When the debate was adjourned last week I was busy referring the hon. Minister of Defence to the purchase of his aeroplane, the Avro-York, and in this connection I want to make just one or two more remarks in addition to what I have already said, namely that it appears so strange that the Prime Minister bought a plane like that. It has already been announced in the Press that the Avro-York is now on the point of being improved to what they call a better aircraft. If the announcement in the Press is correct that already at this stage the aircraft will be improved, it renders the act of the Prime Minister in spending so many thousands of the money of South Africa on the purchase of his plane still more difficult to understand and still more worthy of criticism. The facts which have come to our attention are more or less that the Avro-York is unsuitable to a country like Canada, or to a country like Australia, and further that the Avro-York is an aircraft which is today unsuitable for civil aviation in the United States of America because it does not comply with the safety regulations laid down for civil aviation in America. If that is true, and I have definitely been told that it is true, that the aircraft does not comply with the safety regulations for civil aviation in America, the matter is of a still more serious nature. My question is why the Prime Minister did not buy in the open market. For the same amount of State money he could have got an efficient machine which is much better. Last week already I referred in passing to the fact that it is generally accepted in the world that there are better aircraft than that purchased by the Prime Minister. It is not necessary to mention names. Only last week America came to demonstrate to us that it has an aircraft which is regarded as being better. It is said that even the advisers of the Government were not unanimous as regards this purchase, because they were naturally under the impression that this aircraft would be improved in the near future. I should like the hon. Minister to give us an explanation why he should be bound to one particular nation in this respect. Must the purchase of the aircraft be regarded as an indication of the type of aircraft South Africa will purchase for its route to London? There are a whole number of aircraft which are better according to the experts. I, however, wish to leave this matter there for a moment, and I am jusst asking the Prime Minister to give us the information. Another matter which I wish to touch upon is the amount of £45,000,000 which is being asked for here. For the past few years the House has been faced with a fait accompli, and no particulars of expenditure are given. So many times now the House has been blindfolded and asked to give the Prime Minister a blank cheque for £45,000,000. I do not know whether that is possible in any other Parliament without serious opposition eventuating. It deprives Parliament of the right of exercising any criticism. There are a large number of particulars which cannot be war secrets and which can be given. Is it a war secret to say how much was contributed to the Boy Scouts? Is it a secret to tell the House how much of this vote was used for physical culture? Is it a war secret to tell the House how much of it falls under the heading of recreation and charities? Is it a war secret to tell this House how much subsidy is paid to Imperial Airways? I mention these few examples to prove that the argument that no particulars can be given in connection with the £45,000,000 because it is a war secret falls away to a large extent. The hon. the Minister ought to take this House into his confidence and to make a statement. Seeing that the particulars are not printed here, he can rise and say: “Look, there are certain items in connection with which there are no war secrets.” In that way he can take the House in his confidence and give details in connection with certain items. In order to enable the hon. the Minister to make a statement in connection with Imperial Airways, I will propose—

We shall of course vote against the whole £45,000,000; we vote against the whole vote, but we want to give the hon. Minister of Defence an opportunity in this manner to make a statement about what the amount is in regard to the subsidy paid to Imperial Airways, whether the amount is now more than it was in the past, or less.

I regret, but the hon. member cannot move an amendment in that form. The hon. member must confine his amendment to a specific item appearing in the. Vote.

I propose to reduce the amount by £250,000, and I add to that: “Regarding the subsidy paid to Imperial Airways.” That is the only way in which I can put it. The Airways Conference is now over, and we shall be glad if the hon. Minister will make a statement in connection with the subsidy to Imperial Airways. Is it an amount which still has to be paid, and under what conditions must we pay it? Is the contract with Imperial Airways in force or is a new contract now being entered into? If the new contract has been drawn up, is that the amount we shall have to pay under the new agreement, and will the amount under the new agreement be more or less than what we have paid up to now. We will appreciate it if the hon. Minister of Defence will inform the House for how many years the contract will be valid and what the annual subsidy is, whether we are to continue with the subsidy and whether the subsidy is more or less than it was. Another question I should like to ask is in connection with the hon. Minister’s statement in Another Place. We have heard that the hon. Minister of Defence in Another Place gave a detailed statement as regards his intentions as far as the troops who are to go to Japan are concerned, the troops who will have to sign the Yellow Oath. [Laughter.] I think it is a good name. We already have three oaths, the red oath, and the blue oath and the yellow oath. The question we should like to ask the Prime Minister is whether those who do not now have to go to the East will have the opportunity of returning to South Africa as soon as possible, and whether the others who will take the yellow oath to go to the East will receive the opportunity first to come back to their homeland for a while before they are sent to the East. [Time limit.]

I think it would be well to reply to the points raised last Thursday and which are now again brought up by the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus). The hon. member appears to be surprisingly upset by the purchase of the York, and he is under the impression that it is an inferior machine, perhaps an obsolescent type which cannot comply with the conditions laid down in America in regard to safety, and the hon. member has heard it said that I acted contrary to the advice of my advisers, and he had other difficulties. The hon. member is under a misapprehension and the information received by him is not correct. In the acquisition of the Avro-York I acted solely on the advice of my expert advisers. It was all the same to me. It was made clear to me that the machine in which I usually flew is dangerous with two engines because one often has to fly for a large portion of the night, and if one engine becomes out of action the position is dangerous; the machine then cannot land and it may become a matter of life and death. For some years representations have been made to me in connection with the matter and acting on the best advice I could receive I proceeded to acquire another machine, the York, which has four engines; even it two engines cease to function, it can continue without those two engines without an element of danger being created. That is the reason why I decided to acquire the aircraft.

Was the position that they had to buy a British machine, or could it be bought in the open market?

It was the best machine available.

Then your advice is surprising.

The matter was carefully investigated. It was the best available. I am now talking about a year or two ago. If one waits for some years one can of course acquire other machines. The best make of machine available was the York.

May I ask who gave you that advice? Your own Department?

My own advisers. The York is the Lancaster bomber; it is the civilian form of the Lancaster bomber, which is regarded as one of the best machines in the world as regards safety, and all the other matters which promote safety.

The other Dominions do not want the thing at all.

The other Ministers would like to have it if they could, but they cannot obtain it. I feel quite satisfied. I have travelled with a Liberator, the American type of machine which is also a converted bomber. The Liberator, even as the York, is a converted bomber.

And the Douglas?

That is the Dakota aircraft which we are already using on a large scale. We have quite a number of them and they are the machines which bring our people back to South Africa from the North, and vice versa.

Are they safe?

I believe that as regards safety there is little to choose between the various first-class machines. They all have four engines, and as regards safety, although there is a certain degree of danger as regards them all, the aircraft were tested as bombers in the war on the larger scale and over the most lengthy distances.

Have you seen the report that the York is being changed?

My York is not being altered.

Then it remains obsolescent.

A bigger version of the York will come on to the market, the Tudor. It is still a York, the same machine, but built for civilian use.

Shall we use the Tudor or the York for the new route?

We shall start with the York. That is the only one which is available. It will take time before the Tudor is ready for use. The hon. member need not worry about it. As regards the expense, there is no question of expense. We have an arrangement with the British Government as regards our war expenditure on aviation, and everything in connection with that in the North. The York was added; it was thrown in in the matter.

A present?

Not a present, but no arrangements were made for payment; it was provided on the basis of aircraft for war purposes.

Then it was given so that we should use Yorks for the route?

The hon. member can draw his own conclusions. His premise is quite wrong and his conclusions more so. I can only say that of course from time to time changes are made in the type of aircraft and the York will not remain as it is for ever. Every few years improvements are made and new inventions are applied. But such a machine does not last very long; only a number of years. I acted on the best advice and I am highly satisfied with what we received.

Did we receive it as a bonsella?

It was not charged for in the account.

Is it a present or what? I cannot understand it.

The hon. member will never understand it, because he does not wish to understand it.

Directly or indirectly South Africa has to pay. Otherwise it is a present.

It is not a present, neither is it being paid for. No specific arrangement for payment was made. It is included in the total arrangement between us and the British Government.

But it must appear in the war expenditure accounts of South Africa.

No.

The Minister of Finance told me that it appears in the War Expenditure Accounts.

In the total amount. We pay £500,000 per month for all the aviation facilities we receive in the North. It is included in that.

But then we do pay.

The hon. member raised another point, and that is what we pay to Imperial Airways.

The subsidy.

The vote appears in my estimate, but the House will remember that the contract with Imperial Airways was entered into before the war. I had nothing to do with that. It was an arrangement which was made at the time, just like our mail contract, and there the hon. member will be able to receive information. It is an old contract. It is £20,000 which we pay and no new arrangement has been made.

£20,000 per annum?

We pay annually. I now come to other points which have been raised. The hon. member and other hon. members spoke about our future organisation of defence, and he suggested certain things we should keep in view when we make the arrangements. Now, I must say that I have not yet evolved any firm plan as regards what future arrangements will be made about our Defence Forces. Certain considerations weigh heavily with me. In the first place there is the old practice we have hitherto followed, namely the Commando system which might possibly be improved and extended, and it is an economical system of auxiliary or reserve defence which is available in the country, and I think that we will continue with that. The Commando system gives the whole of the citizenry an opportunity to contribute their share to the defence reserves of the country. As regards the permanent forces we have made certain improvements, even before the war, which we must keep in view. There is for example the old Special Service Battalion which was a conspicuous success. Young people who would otherwise have been idle and without work, although they had enjoyed a certain amount of education, were taken up in the Special Service Battalion, and the Battalion became an outstanding success. During the war that was changed to the Youth Brigade, which was also enlarged. It acquired somewhat more of a war colour, and outstanding soldiers were trained there. I think that the experience we gained there and the results achieved by means of it will have to be kept in view in future when we make plans for future arrangements. When we make plans for our defence forces in future, I am of opinion that we must keep in view the special precedent we created here and which worked so excellently. Then there is another improvement which also had a good effect, namely the Battalion for Physical Training. We have now saved about 2,000 boys who otherwise would have been lost to society. They suffer from one or other physical weakness which renders them unfit for full service in society due partly to bad medical attention; and during the war we took those boys and, acting on medical advice, included them in this scheme, because the medical advice was to the effect that they could be cured and built up. We wanted to build them up into first-class citizens, physically and spiritually, and in order to do that we started this Battalion for Physical Culture. It is an outstanding success. Nearly 2,000 boys have been built up in this manner.

Is not too much of a military colour being given to it?

In time of war we must do it, just as was done with the Special Service Battalion. We built up boys who otherwise would have been wholly or in part lost to society. Where we are now being asked in future to build up a defence force, we shall have to keep in mind these improvements we have made and which up to now have borne good fruit. Our permanent force will of course be a more complicated force than it was in the past. For example, in the past we devoted very little attention to a naval force. In future we shall have to devote much more attention to a naval force. I say that it should be on the same basis and just as large as the other two forces, namely our air force and our ground forces, but it is a force which will be of steadily growing importance. Because we have now learnt what responsibilities rest upon us as the result of our physical position in the world. Our defence at sea has become very important because we have a long coast line and we must steadily devote more attention to it with an eye to our future safety. We shall have an expansion which will be fairly great. It will be the third portion of our defence forces, and it will play a much larger rôle in future than it did formerly.

Shall we receive some of the ships which we captured in the war together with other countries?

About freighters no arrangement has yet been arrived at. Our prize, if I may call it that, was always taken together with other powers, and the question of the eventual disposal of it will be dealt with later. Up to now no arrangement has been made. Some of the ships have been handed back to their former owners.

They are in our service.

In the case of the French ships, we handed them back. The ships we captured at Madagascar we handed back to the French, but the other ships are in common use and the eventual arrangement will be made later. I mention the question of our sea force because it is something new which we shall have to keep in view.

The hon. member for Sea Point (Mr. Abbott) has raised this question of the organisation of our navy and naval force, and he has recommended there should be a separate organisation entirely divorced from our military organisation in regard to our force at sea. I wish to make it quite plain to the Committee that our air force,

our military land force, and olir naval force operate on quite different bases and are distinct forces under their own control. It is only for certain purposes they are jointly administered by the Defence Department. Take, for instance, medical services. You do not want to have three medical services for the three different divisions of our Defence Force; and for accounting purposes, Q. Services, purposes of supply and quite a number of very important purposes it is much better to have one big organisation looking after these various branches. But in regard to their internal organisation and operational work they all work independently, even now, and it will continue to be so and even more so in the future. But the Committee will understand it would be very inconvenient and expensive for us to have three different Ministers, a Ministry of Defence, a Ministry of Air and a Ministry of Marine. Our whole show is much too small to have such an elaborate organisation. So we keep them together in one Defence Department, but in the Defence Department you have three different sections, each looking after its own force. The air force looks after its internal arrangements quite apart from what the men in the other military branches do, and it will be the same for the naval force.

