er to the now united states of South Africa the
unqualified control of their own affairs, Britain necessarily left to
them the vexed problem of devising a just relation between the ruling
races and their subjects of backward or alien stocks; the problem which
had been the source of most of the difficulties of South Africa for a
century past, and which had long delayed the concession of full
self-government. Nowhere in the world does this problem assume a more
acute form than in South Africa, where there is not only a majority of
negroes, mostly of the vigorous Bantu stock, but also a large number of
immigrants mainly from India, who as subjects of the British crown
naturally claim special rights. South Africa has to find her own
solution for this complex problem; and she has not yet fully found it.
But in two ways her association with the British Empire has helped, and
will help, her to find her way towards it. If the earlier policy of the
British government, guided by the missionaries, laid too exclusive an
emphasis upon native rights, and in various ways hampered the
development of the colony by the way in which it interpreted these
rights, at least it had established a tradition hostile to that policy
of mere ruthless exploitation of which such an ugly illustration was
being given in German South-West Africa. An absolute parity of
treatment between white and black must be not only impracticable, but
harmful to both sides. But between the two extremes of a visionary
equality and a white ascendancy ruthlessly employed for exploitation, a
third term is possible--the just tutelage of the white man over the
black, with a reasonable freedom for native custom. 'A practice has
grown up in South Africa,' says the greatest of South African
statesmen,[8] 'of creating parallel institutions, giving the natives
their own separate institutions on parallel lines with institutions for
whites. It may be that on these lines we may yet be able to solve a
problem which may otherwise be insoluble.' It is a solution which owes
much to the British experiments of the previous period; and the
principle which inspires it was incorporated in the Act of Union. This
is one of the innumerable fruitful experiments in government in which
the British system is so prolific. Again, the problem of the
relationship between Indian immigrants and white colonists is an
acutely difficult one. It cannot be said to have been solved. But at
least the fact that t