president's address. 21 



by intercourse in trade and commerce, and by all that is involved 

 in the fact that it is a British Dominion. 



We thus have the one people living their lives centred in 

 South Africa and wholly devoted to its interests, while the other 

 have not altogether detached themselves from their original 

 nationality, and are disposed to regard South Africa through the 

 eyes of England. The one desires to build up a real South 

 African nationality apart, the other has barely yet reached the 

 stage where South Africa is accorded the one and only considera- 

 tion in national regard. The one tends to view South African 

 nationalism without special reference to any other nationality, the 

 other also desires to build up a South African nationalism, but in 

 close association with the British Commonwealth of Nations. 



Viewed in this manner the two aspects can well be understood 

 and each calls for sympathetic recognition. They are the hard 

 facts of sentimental nationalism which will manifest themselves in 

 face of all material considerations, and have to be reckoned with 

 in the up-building of the country. Appreciating and sympathis- 

 ing with their reality no Britisher would desire the "Afrikaner" 

 to give up the national consciousness which he has evolved in 

 South Africa, nor would the latter, in his turn, ask the Britisher 

 to sever himself from all that his country and empire mean to 

 him. In neither case, however, is the retention of these senti- 

 ments incompatible with the building-up of a real South African 

 consciousness, and the recognition of this is involved in what we 

 may term "the new nationalism of South Africa." Mutual regard 

 and good-will obtain among the best types of both, and respect 

 for one another's ideals. "National instinctive tendencies are 

 curbed and guided by the higher reasoning centres of the brain." 



The attitude that is gradually being evolved assumes that each 

 stock will retain its primary nationalism, with its sentiments and 

 traditions; while in all that concerns the real welfare of South 

 Africa the two will work together with the determinism of one 

 nation. How far the latter will in the end replace the former 

 time alone will reveal. In the interests of true South African 

 solidarity it is devoutly to be desired that a study of the socio- 

 logical principles involved will do something to lessen the gap 

 which separates the two peoples, so that all may concentrate whole- 

 heartedly upon what makes for national good. 



The possibilities of ultimate fusion of the two nationalities 

 seem bright with promise. For, as McDougall in "The Group 

 Mind" says: "The crossing of two closely allied racial stocks seems 

 to have a tendency to produce a cross-bred race superior to both 

 parent stocks, and especially to produce a variable stock. It is, I 

 think, probable that frequently repeated blending of allied stocks 

 in Europe has been the fundamental biological condition of the 

 capacity of the European peoples for progressive national life." 



Genesis and Reclamation of the Indigent White. 

 The 'poor white" constitutes a social problem of much com- 

 plexity and grave concern. The class is scarcely known to you 

 in Natal, since the conditions which produced it elsewhere have 