*They are three separate arms and their recruiting is of course a fairly difficult question. The hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) suggested that we should co-ordinate it with the recruiting of policemen. I do not say anything against that. There may be much to be said in favour of it, that with the recruiting for the permanent force we should as far as possible let that recruiting fit in with that for police. Something like that may be possible. I have not yet arrived at a decided opinion about it, but it is an idea which can be evolved if the police see fit to co-operate in the matter. But we must not lose out of sight the fact that our permanent force in future will be a much more specialised body than it ever was before. We have all the machinery, the mechanised weapons and all the new inventions, with the result that the soldier of the future will be practically a technician. He will be somebody with a specialised technique, who is specially trained and is almost an engineer, and it is understandable that a defence force for war, in war service, will be a specialised force, the recruiting of which may perhaps not fit in with that for the police force, which specialises in a different direction. The police must have legal knowledge and receive special training for police purposes. It is possible up to a certain stage to co-operate. One of the hon. members asked why we still keep on the E.S.P.C. I can say that that corps is being retained in very diminished form for purposes for which they are still required. Certain public works must still be protected. The railways regard it as essential to guard certain bridges in certain areas because it will be a great set-back and will have far-reaching results if they were to be demolished. The hon. member will see that hardly a single bridge in the whole country is still being guarded. It is only here and there where it is considered necessary. Furthermore, certain selected military premises are still being guarded and will probably continue to be guarded to the end of the war. Take the ammunition factories and a place like the Central Magazine which, in spite of the sentries, still exploded. The other point which has been much discussed is the question of our supplies. We have been requested as soon as possible to make available to the public superfluous supplies, and especially to the farming community who must provide food for the country. Those arguments were raised on all sides. I can say that we are doing everything we can to pass out as soon as possible everything which is superfluous to another department which then hands over those supplies to the public.

Can you tell us along which channels that material is reaching the public?

I will do that later. In the first place it must be remembered that all the various Government Department also suffered from a shortage of materials. Take the railways, the Provincial Administration, the Roads Organisation, etc. All our public organisations which have nothing to do with defence, were in a terrible state as regards shortage of materials, and the policy which is now being followed is that in the first instance we must see to it that the Government supplies which are in the hands of the Department of Defence should be made available to other State Departments which need them and which are in the greatest need for them.

But why must thousands of lorries stand in the sun month after month?

As regards motors we have already passed out thousands. We have already transferred approximately 3,000 to the Distribution Board and many of them went to the railways.

But why must the things stand in the sun?

No, all the material is being well looked after. It is not being ruined in wind and weather. We are not in the position simply to say that we will dispose of all those things. We must see to it that we retain supplies for the war and for a period after the war. We cannot dispose of anything. We cannot again ask the public after the war to buy this sort of material for the State. We must retain in our hands what is necessary for the continuation of the war, what is necessary in the uncertain circumstances in which we still are, and we must retain in our hands what we need for the years immediately after the war. The Defence Force must have supplies which may be required immediately after the war. But I can add to that that already on a large scale material has been transferred to the distribution board which makes it available to the public. But as I have already said, we must first comply with the requirements of the other departments of State.

But what about buiding-material which is so essential?

The hon. member is under the totally wrong impression in that respect. The building material not required by us is being made available as quickly as possible. But there we have the same argument again that much of this building material is required for other departments and they receive preference.

What about fencing materials?

That has already been made available on a colossal scale. We had more than we needed and we made available wire and such-like things on a surprising scale.

The public did not see it.

No, they have seen a lot of it.

Could you give us particulars as to how this material reaches the public?

Yes, I will come to that. But the point at this stage is the following, that as far as we can and in as great measure as we can we transfer the superfluous materials to the organisation which disposes of it. We do not want to get stuck with these supplies. If we get stuck with it and those materials again become available on the market, this material would become totally valueless. We want to get as much money for it as possible and therefore we are busy as soon as possible to transfer everything of which we can possibly get rid.

But it is being said that the Department of Defence is unwilling to release the material.

No, that is quite wrong. The arrangement which was made is the following. The Department of Defence is not a business department. We cannot sell to the public because we have not the organisation for it. Therefore it is left to the Department of Trade and Industry, which is the correct department for it. A special organisation has been created, a Distribution Board, and everything which is superfluous is passed over to that organisation.

Is that organisation already functioning?

Yes, it is at work. It contains representatives of all the Departments concerned in the matter and it is in contact with all the Departments. There is not a single Department which needs supplies which has not a representative, a liaison or link with the organisation. But it is not an organisation of my particular Department.

Is that the D.G.S.?

No, it is a war Department. The Director of Supplies agreed that such an organisation should be called into being, under my colleague the Ministet of Economic Development.

But the difficulty is that this Distribution Board cannot investigate what material is superfluous.

We shall give them everything they need. The Distribution Board will receive everything we can do without, and they are in close contact with us.

But they cannot judge of what is superfluous.

Of course not.

It is said that the Department of Defence has millions of towels, and there is a shortage in the country.

Many things are being said. But we are still in the war, and there is a surprising consumption of towels, and personal things of that nature. We do not know for how long it will be still be necessary, and for that reason we must exhibit the necessary caution in not disposing of all that material immediately.

What provision is made to prevent large profits being made on that material? What is being done to hand it over to the public directly?

That is a question for my colleague, and that matter can be discussed on the vote of the Minister of Economic Development. I have nothing to do with that Distribution Board to which the material is handed over and which must then dispose of it.

The farmers have not been able to obtain a single yard of wire.

The amount of wire which we have already made available is surprisingly large.

Where did it get to?

It falls into the hands of the trade and the farmers do not obtain it.

One cannot exclude the trade completely because then one will get into difficulty. To a large extent we excluded the trade in obtaining this material. The trade also had a great shortage of this material, and if we are now going to form a Government organisation to exclude the trade, we will land in great difficulty.

At what price does the trade purchase?

To a large extent under the tender system. Various methods are applied. The chairman of the Tender Board is a member of the organisation. He must keep an eye over it because an eye is being kept on him. The Auditor-General supervises the accounts, and care must be taken that the Government should receive value for the material it sells.

It is said that tenders are asked for on a large scale and that the material passes out of the hands of the trade.

To a large extent it is sold by way of tender. I have nothing to do with that. If a large amount of stuff is transferred to the Distribution Board for them to transfer to the public, they ask for tenders, and they must do that according to the best arrangements which can be made. I think that although there are complaints that is the best procedure we can find in order to meet the public.

There is much dissatisfaction and well-founded dissatisfaction.

We can only do our best in the circumstances. There will always be dissatisfaction.

I come to a different point that has been raised. The hon. member for Berea (Mr. Sullivan) has raised the question of C.O.T.T. trainees, and he asked what their future is and what is being done to see they are not put on the streets. I may say this, that like him we have the very highest opinion of the training which has been given to the great bulk of these C.O.T.T. trainees. Very large numbers of them have gone into the Air Force and have become Anr Force artisans, mechanics, and have done magnificent work. There is no doubt with the initial training they had under the C.O.T.T. scheme and the experience they subsequently got in other directions, they are very highly skilled workmen today. We have had some delays in dealing with the question because we have to keep in touch with the trade union movement. You have to see in all these matters that you carry the workmen of this country with you, and that you do not flood their market and make things unnecessarily difficult for them. A joint committee is dealing with the matter now, a committee that represents the Government, the trade unions and other interests concerned, and I am told that there is no difficulty. There does not appear to be any difficulty in making provision for C.O.T.T. trainees in the future. There is very good co-operation among all these elements. The labour movement is very willing to help and we all expect it will be possible to absorb C.O.T.T. trainees on a satisfactory basis in future industry in this country. There will be no question of leaving them in the lurch after what they have done for the country. A committee is dealing with the matter, and they are quite hopeful that satisfactory arrangements will be come to. I should regret it very much indeed that a movement which started so hopefully and which was joined by so many thousands of our young fellows, should peter out and leave the people who had done such magnificent work in the lurch. Every care is being taken of them, and the hon. member may rest assured, and the country may rest assured, that whatever can be done to secure employment for them in the future according to their ability and the training they have had, and under decent wage conditions, will be done and will be secured.

*The question of guns and ammunition is one of the points which were discussed here this morning. Let me say this: We are busy helping the public as far as we can. It is not generally known, for example, that we have already made available to the public 7,800—one can almost say 8,000—guns.

We cannot obtain them.

It has been made available already.

Can Nationalists also obtain them?

Of course.

Wild animals are eating the cattle and one cannot obtain rifles.

That is the reason why I give the numbers. Almost 8,000 rifles have already been sold, 600 or 700 revolvers and millions of rounds of ammunition.

Can you tell us how many rifles were commandeered at the time?

About 90,000.

And of that number about 8,000 have been handed back.

Of that number almost 30,000 have been handed back to the commandos. You know that our commandos are armed, and of the rifles commandeered at the time, almost 30,000 have been returned to the commandos.

Can you tell us when we will be able to organise rifle associations again?

That will have to be after the war, not during the war.

Will you tell us what objection you have against recalling the whole prohibition against firearms?

No, we do not consider that the time has arrived for that. Precautionary measures have still to be taken. The principle on which we act is this. We receive a report from the police and we receive a report from the Local Commando Officers and where they agree the weapons are handed back.

Then the Nationalists are excluded?

No, the hon. member knows that Nationalists are not excluded.

You are discriminating.

No, there is no discrimination. The supporters of my friends opposite receive their guns back on the same scale as the supporters of other parties.

Will wou specifically direct that there should be no discrimination?

There is no discrimination. On the contrary, we often receive complaints that a number of Nationalists in a certain district received guns while old S.A.P. supporters could not receive them. One always receives complaints.

Are there still rifles available?

Yes, I thought that we could solve the question of ammunition by releasing millions of cartridges for distribution through the usual channels, but the explosion at Pretoria wrought much havoc and we will have much difficulty not so much about rifles as about ammunition.

Will you direct that South-West will also receive some of the available cartridges?

I can give my hon. friend who is so concerned about South-West the assurance that South-West will not be neglected. That is an area of the country where one practically cannot farm without a rifle. We will help as far as we can. The House can be assured thereof that I am quite conscious of the fact that in large areas of the country farming operations are handicapped if there is not the protection of the rifle. There are baboons and game and vermin of all sorts. I know the circumstances, but as a precautionary measure we see to it that we have the consent of the police and of the local Commando Officers before we sell the rifles. Another point touched on by the hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) is the return of soldiers to their homes, soldiers both here and overseas. We do our best. We release these people in so far as war circumstances allow of it. The people at home are only too anxious for the man in the North to return, but the man in the North is not always so anxious to return. That is one of the difficulties. I am in favour of demobilising as far as possible. One does not want to cope eventually with an accumulated problem of demobilisation. If we now solve the difficulty gradually it will be much easier for us and it is also convenient to the public.

And do those who wish to return receive preference?

You mean eventually when there is final demobilisation?

No, now.

It depends on whether the man can be released. Our rule is this. In all parts of the country we have liaison committees who are acquanited with their districts and areas. They are acquainted with the circumstances of the people and when they hear that somebody is needed at home or on the farm or in his business, enquiries are made in the North whether the man can be released, and if they say that there is no necessity to keep him there, he returns.

What does the A.G. say?

The A.G. says what the man in the North says. Everything is done in order to meet the public as far as possible, but of course one has one’s army and one must fulfil one’s duties and one cannot please everybody. The question of the discharge of coloured men was also raised. Hon. members know that since last year there has been no recruiting of natives or coloureds at all. Their numbers have already been much reduced and we allow as many as possible to return. It is however very difficult to get these people to return to their work. It is a matter which gives us much difficulty. The difficulty is to get these people to return to their old spheres of labour and that difficulty we shall have to cope with.

You will remember that this side of the House warned the Government at the time that if you take them away from the farms they will not return to the farms.

