As had been expected. General Hertzog's Native Representation Bill achieved
only a bare- majority at the' joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament. It is consequently dead. The Prime Minister has given notice that the related Coloured Persons Bill will also be dropped. General Smuts, true to his conviction that native policy cannot be settled by party conflict, has made the interesting suggestion of a kind of Royal Commission with broad representation and wide powers of investiga- tion. The -German Trade Treaty is still being debated. Nothing new has come to light except a dangerous reference by Mr. Beyers, the self-appointed pilot of the Treaty, to a League of Nations resolution on most favoured nation treatment. The Minister of Mines and Industries is trying apparently to drive a wedge between the British policy of Imperial Preference and the Geneva movement towards freer trade, which has the support of the British Government no less than that of all those who have eyes to see the dangers of economic nationalism.
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