained. There was still no guarantee of the permanent domination either of a white race or a white civilisation.

That, under existing conditions, there is no such guarantee in the future is the considered conclusion of the Director of Census. What is also now becoming clear is that, with merely the continuance of present development, it must become more and more difficult for the white minority to rule the coloured majority. In present-day South Africa it is no light task for 1,500,000 whites to control the destiny of 5,500,000 non-whites. What they will have to face in the future is not only a still greater disparity of numbers, but a growing disposition on the part of the coloured masses to resent a white dictatorship. White rule in South Africa has to-day almost effaced the old tribal divisions and antagonisms which once weakened the native races in their conflict with Europeans. The natives are becoming one race, possessing a distinct race-consciousness. The Rev. Charles Bourquin, of the Swiss Mission, who has made a special study of the natives, recently declared that 'the abyss between the two races is growing more and more.' The influence of the purely British rule which they feel did much for them, has been withdrawn, and the natives say the cow of Great Britain has now gone dry, and we must look to our own selves for salvation.' Missionaries, Natives Affairs Department officials, and police officers in rural districts know well that the attitude of the natives has changed a great deal in recent rears. Since the Great War much vague Bolshevism has been talked in the kraals. Among themselves the tribesmen are fond of boasting that the land is really theirs and that one day they will make another effort to possess it. They resent the higher wages paid to whites, their own exclusion from many classes of skilled work, and what they regard as the harsh land and pass laws. Further, the white aristocracy,' which is coming face to face with a coloured proletariat increasing in numbers and restlessness, is itself revealing signs of growing weakness. Not only is it performing a diminishing share of the actual work of