That warning was golden advice which one was not able to accept. The problem is not to release these men; the problem is to get them to return to their old spheres of labour, and the demobilisation organisation is dealing with the matter and it will take some time. One cannot immediately solve all the difficulties in connection with the taking back of these people in their old spheres of labour, but we hope to succeed in it eventually.

But the process is very slow.

Yes, it is very slow; I admit that. Then the question of the Yellow Oath in the North was raised. I explained in the Senate that nobody would go to the Far East without a new attestation, that the last attestation for general service everywhere would not be valid. I gave that assurance to the public and we stand by it. There are, of course, large numbers who want to go. Much larger numbers are willing to go for further service than we shall need. If they go that new attestation will be necessary for that special object.

Is that the oath?

No, it is not an oath; it is a declaration, but that makes no difference. It is a legal document.

Will you give the House the assurance that if anyone is unwilling to go he will not be forced to go?

Of course, I gave the assurance before and I give it again. Nobody will be forced to go. But, as I have said, larger numbers will be willing to go than we need. I do not think that our forces will be needed in the Far East very much. The great war effort of America in the Far East is on a colossal scale, and the British effort there will also be on a colossal scale, and according to my information they will need a certain portion of our air force and technicians who will also be required in small numbers. But as regards the ordinary soldiers a large number will not be required.

Does that mean that members of the 6th Division will almost all return?

Yes, those who do not want to go and those whom we do not require in the Far East will return. A question was asked about the Italian Declaration. A declaration is required from the Italian prisoners-of-war and information is asked about it. Let me say this. Hon. members have perhaps forgotten that we have no prisoners-of-war of our own here. The prisoners-of-war we have here we are keeping on behalf of the British Government. We ourselves have no prisoners-of-war. The 70,000 who originally came here, of which there are still remaining 20,000, I think, are prisoners-of-war whom we are keeping here for the benefit of and at the cost of the British Government.

Do they pay us for it?

Yes, we are paid for all the expenses we have. The Italian Government approached the Allies and said: “We are now fighting with you; we are no longer an enemy; we are friends and we do not want our prisoners-of-war treated as such; we want to put them on a better basis, and we want them to make a declaration, if they want to, which will put them on a better basis, which will ensure better payment to them, and by virtue of which they will not be regarded purely as prisoners-of-war.” That statement was conveyed to us by the British Government from the Italian Government. The statement is submitted to the prisoners-of-war here, and the large majority of them accepted it without trouble, because in the final result it improves their conditions here and they also obey their own Government. There is a very small number of Facists amongst them who do not want to sign the declaration. They say they do not agree with their Government, and a small number of them do not work on farms or elsewhere. They are kept in the camps, but the others are available for work—and for work at better wages—and they signed the declaration. I explained this only to make hon. members understand, and to let the public understand that the declaration does not emanate from us. We did not draw up the declaration or ask that the people should sign it. It was done voluntarily at the request of their own Government, in order thereby to give better expression to the improved status they now have.

Must they give an undertaking that they will return to their own country after the war?

Yes, that obligation will have to be there. We know that many of them will want to remain here, and there will also be a great pressure from the side of the public to retain the good ones amongst them, but technically they are prisoners of war and under the Geneva Convention they must return to their own country. If they want to go they must go, and if they do not wish to go we shall have to make other arrangements. But without doubt there are excellent workmen amongst the prisoners of war, and I must say this, as regards the Italian prisoners of war, that they helped us out of a surprisingly great difficulty as regards labour; on farms and in other directions they did much good work and there are many deserving cases amongst them. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) (Mr. Haywood) again referred to the question of Midway. Midway is an air station near Bloemfontein.

The people of Bloemfontein are so annoyed that they voted out of the City Council all the supporters of the Government.

The hon. member, I suppose, is glad about it. I have done him a favour. The difficulty is that when the air field was erected and when the natives received a place next to it for their camp, no objection was raised; it was after the camp was completed, and after an amount of between £20,000 and £30,000 had been spent, that the objections’ were raised.

The objection was raised in this House year after year for the last few years.

It has been raised in the House for some years now, but, you see, the camp was already built. Everything was completed; and unless one removes the camp—something Bloemfontein will not like—at great expense to the State, it is impossible to remove the natives from that place. As regards the complaint that beer is brewed there, that we only hear in the House now. That complaint was never made to us. The natives receive their pint of beer once a week and it is consumed under supervision and we did not hear complaints about beer brewing.

Is the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) wrong when he says that you were approached in connection with the matter before the camp was erected?

No, I say that an amount of between £20,000 and £30,000 had already been spent on the matter; it was then too late and I do not believe it is worth while removing the whole camp. Bloemfontein certainly will not like it either. It will cause us expense. The position must be accepted as being unavoidable.

Can you tell me this: That portion of the camp which adjoins the inhabited area, why must that be selected for the native quarters?

That is the only place.

There are other boundaries which adjoin other places.

The camp was laid out there and when it was laid out there was no objection. After the camp had been built and after the natives were there, the complaint came, and now it is too late. One cannot now interfere with the matter.

The hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) has moved to reduce the amount by £250,000 in connection with “Imperial Airways, Limited”. I regret that I cannot accept this amendment, because it refers to a specific item which does not appear in the Vote.

May I ask whether you will give us a hearing before you make that decision.

I regret that I am unable to accept the amendment. If the hon. member will alter his amendment simply to read “to reduce the amount by £250,000”, I can allow it.

Will you just allow me to say that I have put the amendment in this form in order to bring to the notice of the Committee the difficulty under which we are labouring, and I have tried to put it in this form to bring to your notice the position in which the Rt. Hon. member has placed the Committee. He asks for £45,000,000 and he does not give the details. If it was an ordinary vote the vote would be divided up in items, and then I could have proposed the deletion of a definite amount in connection with a specific item, but the Prime Minister has not itemised the £45,000,000. If he states clearly what amount should be voted for Imperial Airways we shall be in a position to propose that that amount should be deleted. How am I to propose this now?

You should propose a reduction of the total amount.

But how am I to move for a reduction of the total amount if the Prime Minister does not say that £20,000 or £30,000 has been spent on Imperial Airways? If we want to propose that any specific amount should be deleted, for example the amount of assistance to the Boy Scouts, we are unable to know how to propose that, because we do not know what amount is being spent on the Boy Scouts; and we could go on in this way in connection with a considerable number of items. If I want to propose that the item in connection with cadets should be reduced, I do not know what amount to propose, and consequently I have put the amenndment in this way in order to obtain an opportunity to register a protest at the manner in which the Prime Minister has been taking away Parliamentary rights. He has placed us in an absolutely impossible position by asking us for a globular sum of £45,000,000. It is not right to ask us simply to vote for or against it. In connection with any other vote, we have the right to move for the deletion of a specific item, but we cannot do that here, because we do not know what the amount is. I should like to put it this way, that there are items here that have no bearing on war secrets. I cannot imagine how the Speaker or you do not express an opinion on a vote that comes up in this way. I do not know whether it is a derogation of the rights of Parliament, and consequently I put the amendment in this way to give the Committee an opportunity to express a view on the matter.

Does the hon. member want to move the reduction of the Vote by £250,000? The hon. member can do that.

As I have put it it is not acceptable to you.

No, but the hon. member may move that the amount should be reduced by £250,000.

That is not my object. I want to move the deletion of the Imperial Airways item. How can I do so?

The amount is £20,000.

That may be so, but how are we to know it? Will the Minister of Finance tell us in the first place what is the expenditure in connection with civil and military staff?

No, I cannot.

What is the expenditure in connection with defence forces and cadets? What is the item “protection of essential services”. You want to give me Imperial Airways, but you do not want to give me this.

Now the Minister has put his foot into a trap.

I should like probably to move amendments on all these votes. The Government has given us the figure in connection with one item. Will the Minister give us the others. I ask for your ruling, whether we are entitled to ask the Minister what the various items are.

As far as I am concerned the hon. member can put questsions to the Minister. I cannot prevent him.

But you cannot force him to reply.

No. I understand then that the hon. member does not want to move his amendment.

If an amount is owing, whether the account is only £1 or £2, there is no need for me to pay that account before it is fully specified. Here we are asked for a sum of over £45,000,000, and a further £50,000,000 from loan funds, to be approved in connection with votes no particulars of which have been furnished. I agree with the last speaker that there may be things here that it will not be wise to divulge to the enemy, although the war has reached a stage when I do not see how it could help him. As we have reached that position it appears to me that we are entitled to ask for this. To ask me to vote nearly £100,000,000 without my knowing what it is for is certainly unreasonable. It is stated here that the sum of £45,000,000 is going to be used for certain purposes. There is, for example, the cadets, the Boy Scouts, the intelligence service, there are civil and military staff on temporary service, there are grounds, buildings, official functions, recreation, benevolent funds, physical culture and technical training. Here are at least ten or twenty items which fall under war expenditure and of which particulars are given, and which certainly are not secret. We can at least ask for that. If the Prime Minister will give us the particulars of those things which he knows will not be of any benefit to the enemy, we shall at any rate have something we can go on. Our only other way is to move that the services be deleted.

You cannot delete the services.

We can try in any case; I think we can propose it. If we say that the subsidy to Imperial Airways should be deleted, the amount that is voted cannot be used for that purpose. It is also of great interest, because a conference is now being held here where I understand a monopoly will be given to Imperial Airways, and we are entitled to know how much money the Government is paying out. We are being asked to vote a sum of £45,000,000 without knowing how it is apportioned. And then there is “Grant towards cost of official functions”. Surely we are entitled to have particulars in connection with that. Then there is “Incidental expenses”. We do not even know what these incidental expenses are. We are of course entitled to know what they are. I feel that the Minister is putting us into such a position that we cannot but think he is treating us with contempt. He simply says: Here is the full amount and I am going to use it for such and such purposes. The common law of the country is that a man is entitled to a detailed account. Here we are being asked for £50,000,000 and we do not know what it is for at all. I do not believe it is impossible for the Prime Minister to give us that information. If his department has prepared estimates as other departments have done he knows for what purpose the money is going to be used. There must have been estimates made in the first instance. This procedure makes it simply impossible for us, and I think it is treating the House in a very off-hand way to ask us to vote for this.

I should like to put a question to the hon. Minister of Finance in connection with the difficulty that is facing us. He has stated here that the amount involved in this question of subsidies to Imperial Airways is £20,000. Then that is one item here that is not a war secret, and the Minister of Finance can thus explain the amount.

It is the same amount as heretofore; everyone knows it.

Will the Minister of Finance stand up and tell us what other items there are amongst those listed in connection with which he can mention the amount; are there no other similar items? Take the question of “Civil and military personnel on temporary service”. I heard from the lips of the Prime Minister that we should expedite the question of demobilisation. We are now in the transition period from military to civil activities. Here is an amount that is being expended on civil and military staff in temporary service. How long are they going to remain in temporary service? Is it not an item where the Minister can give us the amount? Further, there is the question of help to Voortrekker and Boy Scout associations. That is not purely a military thing. It is a question that is still open.

The same amounts are being paid as before the war.

Do you see what an impossible position members are being placed in? In the case of the subsidy to the Imperial Airways, the argument is that it is an old thing and yet we may know that it is £20,000. In the case of the Voortrekkers and the Boy Scouts these are also old matters, but they are military secrets; you may not know the amount. Have you ever seen anything more inconsistent, and this very inconsistency of the Minister’s supports the argument of this side of the House that the stage has been reached when this blindfold system now being practised, where £45,000,000 is being asked without the country knowing what it is for, has had its day. These cases have been specified here. It is, however, not a difficult thing to say that “the following items are items that existed before the war”. These would then be items that are not exclusively of a military character, and the amounts can be mentioned. Then the Minister of Defence can stand up and say further: “The following items should still be regarded as military secrets, and for that reason they cannot be mentioned.” I feel that we here have such an important and such a strong case that the House is not in a position to proceed further with the matter until some light is thrown on it. I want to ask that the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance should give the House reasons why this discussion should be continued, in view of what is now stated. It has appeared that certain items do not contain war secrets, and the Minister is obliged to inform us what these items are I think it is clear to anyone, and I would earnestly ask the Minister to rise and give a more satisfactory explanation than we have hitherto had. On that will depend whether the Committee is right in continuing further with the discussion. As far as concerns the explanation of the hon. Minister in regard to the Midway Camp at Bloemfontein, I want to say that this matter has now been mentioned for a number of years, and now the Prime Minister comes with the argument “You did not make any objection at the time, and accordingly I cannot take these people away.” The hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) (Mr. Haywood) mentioned this matter repeatedly, and we never heard the argument of the Prime Minister that objections were made too late to enable an alteration to be made. But let us for a moment presume that it is right that costs were incurred before any objection was offered. I ask what protection can the European public have who bought land and at great expense erected buildings and laid out gardens, and then suddenly have had a number of natives dumped down right in front of their door, so that they have been obliged to sell their property for an old song. What protection has the public against action of this sort? I think the manner in which this has been done is extremely lax. When the Department of Defence wanted to establish a camp it was its duty to ensure that no inroad was made on the vested rights of people living there. So far as I understand the position the camp borders on one side of the residential area where there are plots belonging to European people. Why should the camp have been placed just there, adjoining the inhabited part where decent European families are living? Why could not it have been placed further away? Why pick out just this part? It was certainly not necessary to dump those natives right at the front door of the Europeans. The State ought to take into consideration the existing rights of people, and it is no excuse for the Minister to come and tell us that the people waited too long before raising an objection. Supposing that they did not make immediate objection; the moment that they found that their plots were being reduced in value, when they saw the injustice that was being done to them, they did raise objections, and that objection has been mentioned here from year to year. I do not think that the argument of the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister holds water, that they did not make their objection soon enough and that they, on that account, cannot be accommodated.

I wonder whether the hon. Minister of Defence imagines that he can keep on in this way in regard to the handling of his votes. It awakens great dissatisfaction amongst his own followers. Three weeks ago I was in my constituency, and an English-speaking supporter of the Prime Minister addressed a letter to me asking me when I was passing through the station, as he wanted to see me. He came and saw me, and he said that he wanted our system of taxation to be altered. I told him that as he was a Government supporter he did not mind paying. He retorted that if he had to pay he wanted to know how the money was being expended; that if £100,000,000 was being expended he wanted to know on what it was being expended. To that he added that it all looked to him like tomfoolery, and that he as a middleman who was heavily taxed wanted to know what was going on. This was not a Nationalist who was speaking, but a supporter of the Prime Minister who is no longer satisfied with a round sum just being voted for defence. He went on to say that we Nationalists should bring up the matter because on the other side there was just a bunch of yes-men, like Arthur Barlow with his newspaper writings. They voted as they were told. The Prime Minister has placed us in a position that unless he or the Minister of Finance rises and says what the various amounts are for we shall necessarily be compelled to move this afternoon that the votes stand over until we can see what we are voting for. We cannot go on like this every year. I want to come to something else. I think that the hon. Minister of Defence owes the country a statement on how he personally stands in regard to the purchase of the Avro-York. The Prime Minister made a statement this morning. When one has known him for years one wants to laugh when he stands and talks like that. He said: “We did not buy it, but neither did we pay for it, nor was it a present, we did not get it as a bonsella.” One of the new members here made the observation: “It seems to me that the ‘Oubaas’ is today running around a round table. He never comes to the point because a round table has not got a point.” We have not bought it, we did not get it as a present, nor did we steal it. Then there is only one explanation, and it is that the aircraft was handed over for services rendered. Then we have to guess what the services rendered were, and that is not difficult. Other countries do not make a present to you for services that you render to your own country, but only for services that you extend to them. In other words, it is for Empire services and not for services that the Prime Minister has given South Africa. For what we need ourselves we have to pay, but for services to the British Empire this aircraft has been given. Let us come away from the round table. A few days ago the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister spoke about the man in the street and the man in the moon. Well, frequently these people are right, and I want to tell the Prime Minister that they do not run around the round table but they come immediately to the point. And the man in the street will say that if it was not bought and was not paid for and was not given as a present, then it is for services rendered. The Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister is being described as the biggest imperialist of this century. But of course we know that. The Minister, moreover, made an explanation in connection with the disposal of war supplies. He says that a body has now been established to ensure that the supplies are disposed of in a proper way and further he says there is still the tender system. Now I ask any hon. member what the Prime Minister said in addition to that? Absolutely nothing. I do not want to be personal but we have known the Prime Minister all these years. Whenever he talks like this running around the table, there is something in the wind. I asked hon. members here to keep quiet, because I expected the Minister to talk until Tuesday morning. Whenever he talks like this without coming to the point, it is due to one of two reasons, either he is hiding something, or he does not know what the real state of affairs is. We take considerable interest in this question of war supplies, and the public is taking an interest in it. Three organisations in my constituency, farmers’ associations on which there are mainly supporters of the Prime Minister, have already repeatedly asked that I should urge on the Government that the farming co-operatives or farmers’ associations should be furnished with requisites for agricultural purposes in order to prevent other people making tremendous profits out of them. I want again to ask the Prime Minister to take this into consideration. I agree that war supplies should, in the first place, be made available to certain departments. Take for instance the railways, which have gone out of their way to give a big rebate to the Department of Defence. It would seem reasonable that the Department of Defence should provide them with what they require, railway buses or whatever it may be. But now I want to ask what the conditions are under which a department obtains these supplies. In what way is it arranged.

Business suspended at 12.45 p.m. and resumed at 2.20 p.m.

There is something else that I should like to bring to the notice of the Prime Minister, and that is the explanation that he has given about rifles. He stated here that at the time he collected some 90,000 rifles, that he used 30,000 of these for arming on the home front, and that 7,000 or 8,000 were returned to the public. So there are still about 50,000 rifles regarding which the Prime Minister has given no account. As the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein) has stated here, I really think that it is high time the public were put in a position to get those rifles back. I want to say to the Prime Minister this afternoon that some of my constituents have made application to get rifles, because they find these rifles highly necessary, and not one of them who is a Nationalist or friendly with the Nationalists has got his rifle back. I want to tell the Minister that the Provincial Councillor for the constituency applied for a rifle, and he could not get one. The public elected him because he enjoys their confidence, but the police commandant who has to report whether the man is reliable, apparently thinks otherwise, and this person whom the public trust as their Provincial Council member cannot get a rifle. Look at a constituency like that of the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) and parts of Calvinia. It is impossible for the farmers to exist there without a rifle. Take other parts of the North-West. It is simply impossible for these people to be without a rifle to protect their farms and their livestock. During the morning I said that I hoped the Prime Minister in the meanwhile, with the Minister of Finance, would give us the assurance that they would provide the particulars of how this £45,000,000 is comprised. I do not believe the Prime Minister will comply with that, and to give him the opportunity to get that information. I move—

If this motion is adopted the Prime Minister will have an opportunity to ascertain what the details are regarding the various items that are given here, and he can pass the information on to the House.

I do not want to prolong this debate, and I shall be very, very brief. To me it is a healthy sign that this vote has been considerably reduced from that of last year, by about £6,000,000. The vote, as it is now, covers many services, which are essential to the security and freedom of South Africa, and this is the price which we have to pay for our freedom. We all realise that if we had not declared war in 1939 we would now have been under a dictator.

The hon. member can only now discuss the motion which is under discussion.

And that is the vote?

No, it is the motion that this vote stands over for further consideration.

He never understood a word of what took place. He is thoroughly bilingual.

He has the right to be here.

That is quite true. He has the right to be here, but he should not be here.

I will have another opportunity later on.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. May I enquire whether the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) has any right to say that an hon. member should not be here?

Of course I have. You have no right to be here either. None of you have the right to be here. You will not be here long either.

That is not a point of order which has been raised by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (South) (Mr. McLean).

Is it a point of disorder then?

I rise to support the motion of the hon. member for Albert-Colesberg (Mr. Boltman). When we look at these estimates of the Minister of Defence, then it does seem really as if the Prime Minister expects us to support him as the hon. member for Losberg (Mr. Wolmarans) supports him, because we call to mind that the other day the hon. member stated here that he was willing to give a blank cheque to the Prime Minister. We on this side of the House do not feel like that about the Prime Minister, and I can give the Prime Minister the assurance that the public do not feel that way either. The other morning I had a conversation with an English-speaking friend, and he passed the remark that it looked as if Parliament had become a farce. I asked him why, and his answer was that members went wrong over this and that, but if the Prime Minister says that something has to happen, no notice at all is taken of what hon. members say. One of the Prime Minister’s own supporters told me that it looked as if we were wasting our time here, because we have no say and no rights. I think that this is the impression that has been gained by the public, and I only want to inform the Prime Minister that he is making the position of our Parliamentary members extremely difficult in our constituencies. When we return to our constituencies, our constituents approach us and put questions to us. They say, for instance, that the Minister of the Interior stated a few days ago in this House that one of these days Parliament will be called together to celebrate peace, and then they see that we are voting £45,000,000 here for war, without our having any information in regard to what is happening with the money. They want replies from us on these points, and we cannot take umbrage when they imagine that down here we are taking part in a farce. It makes our position unbearable, not only in this House but outside. Consequently I should like to identify myself with those members who have asked the Prime Minister, in view of the fact that we have now reached the stage that possibly one of these days we may have to celebrate the peace, whether particulars of this expenditure cannot be provided. There can be no secret at all that will be of value to the enemy in connection with this expenditure. The Prime Minister must realise that the people outside are looking to us. Here we are voting masses of money, and we ought to know how that money is being used. I want to identify myself, therefore, with the request that has been made to the Prime Minister that he should furnish particulars of this £45,000,000. Then there is another point I want to touch on. I want to ask the Prime Minister whether he does not think it is very dangerous to have ammunition magazines in towns.

The hon. member cannot discuss that matter now; he should confine himself to the motion that the Vote stand over.

Then I will leave that matter there, and merely again ask the Prime Minister to think of the people outside who want this information. Here we are voting millions, and we have virtually no say, because we do not know where the money is going. Our constituents and the supporters of the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister himself are discontented about this. I want to tell the Prime Minister that it is no longer a question, as the hon. member for Losberg has put it, and as the hon. Leader of the Opposition observed, of “complete confidence”, that is all. The Prime Minister cannot expect members in this House to act merely on the basis of absolute confidence, and he is making a mistake if he imagines that in the future that is going to be done. We want the details in connection with a vote like this, because we have no control if we have not the particulars.

I only wish to say that I am not rising to delay the debate any further. I think that I made a very reasonable proposal when I asked the Minister of Finance to state the reasons why the amounts can be mentioned in connection with certain items but not in respect of others. The amount that has been mentioned by the Minister of Finance in reference to Imperial Airways has perhaps a greater bearing on war activities than many of the other items that are specified here. I want to put it like this by way of comparison. It appears to me that a greater degree of war secrecy is bound up with the subsidy to Imperial Airways than for example the amount that is expended in connection with the Voortrekker movement and the Boy Scout movement. I cannot understand why the last amount is being preserved secret. The Voortrekker movement has nothing whatever to do with the prosecution of the war. There can be no military secret in this matter. Hon. members would like to know how these amounts compare that have been granted to the Boy Scout movement and the Voortrekker movement. We want to place these amounts parallel to each other in order to see how the money of the country is being expended in relation to these two movements. Then there is an item here in connection with roads. So far as our memory serves at present no money is being spent in South Africa on roads with an eye to military considerations. We are not at war here, and no land movements of military units are taking place. How is this money being expended on roads? I think it is a purely civilian matter. How can there we a war secret involved in this. If the carrying out of the war has reached a stage when the Prime Minister has stated we may soon have to demobilise it should be possible to tell us how much money is being expended on roads. This can have nothing to do with the prosecution of the war. Are these roads inside the Union or outside the Union? What are the various amounts? Furthermore, an amount is being asked here for the construction of rifle ranges. We have come to a stage in the war where various aerodromes have been eliminated. Aerodromes have been broken up. If this amount under the vote is for rifle ranges within the Union, how many are used as rifle ranges with an eye to existing military interests and how much is being expended on rifle ranges for musketry practice for citizens in the future. There is another item here, an amount for “animals”. I assume that this is for the purchase of animals. We know that at one period during the war the Defence Department bought horses on a large scale. People were appointed and paid large salaries in order to go right through the country buying horses. Later these horses were assembled in a large camp in the Northern Transvaal, and these horses practically trampled each other to death in the camp. Then it was found that the horses were not required for military purposes. Are these horses also part of the “animals”? What amount is being spent on horses? Does this represent a dead loss to the department? I think we may reasonably demand that the Minister should give us the necessary information. At least we should get the assurance of the Minister that it is absolutely necessary to draw a veil over the expenditure and keep people in the dark in connection with the way these tremendous amounts are being disbursed. Consequently I support the amendment of the hon. member for Albert-Colesberg.

I have before me a motion that I wish to propose after the one that the vote should stand over, and I think there are certainly other members who would like to make a similar proposal, namely, to reduce the vote by a stated amount in connection with certain items. It seems to me that the hon. Minister of Defence, when we asked him to give us a little information in connection with certain points did not intend to provide any information. All the information we got in connection with Imperial Airways was forthcoming this morning, not from him, but from the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Defence is determined to furnish no information. The sooner he tells us that he does not intend to provide any information, the better. Then we should at least know where we stand. Does the hon. Minister intend to give any information in connection with any one of these items? We have heard nothing from him as the responsible Minister. Will he go so far as to tell us which items he views as war secrets, then perhaps we shall make some progress. There is quite a number of items in connection with which, as he knows, no war secrets are involved. There is, for instance, the intelligence service. This is not a case of war secrets. We should like to discuss the vote, and we should like to find out whether Dr. Malherbe’s salary also falls under this. We should like to know whether his salary was paid out of this for the election in 1943, when he went round amongst the troops and got them to take resolutions of a political nature, resolutions to support the Prime Minister. I should like to know whether his salary also comes out of this, whether the expenditure in connection with going round amongst the troops and addressing them on political lines, and in getting them to take political resolutions to support the Prime Minister during the elections, also came out of this. I think the country is entitled to this information. The Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister should not persist in being obstinate. It might pay in Another Place, buit it will not always pay in this House. If he gives that information to us we shall be reasonable, but we are entitled to information that is not a military secret.

There is one accusation that no one will level at the Prime Minister, namely that he is a good businessman. We know that he is no economist. His whole record as a Minister is proof of that. The department that he administers is not administered on an economic basis. It has always been the case with the special departments that he has been in charge of. Things occur in his department over which he has no control. Perhaps one would be wrong in ascribing that to a lack of economic sense. Perhaps the Prime Minister allows himself to be too greatly preoccupied with other matters, in consequence of which he is not prepared to get down to it and to tackle practical things—he prefers to soar in the clouds and to occupy himself with international affairs. The result is that the Prime Minister stands alone as a person who has no control over his special department, and that costs the country a lot of money. In the previous war we had the experience of millions of pounds being spent and squandered in connection with which no report could be given. In this war the same thing is occurring. Millions are being spent right and left, and when information is asked everything is tucked away under the general term “war secrets”. We are governed by the Cabinet and Parliament. The Cabinet is the executive authority and Parliament only the money-voting authority. Now I ask where the responsibility of Parliament comes in when it as a money-voting body, has not the right to know how the money is being spent. We have here to deal with a department in connection with which the greatest expenditure has been incurred, namely, in reference to defence. About £100,000,000 a year is being spent by this department, and this House has to vote this money, but while it is its principle function to vote money it is not permitted to know how the money is being expended. Consequently it is high time that a halt was called and that the Minister should be obliged to furnish the necessary information. I wish I could take the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister with me to various parts of the country to hear the opinion of the public on the administration of the Department of Defence. I wish I could take him with me to Oudtshoorn so that he might see how money is being spent right and left in connection with the camp there. The time has come when this House must call a halt, and when we should no longer tolerate Parliament being used as a voting machine while it can obtain no information. Accordingly I feel that I cannot vote for expenditure merely to allow the Minister of Defence to continue spending millions of pounds without the requisite information being given to this House. This applies all the more, seeing that we have reached the period when, as the Prime Minister himself said, we shall have to give our minds to demobilisation. It is no longer a question of making war or continuing it, but of the ending of the war. Certain hon. members on the opposite benches may perhaps like to know why the war should be stopped. They are so much enamoured of the war that they may perhaps want to continue it. We on the other hand should like to know whether it is necessary to go on with it. We know that the principles for which we originally entered the war have long since been forgotten. We should like to know whether it is worth the trouble spending a penny on Russia, securing the victory that it is now occupied in achieving at our expense. Will it not be better to employ the money usefully in the building up of the country? Millions of pounds can be saved and applied in a useful way in the interests of the country.

Motion put that the further consideration of the Vote stand over, and the Committee divided:

Ayes—28.

Bekker, G. F. H.

Boltman, F. H.

Booysen, W. A.

Bremer, K.

Brink, W. D.

Conradie, J. H.

Erasmus, F. C.

Erasmus, H. S.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux; J. N.

Le Roux, S. P.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan, D. F.

Mentz, F. E.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Serfontein, J. J.

Steyn, A.

Strauss, E. R.

Swanepoel, S. J.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Vosloo, L. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wessels, C. J. O.

Wilkens, J.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and P. O. Sauer.

Noes—76.

Abbott, C. B. M.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden W.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bosman, L. P.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowker, T. B.

Burnside, D. C.

Butters, W. R.

Carinus, J. G.

Christopher R. M.

Cilliers, H. J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Clark, C. W.

Connan, J. M.

Conradie, J. M.

Davis A.

De Kock, P. H.

Derbyshire, J. G.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fourie, J. P.

Gluckman, H.

Goldberg, A.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Henny, G. E. J.

Heyns, G. C. S.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Howarth, F. T.

Humphreys, W. B.

Jackson, D.

Johnson, H. A.

Lawrence, H. G.

McLean, J.

Madeley, W. B.

Maré, F. J.

Marwick, J. S.

Moll, A. M.

Morris J. W. H.

Mushet, J. W.

Neate, C.

Oosthuizen, O. J.

Payn, A. O. B.

Payne, A. C.

Pocock, P. V.

Raubenheimer, L. J.

Robertson, R. B.

Russell, J. H.

Shearer, O. L.

Shearer, V. L.

Smuts, J. C.

Solomon, B.

Solomon, V. G. F.

Sonnenberg, M.

Steenkamp, L. S.

Steyn, C. F.

Stratford, J. R. F.

Sullivan, J. R.

Sutter, G. J.

Tighy, S. J.

Ueckermann, K.

Van der Byl, P.

Van der Merwe, H.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L.

Van Onselen, W. S.

Wanless, A. T.

Warren, C. M.

Waterson, S. F.

Wolmarans, J. B.

Tellers G. A. Friend and J. W. Higgerty.

Motion accordingly negatived.

I only want to say a few words in reference to what the hon. member for Albert-Colesberg (Mr. Boltman) has said. He told us a lovely story here about running round the table. Well, it appears to me as if he was also chasing round the table, and as usual, he went absolutely wrong. Amongst other things he said that the explanation that I gave, or the absence of an explanation, signified that he could only arrive at one conclusion, and that was that the Avro-York was given to us for services rendered. That is absolutely wrong. But I am sorry to say that I was also wrong. I find that in my absence from Parliament last year the Acting Minister of Defence gave an answer to a similar question, and I think that what he said there was correct. A question was put by the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) about the Avro-York and what was paid for it.

I?

Yes, it looks as if the hon. member’s memory is even shorter than mine. The answer was:

So I was wrong but the hon. member was even wider of the mark.

We have heard a great deal about the fear that secrets may leak out, but I have something on my mind in connection with which I feel that the Prime Minister may perhaps be able to furnish me with some information. I see from the newspapers that the Sixth Division will be transferred from Italy. The men of the Sixth Division have now been two, three or four years at the front. In the interim they have had a rough time. I can understand that it may not perhaps be good tactics for the Prime Minister to announce to the world where they have been sent to, but I think he would be giving a certain amount of satisfaction to their relatives by telling them that they have no need to be uneasy about their being sent to a more dangerous front than they are on now. Whether hon. members opposite want to believe it or not, I have come into touch with various parents and family connections of people serving there, and considerable disquiet exists amongst them regarding the transfer of the Sixth Division. I assume that secrets cannot be revealed, but we shall be glad if the Minister can give a guarantee to the House on the lines I have suggested. As regards the explanation of the Prime Minister in reference to the war effort of South Africa against Japan I should also like to say something. When one takes into consideration that the Director of Technical Supplies said last October on his return from London that South Africa would have to fill a big rôle in connection with the prosecution of the war against Japan; when we recall also that shortly afterwards the Director of War Supplies said that there should be no slackening in the prosecution of the war against Japan; and when we find that Senator Adler, who is a member of the Head Committee of the United Party in the Transvaal, stated in the Senate that he hoped and trusted that the war against Japan would be prosecuted with all our strength and with all our assistance, then I should like to know from the Prime Minister what precisely his effort is going to be in the war against Japan. He had stated that this effort is not going to be such a great effort; but will there not again be influence exerted on him which will compel him to increase that effort to a larger and larger extent? Then we find also that the Prime Minister has promised that he will send only volunteers to the Far East.

He announced that this morning.

We know that our Sixth Division is in Italy. There exists a strong desire amongst those men to return to the Union, and I should like to know whether the Prime Minister will give an assurance to the House that these men will first be brought back to South Africa before they are asked whether they will proceed to the Far East as volunteers. These men in the North are very anxious to get back and it can easily happen that the position will be put to them that if they are prepared to sign for service in the East they will get a few months’ leave to spend in the Union. The. Prime Minister has told us what difficulties there will be after the war in bringing these people back oh account of shortage of transport. Now, I am rather afraid that preference will be given to the volunteers to return to the Union. It is not difficult for the Prime Minister to give the promise that I have asked here, and I hope that he will furnish us with the desired information. Another question arises in reference to the native soldiers and the coloured soldiers. I believe that the Prime Minister stated in reply to a question that there are still 44,000 native soldiers and 27,000 coloured soldiers in the army, a total of 70,000. I am speaking subject to correction. The Prime Minister should inform the House today what work those 70,000 native and coloured soldiers are doing. On the platteland we are suffering severely on account of the shortage of labour. This is a matter that has already been touched on, and I do not want to go into it further. The Prime Minister should tell us clearly what those men who are still in the army are doing. The Prime Minister incidently allowed something to leak out in connection with this matter. He said that the difficulty was that most of the coloured men in the army did not want to return to their former fields of employment. Is this the reason why he is not discharging these non-European soldiers? If that is so I do not think that the Prime Minister is justified in the public interest in retaining those men in the army any longer, more particularly in view of the existing shortage of labour in the country. Then there is another point on which I feel unhappy. When the Prime Minister moves around in our country there is always a bodyguard around him. Shortly he will be leaving for overseas, and will he have a bodyguard overseas. It is a reflection on our people. We may differ on political grounds, but I do not think that the Afrikaner people have sunk so low that the Prime Minister needs to have a lifeguard when he is moving about us, if he is not to be protected in this way when he is outside the country.

You know what happened at Klerksdorp.

My hon. friend should rather give some attention to his oranges. Finally I want to say this. I cannot understand why hon. members on this side of the House have asked the Prime Minister how he is going to organise the Defence Force after the war. My friends are completely on the wrong track. I assume that after the war we shall have a General Election. Then a new government will be formed. That government is going to be the Nationalist Party, and we shall not then need to ask the Prime Minister how to organise the Defence Force. We can do it ourselves in the manner we wish.

I wish to begin by saying a few words about war supplies. The Prime Minister has told us that his department does not sell the supplies but that the material is handed over to the Department of Trade and Industry, and that that department then sells the supplies by means of the tender system. I want to ask the Prime Minister whether he will not change that system. When tenders are called it is usually for a large quantity of goods with the result that only certain persons, often men belonging to the speculator class, submit tenders for those great quantities of goods that are offered. In order to obviate that and with a view to making it possible for smaller interests and individuals to secure such supplies I should like to suggest that the Prime Minister should accord consideration to the view that the matter should not be left in the hands of the Department of Trade, using the tender system, but that provision should be made for the supplies to be sold by his department in various parts of the country. If the Prime Minister sees to it that his department gives notice that on specified days supplies will be sold in the various towns throughout the country everyone will be afforded an opportunity to go and buy the goods that are offered. If the Prime Minister follows that course he will also obtain considerably more for the goods. At the moment only certain individuals and firms may submit tenders and frequently there is some preliminary jobbery in connection with the tenders. They get together and agree amongst themselves that each party will only tender for a certain part of the goods and then they divide it up later. I think it will be in the general interest if the Prime Minister follows some other course. Then I want to ask the Prime Minister to take into review the system of preference in connection with the issue of rifles. He has stated here that the police are consulted and also the commandant of the district from which the request comes. The position in South Africa is now of such a nature that no necessity exists for this discrimination. We are experiencing a period or normality in the Union and I want to ask the Prime Minister definitely to alter that system. It is necessary for many of our citizens to have rilfles. I am pleading especially for the farmers. To them the rifle is a necessity, and the result of the system of selection is that many farmers are excluded. The Prime Minister has stated that already more than 7,000 rifles have been sold. I want to tell him that the farmers’ immediate requirements run to far more than 7,000 rifles. I know of farmers in my constituency against whose honour and sincerity not the slightest thing can be brought and they have made application for rifles but have been refused. I want to ask the Prime Minister to bring this matter under review and to allow the rifles to be issued. In regard to the rifles themselves I understand that only Lee Metfords are being sold. The Prime Minister knows that the farmer is very fond of his Mauser but the Prime Minister is not allowing Mausers to be sold. I want to ask him to take this also into review.

Is there ammunition for the Mausers?

I will admit that it will be more difficult to get ammunition for the Mausers than for the Lee Metfords. But up to last year, we know, Mauser cartridges were obtainable. As far as I am concerned I should like to buy a rifle, but I want a Mauser, not a Lee Metford. Perhaps one of these days there will again be cartridges available for the Mausers. If, however, no cartridges are obtainable for the Mausers there is still less reason why these rifles should be refused to the farmers. I hope that the Prime Minister will again take this matter into consideration. Then there is the question of the Italian prisoners of war. I fear that the Prime Minister and I do not regard that matter in the same light. The Prime Minister almost welcomed the fact that the prisoners of war would remain here.

No, I did not.

I have not the slightest feeling against the Italian prisoners of war. I have no prejudice against any particular nation, but I do feel that in connection with immigration in the future we must see to it that only those immigrants are admitted who can be absorbed in our national life. We should chiefly get people who belong to the original elements of the nation, and as we know that the Italians do not belong to those elements they cannot be regarded as the most suitable type of immigrants. There are other peoples it is not necessary for me to mention here but which do not belong to those elements from which our nation has sprung. As it is being stated that many of these prisoners of war will remain here I feel that I would be neglecting my duty if I failed to give a warning that only those people should be attracted that belong to the original elements of the nation. We do not want to tempt immigrants here who will later cause another problem to loom up on our country. Already we have many race problems in the country and we should not act so that we will have an Italian problem in the country tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Let us reduce the size of those problems rather than enlarge them. As far as the prisoners-of-war themselves are concerned the Prime Minister has stated that he sent a circular to them which is tantamount to saying that they should give an undertaking that they are no longer hostile in their attitude towards the Government. Italians are working for me and I am very satisfied with them. They also received the circular. I cannot read Italian but it appeared to me that they are asked in that circular whether they are prepared to fight on the side of the Allies.

It relates to service.

That is not what the Prime Minister said here this morning.

It is the Italian formula.

The Prime Minister stated here this morning that it was only to evince their friendship towards the Allies. What is really contained in the declaration is that they are prepared to go and fight for the Allies. That is not what the Prime Minister intimated here this morning. The Italians who are working for me stated that they would not do that and why should those people be treated less considerately than the others? It is unnatural to expect that people who took part in a war yesterday on one side should now switch round, and if they do not take that course they will be treated with less consideration. We know that the Italian prisoners-of-war are tired of the war, and no harm at all will be occasioned if the regulations in connection with them are relaxed. I should like to see that, without that demand being made on them, the regulations are less strictly enforced. [Time limit.]

I should like to put a few questions to the Prime Minister in connection with the distribution of war material and how it is going to affect the agricultural co-operatives. I have learned from the agricultural co-operative in my constituency what their desire is in connection with the matter. That co-operative society has 2,000 members, and I have received a letter in which I am informed that that society has not succeeded in obtaining certain material, while others have been able to provide their members with it. They mention the .22 rifles. There are dealers who are already handling them and selling them, and though the co-operatives are also licensed to sell rifles they are nevertheless unable to obtain them. I should like to learn from the Prime Minister what the reason is. A letter was addressed to the co-operative in which it was stated that the rifles would be sent to five centres in the country, and from these they would be distibuted to the wholesale trade and the retail trade. They talk about 7½ per cent. for the handling of them. Suppose that the centres get 7½ per cent.; the wholesaler gets 7½ per cent., and the retailer get his 71 per cent., although at times his profit runs to 30 per cent., then it means that up to that stage 22% per cent. has been added. But the co-operative handles a line at a cost of 2% per cent. to 5 per cent. to its members. The object is to provide an article as cheaply as possible to the members, not that the middleman should annex profits in the process. Urgent letters have been addressed to me in this connection, and I hope that the Prime Minister will explain what the procedure is. I want to say that the largest buyers are the farmers, and if the line can be handled by the co-operative associations it can be done more cheaply and the farmers’ requirements can be satisfied without there being any exploitation.

Last week I brought up the matter of the explosion in the magazine at Pretoria. During the weekend an explanation was issued and I shall not go further into that question now. But there is one aspect on which the Government has remained silent and that is moreover not mentioned in the report of the Commission of Enquiry, and that is the fact that, with the knowledge of the Government, the magazine continued to be located in a comparatively thickly populated area. On whose recommendation did the Government do this, and why did the Government reveal this negligence? It was negligence that bordered on being criminal and the people have had to pay heavily for that. Valuable lives were lost, and great financial loss was also entailed. I think that the Prime Minister owes an explanation to the country on the matter, and we should specially like to know whether the Defence authorities agreed to such a dangerous thing as a magazine being retained in such a thickly populated area. I want to make an earnest appeal to the Prime Minister to give a clear explanation of this matter, because the people feel highly dissatisfied over this gross negligence that has been divulged on the part of the Government and the Defence authorities. Then I should also like to learn from the Prime Minister whether it is not possible, and without further delay, to abolish the nonEuropean military guards who look after the Italian prisoners-of-war. We cannot get away from the fact that this is a policy that hurts our feelings as Europeans, not only the feelings of the Afrikaans-speaking people but also the feelings of every right minded Englishman, and they feel incensed at this spectacle that we must witness. There can be no excuse now for that policy. When we look at the demobilisation depôts we see large numbers of European soldiers who are doing nothing. Why cannot they rather be used there so that the coloured soldiers can be discharged? It runs counter to the policy of this side of the House and to the ideas of the white population in general. Place the coloureds and the natives at the disposal of the farmers in the country and let the Italians be guarded by European soldiers. Abandon a policy which is assuredly in conflict with the policy of our country, and that goes against the grain in the case of everyone who means well towards our country. I make an appeal to the Prime Minister to take immediate steps in this matter.

I would very much like to bring a few matters to the attention of the Prime Minister. The first concerns the discharge of soldiers. The war has already reached the stage when the Prime Minister himself has declared that it is their policy to discharge soldiers who are not so urgently required in order that they may again find their feet in civilian life and look after themselves. But nevertheless when we approach the Defence Force and ask that a soldier be discharged, so that when the war is over that person will be again settled in civilian life and will not be a burden to the Government, we find that the heads of the Defence Department put a stumbling block in the way. During the past few weeks I came across a case of someone who has rendered outstanding service to his country. The father concerned has three sons in the army. His business has undergone a change on account of his partner retiring, and he was compelled to apply for the release of one of his sons to carry on the business. But now we find that the Defence heads have placed a spoke in the wheel. They have refused to accede to this request. The result is that the father will have nobody to take charge of his business, and after his sons have given five years of excellent service, and though he has always been a supporter of the Prime Minister, it is made practically impossible for him to continue his business, with the result that he and his family will be placed in a difficult position after the war. Next I want to make a few remarks in regard to supplies. The Hon. the Prime Minister here and there gave us some information as to the position of supplies which would be released. There is talk of a new committee which is being called into being to deal with the matter. The Hon. the Prime Minister has informed us that this committee will resort under the Minister of Economic Development, but he has not told us whether the same policy which has been pursued by that department, will also be followed in regard to these supplies, namely that co-operatives and other bodies who are not recognised as importers or dealers in these various articles, will be subjected to a surcharge of 20 per cent. During the past five years we have been up against that. It is quite unnecessary to require them to pay the 20 per cent., and I want to appeal to the Hon. the Prime Minister to drop that. I do not want to condemn the Department of Commerce and Industries, but Ï want to ask the Prime Minister to see to it, before such supplies are handed over, that a basis is laid down to guarantee that any body in the country will receive those supplies on the same basis. The tender system has caused a lot of trouble in the past. We know that the railways have regularly offered large quantities of material by tender. It seldom happened that at the last moment something did not leak out in regard to the tenders, and then one or other party tendered at a slightly higher figure and in that way got hold of all the material. I am anxious that the Hon. the Prime Minister should give instructions to that committee to deal with all the material in the following manner. Whether there are 200 lorries or 2,000, and whether it is a question of wire or other material, no tenders should be asked, but prices should be fixed. We all know the value of barbed wire, or a lorry, or whatever there may be. Make public whatever is available, and afford everybody an opportunity of applying before a certain date. When these applications are received, the available material can be allocated by the committee, granting all the applicants the pro rata share to which they are entitled. We do not want to do an injustice to the trade or to anybody, but as organised farmers, we want to get our fair share of these supplies, and we are not prepared for the sake of the distributive trade to pay an additional 20 epr cent. I want to appeal to the Hon. the Prime Minister to see to it that all are treated fairly, and that we get our quota, and that prices are fixed, also the maximum profit which may be made. Everybody should get his just share of the available supplies, and distribution should be on an equitable basis.

Last year I put a question to the Hon. the Prime Minister in regard to shot cartridges and I was promised that a certain quantity would be made available. Some time afterwards I was informed that a certain quantity of shot cartridges was available. I want to give the hon. the Minister the assurance that the farmers in the Marico area urgently require shot cartridges. I have approached the department and was informed that the matter would receive consideration. We are in the position that vermin is destroying our lands, and we do not have the means to protect our farms. Daily I receive letters from farmers and farmers’ associations complaining about the matter, and to ask me to try to get shot cartridges for them. I want to ask the Hon. the Prime Minister to give us some information in regard to the matter. You may be aware what happened to the last cartridges which arrived last year. Somebody told me that he went to a firm in the Cape and that firm in the Cape told him that in three days he had sold 53,000 cartridges to people in the City of Cape Town. These people in Cape Town certainly do not require the cartridges to destroy vermin. There are many other kinds of vermin quite apart from baboons, doing damage, and the Hon. the Prime Minister should please make a plan to come to the assistance of the farmers. Why should such an amount of cartridges be sold in Cape Town. I do not know. I personally went to a trader and informed him that cartridges were arriving and that he should be ready. But they were only entitled to sell three cartridges to one man. Well, what are three cartridges for a baboon or a number of baboons? The Government expects the farmers to produce, but in the circumstances we cannot produce, because the baboons are destroying our lands. I hope the Hon. the Prime Minister will do his utmost to see to it that in future our lands are protected. There are many things we have to fight against. I am glad to hear that there are so many baboons round about here. If we can catch some, we will send them to Cape Town. I should be glad if the Prime Minister will see to it that cartridges are manufactured in our country. We require them, we require them badly.

I would like to ask the Hon. the Prime Minister—probably he can tell me at once—whether Mauser cartridges are manufactured in our country. My infromation is to the effect that they are manufactured at Kimberley. We get for instance 7.9 Mauser cartridges with the stamp of the Kynoch factory.

Yes.

The Prime Minister will agree with me that many of our people who have rifles today still have Mausers. Others would like to have a rifle, as the hon. member for Oudtshoorn (Mr. S. P. le Roux) said just now, and they would like to have a Mauser. The hon. member for Pietersburg (Mr. Naudé) put a very polite question to the Prime Minister. In the magazine they still hold a large proportion of rifles, of the 90,000 which were commandeered. Among the balance of the 90,000 in the magazine, there are valuable guns, which are highly valued by the owners. Probably there are still rifles which the Boers used in the Boer War. In the confusion which followed the calling up of the rifles, people handed in those rifles. I want to ask the Hon. the Prime Minister what can be done to see to it that a man who handed in his rifle under these circumstances, can get same back. Does the Hon. Prime Minister realise what these rifles mean to these people? I think we would like to have a statement from the Prime Minister in this regard. I cannot believe that rifles are not available. There are many Mausers which have accumulated in the magazine, rifles which have not been used by the troops in this war. Where these rifles are still available, why can’t they be returned to the people, and why can’t provision be made at the same time to provide Mauser cartridges? This request from the people for the return of their rifles is not a frivolous request, it is urgent, and it comes from supporters of this side and supporters of the other side of the House. These people felt it keenly when they were disarmed. What is more, it is necessary that these people should have their rifles back, and I think it is necessary that the Hon. the Prime Minister should not leave at this stage for the Peace Conference without removing this grievance of disarmament of the burghers. I think the Hon. the Prime Minister will render a great service to the country if he makes a statement to the effect that, as far as supplies are available and as far as claims are justified, these claims will be satisfied. I was of opinion that the Prime Minister should at this juncture repeal the prohibition on arms, but he has refused to do so. Where he has refused, I want to ask him to issue instructions to his department that the supplies they still hold should be issued to the people under less stringent conditions, and that there should be less discrimination against one section of the population—discrimination does take place. Those who have joined up and are members of the Home Guard, in which capacity they have done nothing but to make a few pounds out of the Defence Force, have their weapons.

[Inaudible].

Apparently he is also a member of the Home Guard. I do not know what he is doing with a rifle. Probably he is protecting his oranges. If he has no rifle to protect his oranges, I suppose the oranges rot. In all seriousness I want to appeal to the Hon. the Prime Minister to make available the guns they have at hand, and if sufficient quantities of Mauser cartridges are not available in the country, they should be manufactured. After all, whether you allocate the Lee Metford cartridges or Mauser cartridges, in both cases they are used for the same purpose. I think it is necessary that one should not discriminate against people who have Mausers and who prefer Mausers, but that provision should be made so that they can get hold of the necessary ammunition. In my plea I have referred to a very serious matter. I hope the Hon. the Prime Minister is going to give attention to this matter, and that is that a large section of our population as a result of disarmament, is unprotected; as a result of this lack of protection, recently very serious criminal assaults have taken place, and it is significant that the people least protected, are the people against whom these assaults were committed. I want to ask the Hon. the Prime Minister how many revolvers are in the possession of his department, which are not used for war purposes, but which have been commandeered, and which can be released and sold to the community, so that the people who are unprotected and who are living on lonely farms, and who are afraid of terrible assaults, are in a position to defend themselves? I think a, large number of revolvers which are not used for military purposes can be made available for the protection of the community, so that these burghers can protect themselves adequately. I hope the Hon. the Prime Minister will give me a straightforward answer to these suggestions. I regret that I cannot quite accept the statement of the Hon. the Prime Minister in regard to the position at the aerodrome at Bloemfontein. Certain information has reached me. Unfortunately the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) (Mr. Haywood) who has raised the matter, is laid up and cannot be here. But I have received information which I want to submit to the Hon. the Prime Minister. I am given to understand that within the area of the aerodrome, there is plenty of space to remove the natives to a place where they are not next to Europeans and that the natives can be put elsewhere within the vicinity of the aerodrome. One side of the aerodrome adjoins a place where Europeans have been living for years. Why is it necessary to place the natives on their doorsteps? The Hon. the Prime Minister has informed us that probably this aerodrome will be a permanent aerodrome and that is an additional reason why these natives should be removed to another section of the aerodrome. They can be housed on another part of the available terrain, or on a piece of land near the aerodrome which can be acquired by the Government. To my mind, this condition is a crying shame. The Hon. the Prime Minister referred a few days ago to segregation, he favoured segregation. I called it an apparent feeling in favour of segregation. Here you have a case where natives are placed next to Europeans. If the Hon. the Prime Minister wants to prove that segregation means something to him, he should give instructions to his department to remove these natives, and to place them where they are not next to Europeans and where they do not constitute a grievance to the Europeans living there. I may add that from the first day the natives were stationed there, and as soon as it became apparent what the position was going to be, complaints were lodged and these complaints have repeatedly been aired in this House, and I want to ask the Hon. the Prime Minister to issue instructions for the removal of the natives to another locality. Today they are at the front door of respectable Afrikaners who can no longer tolerate that position. I want to ask the Hon. the Prime Minister to give his attention to this matter, and may I add that if he does not do so, it will remain a grievance with the people concerned.

It is not my intention to reply to the cheap and personal remarks of the hon. member in regard to myself. It is not necessary. I want to give him the assurance that he need not be concerned in regard to my farming operations. I can look after them myself. I want to add that I am not a member of the Home Guard. I have my own Mauser. I would like to remove a misconception.

Where do you get cartridges?

Unfortunately since last year I have not been able to obtain cartridges.

Where do you get the Mauser?

That hon. member would be glad to get a Mauser where I got mine. I have risen to remove a misunderstanding. This is the kind of story we are asked to listen to. It is stated here that members of the Home Guard have received rifles. We have been told that there are some 30,000. The hon. member knows that that is not so. Those rifles do not belong to members of the Home Guard, but remain State property. A member of the Home Guard received a rifle to be used on parade, but it is not his rifle.

But in the meantime he can use same.

How?

He has got a weapon, and if he likes he can go and shoot a springbok.

I learned from them to shoot springboks.

As I said that man gets a rifle to use on parade. He can only use the rifle if he has cartridges and he can only buy cartridges if he has a licence for that gun and he is not issued with a licence. The 30,000 men do not possess these rifles, they belong to the State. Reference was made to discrimination. As far as discrimination is concerned, I can assure the hon. member that it is not so much a case of discrimination as differentiation. In my district I have assisted Nationalists to obtain rifles, in cases where my advice has been sought, because I know that they are trustworthy burghers of the country and they need their rifles to protect their cattle and their crops. There were others who applied for rifles, and when my advice was asked I said “definitely not”.

So you are handing them out?

I said I have made recommendations where my advice has been sought.

So they ask you for advice?

Yes. They would probably not accept that hon. member’s advice. I have just said these few words to clear up the misunderstanding which was created by the hon. member for Boshof (Mr. Serfontein).

I would just like to draw the attention of the Hon. the Prime Minister to something, which, in my opinion, cannot just be a coincidence. A short while ago I asked the question: How many pupils are being trained in the air force who are Afrikaans-speaking and how many who are English-speaking, and the reply was that there are 2,663 English-speaking and 314 Afrikaans-speaking. It seems to me that this is not merely coincidence. In the army we find about 70 per cent. Afrikaans-speaking citizens and the rest are English-speaking. In the air force we find that 2,663 are English-speaking and 314 are Afrikaans-speaking. That is approximately in the ratio of one to eight. For each Afrikaans-speaking pupil there are eight English-speaking pupils. Is this merely coincidental? It is after all a section of the army. Now I would like to ask the Prime Minister why this is the case? To whom is the selection entrusted? On what grounds does this discrimination take place? Are they perhaps afraid that the Afrikaans-speaking section is not to be trusted in that force? I would like to point out to the Prime Minister that it cannot be said that the Afrikaans-speaking fliers are not as good as the English-speaking ones. We have men like Van Ryneveld and Malan. They are Afrikaans-speaking, or at least have Afrikaans names. It seems to me that discrimination is taking place. Furthermore, I asked what language is being used in the training of the personnel. I asked whether Afrikaans was used in their training. The reply was: “Yes, as far as circumstances permit.” Now we would like to know what the circumstances are. For instance, is there a code in Afrikaans, or is everything done through the medium of English? Is the instruction in the engineering section given in Afrikaans or in English? If a pupil desires to be trained through the medium of Afrikaans, will that be made possible? It appears to me that the whole training in the air force is through the medium of English. Now I want to leave this matter and return to another case of discrimination. It seems that this afternoon we are faced with quite a few cases of discrimination, and also in this case it cannot be mere coincidence. I am now referring to a movement of which the Hon. the Prime Minister is a patron. I am referring to discrimination between the Voortrekkers and the Boy Scouts. Let me just refer to one case in point which was brought to my notice the other day. The Voortrekkers were camping the other day and tents were offered to them free of charge. Some 50 military tents were sent. They camped out for three days. After they received the tents, an account was submitted for approximately £25 for railage and subsequently they received an account for approximately £125 for depreciation, in other words, an account of £150 for three days. It seems a case of discrimination. Because these boys are Voortrekkers, they have to pay. They made representations to the department, but the department took no notice until finally the Voortrekkers approached the Member of Parliament of that constituency. He raised the matter with Gen. Mitchell Baker. Gen. Baker went into the matter and solved the problem. He put the whole tiling in order and the total amount was written off. But why was the accounts submitted in the first instance? There is an amount available for this purpose. I want to know who is to blame. Is it possibly an English official? Can the Minister rebuke the person who made this mistake? Even in the time of Mr. Pirow, the Voortrekkers got their tents free of charge, and they did not pay railage, but in this case an account for £150 was sent to them. Gen. Mitchell Baker was prepared to solve the difficulty, but we would like to know who was guilty. It seems to me there is discrimiation. We have this discrimination as between Mausers and Lee Metfords; we have discrimination as between Voortrekkers and Boy Scouts. I think the time has come to put a stop to this kind of discrimination.

The hon. member for Christiana (Mr. Brink) put certain questions to the Prime Minister in connection with the use of Afrikaans in the air force, and the answer that he got to that was that Afrikaans was used as far as circumstances permitted.

“As far as possible in the circumstances.”

Or as far as possible in the circumstances. I should like to know what that really means. I can give him the assurance that he will not hear from the Prime Minister what it means. But I can tell him what it means. In the first place he asked whether Afrikaans was used in the teaching of the engineering trades. I can give him the assurance that not a word of Afrikaans is used. Then he wanted to know whether Afrikaans was used in connection with the code. Not a singde word of Afrikaans is used there. In regard to flying instructions not a single word of Afrikaans is used, even when the staff are called for meals no word of Afrikaans is used. But I will tell him when Afrikaans is used; if one of the recruits says “Gee vir my ’n sigaret” then it is one of the circumstances in which the two officials languages are permitted. Now I should just like to say a few words to support the hon. member next to me in connection with the question of rifles. I do not wish to speak now about the difference between differentiation and discrimination as mentioned here by the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie). I do not know what the difference is between differentiation and discrimination and apparently I am in good company, in any case I am in the company of the hon. member for Rustenburg—good or bad—but in my constituency there is both differentiation and discrimination. There is discrimination between baboons and Saps. All the Saps get rifles when the baboons molest them, but the baboons on the farms of Nationalists are allowed to destroy the farmers’ crops. What I am saying now I am quite prepared to prove. That is an absolute policy in my constituency. I am only speaking about my own constituency; I do not know what the policy is in the constituencies of other members. Perhaps they have more baboons in their constituencies, such as that of the hon. member for Rustenburg, perhaps; I know he represents a mountainous district. In my constituency there is definite discrimination. It is a mountainous part. There are various sorts of vermin of which baboons do the most damage.

Are there any Saps?

Very few. The one steps into the place of the other. There are also lynxes and jackals who do an exceptional amount of damage. Many applications have been made from the constituency by farmers who want rifles where they are absolutely necessary for the protection of their crops. On many occasions I have notified the officer of the Defence Force who has to deal with this, and with the exception so far as I can recall of one or two cases, rifles have not been granted to supporters of the Nationalist Party in my constituency, but almost without exception they have been granted to supporters of the Government party. I have gone so far as to write a letter to the Prime Minister asking whether I must take it that the vermin must continue with their lust for destruction in the lands and amongst the flocks of the Nationalists, but that the Saps on the contrary, are to be protected. Discrimination has been made in my area. The question is not asked if the necessity exists on the part of the farmer for the protection of his lands and flocks against vermin. He can only obtain a rifle to protect his lands and flocks if he is a member of the Prime Minister’s party. Then I wish to lodge a protest against a certain line of action that was followed in connection with the Victory Cavalcade in Johannesburg. We also had a Victory Cavalcade in Cape Town and in various other centres there have been similar cavalcades, or whatever you call them, sometimes under different names but always with the object of collecting money for war funds. I was not in Johannesburg, but members of my family went there. As they are reliable people I have no reason to think that what they are saying is not the truth. They say that the biggest feature of that cavalcade in Johannesburg was the ease with which the public could obtain strong drink. We all know that this is now perhaps a characteristic of Johannesburg or of Johannesburgers. I shall not say it is a weakness; it is perhaps a good characteristic. There was no objection to that, but what was objected to was the fact that at this so-called Victory Cavalcade in Johannesburg apparently an unlimited quantity of liquor was available and that natives could buy liquor apparently at any of the bars which virtually occupied three-quarters or a half of the accommodation available in the cavalcade. I have been assured by reliable sources that the conditions there late in the evening were extremely undesirable, and that one saw not one but hundreds, if not thousands, of drunken natives lying about there at that cavalcade. No distinction was made in regard to admission. Natives and Europeans were permitted to go there at the same time, and apparently as far as the sale of liquor was concerned no discrimination or differentiation was made between Europeans and non-Europeans with the result that hundreds, if not thousands, of natives were wandering about amongst the Europeans at the cavalcade in an intoxicated state. We cannot do otherwise than protest against that. If it was thought proper to allow natives to visit a place that is chiefly attended by Europeans it is bad enough. If you want to admit them to such a place let them go at a special time and let there be hours reserved for the Europeans. But I think that any right-thinking person does object to natives being provided with liquor in unlimited quantities, and to their being allowed to obtain liquor amongst Europeans and to consume liquor to excess, to the extent of lying around in a drunken condition.

Always provided it is true.

I say that the source from which I got the information was very reliable and I have no reason to cast any doubt on it.

I can confirm it.

I received the information from an absolutely reliable source, and the assurance that I had is that this actually happened. I have no reason to doubt that. I am very glad that I have the support of the hon. member for Rustenburg that conditions like that ought not to be allowed. Someone was responsible for that. It is apparently a person who has not the slightest conception of what the feeling is or what the feeling ought to be between Europeans and non-Europeans in South Africa. What steps were taken against that person I do not know, but I hope that this warning will prevent there being any repetition of these conditions at any similar event in South Africa in the future.

In regard to the matter of the rifles, the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie) said there was no discrimination in connection with the issue of rifles. The Rt. Hon. Minister of Defence told us that the chief of police in any given area made a recommendation whether a person should have a rifle or not, but the hon. member for Rustenburg has come and told us that he was also consulted. As soon as you consult the political leader of a constituency, from the very nature of the matter an undesirable position is created, and he will, of course, be inclined in the first place to give rifles to his supporters.

Ask about that at Rustenburg.

I am speaking from experience. I know of farmers just outside Pretoria who have been struggling for more than a year because they are prominent members of the Nationalist Party. I can find no other reason than that they are members of the Nationalist Party, because they are prominent persons of high repute and who would be as unlikely as the hon. member for Rustenburg to make misuse of their rifles. They are unable to get rifles. I knew of one special case. Eventually I went to the chief of the police myself and said that I would hold myself responsible for this man’s rifle, and then we got it within a few weeks.

Then you have been doing that yourself? Why do you accuse me.

The difference is that the hon. member withholds rifles from those who need them, while I have endeavoured to get rifles for people. Some time past I had to deal with a case in the North-Eastern Transvaal. The person concerned was a prominent member of society, and a well-known member of the Nationalist Party. For 18 months he was refused a rifle, although he had battled to get one. Eventually it transpired after investigation, and it was also admitted by the head of the Home Guard, that the head of the Home Guard had reported unfavourably on this person. It was the head of the Home Guard who made the recommendation that he should not have a rifle, in spite of the fact that one of the man’s crops had already been destroyed, and a second crop was running the danger of being entirely destroyed. And what is more, that same individual in the Home Guard was not so long ago charged with a grave offence. What happened? When the facts were traced and the police had all the information, instructions came from Pretoria not to prosecute the person. This is the individual who makes recommendations about prominent people, whether they should be allowed to have a rifle or not. That is the position on the platteland. The hon. Minister of Defence perhaps does not know about it, but he ought to make closer investigation so that what is right may prévail and persons who need rifles for the purposes of their farming may be able to get them. But while rifles are being refused to bona fide farmers it happened shortly before this Session, while farmers were being told that no more rifles were available, rifles were being issued to certain officers living within the City of Pretoria. Apparently the holding of officer’s rank constitutes a recommendation for obtaining a rifle for pleasure purposes, but bona fide farmers could during this time not obtain rifles to protect their crops. I know several of the officers. Improper discrimination occurred. In the first place there was discrimination as a result of the recommendations that were made, and the second injustice was that while rifles were still available those rifles were given to friends in the towns. There is another point that I cannot refrain from referring to again. I spoke about it last year. There is a frightful laxity continuing even today in connection with the private accounts of individuals in the Defence Force. It sometimes occurs that a man overdraws hundreds of pounds and then leaves the military service. In some cases this is followed by dishonourable discharge. What happens about the money that the man still owes I do not precisely know. I know of no case where steps were taken against an individual who owed money. I do not know of any steps having been taken to recover this money for the country. In more than one instance it was obtained in a dishonourable manner, and on that account persons have been discharged though no efforts were made to recover the money. There was one case of a major who lived above his rank and overdrew £730 at the military pay office. What was done? When that was discovered up North he was returned to Sonderwater and he had to remain there a year or two, only £15 a month being paid out to him, the balance being credited to his account. He did nothing there, and at the end of the year he was simply discharged. If the accountancy system of our Defence Force is so weak that it is still possible for individuals to overdraw such large amounts on their accounts, it needs tightening up somewhere. The period of so-called emergency in connection with the war has now passed, and the time is overripe for the Defence Force to see to it that the squandering of money and dishonest practices should no longer occur. If the money that is frequently obtained dishonestly by individual soldiers was paid out to soldiers when they are demobilised there would be something to be said for it, but today money is being wasted with the result that persons who on demobilisation have honourable claims are frequently not treated properly and go away dissatisfied. I can give the Prime Minister the assurance that if there is one quarter where he will encounter big opposition it will be from the demobilisation committees in view of the injustices that are frequently committed. It is from that quarter that the greatest opposition to the Prime Minister and his party will come. A further point in connection with which I should like to have information is this: In the past soldiers have refused to take the new oath, and these persons have been demoted without exception. There are cases in my constituency where individuals on account of domestic circumstances could not take the blue oath at that time, but they said that when their families were well or if other circumstances were adjusted they would be prepared to take the oath. A month or two later they have gone and expressed their readiness to take the oath. Nevertheless these persons—I am referring now to people in the permanent force are demoted. What is the position going to be? Is the Prime Minister going to discriminate against them throughout their careers when they, frequently through unavoidable circumstances, do not take the oath? There have been several cases in my constituency, and I have made representations to the Department of Defence and I have mentioned the matter, but we can get no satisfaction. Will the hon. Minister have every case carefully investigated. The hon. Minister stated that after the war another large defence force will be required. May we ask on what basis the people are going to be selected for retention in the defence force? Will it be on the same basis as in connection with the air force? Will it be the basis that they are “red” and that their outlook is unAfrikaans? This would appear from the few hundred out of the 2,000 in this case. Two-thirds of the population of the country are Afrikaans-speaking and if only one out of eight in the defence force is Afrikaans-speaking it is going to cause great dissatisfaction in the future.

From what the hon. Minister for Defence has said, it appears that in the future there will be two categories of Italian prisoners of war, the first being those who sign the formula and the others those who do not sign it; and it appears that those who do not sign it will not be permitted to work amongst the farmers, while those who sign the formula will be allowed out. But at the same time the Prime Minister has stated that they will have to work on a higher schedule. Now I should like to have a little more information about this higher schedule. We have arrived at the stage when the farmers will want to use prisoners of war for their mealie crop. I should like to know what the higher scale of payment is for the prisoners of war. The mealie farmers would like to know what they will have to pay when they utilise prisoners of war. The farmers have great difficulty in connection with the mealie crop, and they would like to know whether they can utilise the services of prisoners of war. Another point on which I should like the Minister to throw some light is the tender system as applied to war material. Is the department going to continue with that? The other day I said in the course of my speech that it sometimes happens, and it can easily happen that tenders leak out. Accordingly I ask whether it would not be possible to replace the tender system by a system of more equitable distribution of war supplies, so that the trade would have a proportion and the co-operative organisations another proportion, and the articles would then be sold at fixed prices. I am not referring only to agricultural implements but also to other articles such as clothes. It may be said that it is difficult to fix the price of clothes because some will be in good condition and others in bad condition, but up to a certain point this practice is now being followed. The S.A.W.A.S. obtain certain clothes at fixed prices, and they then sell them to the public. The excuse does not go far enough, and we feel that if the co-operative societies receive a quota to enable them to sell at a fixed price to their members, it will be much more satisfactory. Then there is also the danger that the supplies will be offered in such great quantities that smaller organisations, such as agricultural associations, would not find it possible to tender for such large quantities with the result that only certain businesses that are powerfully financed will be able to tender. The smaller organisations would in this way be excluded; and I shall be glad if the hon. Minister would direct his attention to this matter so that the smaller organisations will not be excluded but will be able to get smaller quantities of the goods.

I should like to associate myself with what an hon. member said just now in connection with the cavalcade in Johannesburg. I can give the Minister the assurance that intoxication amongst natives happens on a large scale. I saw it myself. But I want to ask something else; I should like to ask the hon. Minister whether he knows where all the meat and butter came from which was sold at the “Speed the Victory Fair” which was held recently. It was a time of absolute meat scarcity on the Rand, but at that fair there was a superfluity of meat. When I asked where it came from I was told that it was given as a present and that sort of story. If that is the case I should still like to know how that meat and butter came into the controlled area of the Witwatersrand. There is another point in connection with it. The price of meat and butter is fixed, but there, while no meat or butter was available, one could buy meat and butter, as much as one liked at 5s. per lb. I should like the Minister to explain how that was possible. There is another point in this connection which I want to mention. As soon as such a military form of amusement is in progress, collections are held on a large scale in the Johannesburg station and in the great hall at the entrance in De Villiers Street, and it has often happened that one cannot pass to get to the trains. The collection boxes are held under one’s nose and they rush at one with them and become a nuisance. One has to catch the train but they rush at one from all sides and practically force one to make a contribution. That sort of thing should not be allowed. There is another point which I want to raise, in connection with rifles. In the beginning when rifles were commandeered I believe that a regulation was issued that if the rifles were heirlooms of persons, they could receive back these heirlooms on application being made. I know of persons whosé rifles were taken, rifles which were heirlooms, and who applied to get them back, and did receive them. But in other cases it was firmly refused. I for example know of a Mauser which was an heirloom. I do not think that the hon. Minister of Defence could use it. A request was made that it should be returned, but that was definitely refused. I should now like to ask the hon. Minister where these heirlooms are. They have sentimental value and one cannot buy them with money. Is it still possible that the rifles will be returned, or is it hopeless to think that one will ever hope to see them again? I should like to have some information about these matters. In connection with the terrible explosion at Pretoria recently, I still want to ask the Minister whether he does not consider it dangerous that on the Rand we still have bomb factories at various places, for example, in Langlaagte and other places. Will it not be better to erect these factories outside where they are of no danger to the public?

I am sorry that the hon. Minister of Defence cannot say what the figure in the Estimates is for the Information Bureau. I should like to repeat my question. The officials are there and they ought easily to be able to give the information. There are no military secrets connected with it. Then I should like to know what the position is in connection with the camps for British troops, especially here in the Cape Peninsula. There is, for example, Wingfield. The buildings and sheds erected at Wingfield, were they erected at the cost of the Union Government? If so, has any payment been made to the Union Government by the British Government for the use thereof? When he gives the information in connection with Wingfield I should also like him to give information in connection with Malagas, whether we erected the buildings there and put the clientele in order, and whether the British Government pays rent or contributed to the cost, and much. If Wingfield and Malagas are evacuated, will the buildings belong to the Union Government? Will the British Government have to receive compensation for it? The position seems to be peculiar, especially in connection with Wingfield. It seems as if it is béing used by both the Union Government and the British Government, by us for civil and other aviation, and by the British Government for practice purposes in connection with aviation. I shall therefore be glad to receive the particulars. Suppose, for example, that we should one of these days find ourselves in the position—which of course under this Government is almost unimaginable—that South Africa should be at war with Great Britain, we would have provided all the facilities for them to know every post in South Africa and to know precisely what the position is. Another point I should like information about is in connection with the troops who are to go to the East. When South Africa was asked in 1939 to enter the war, that was done by a resolution of Parliament. In 1943, when the Prime Minister judged that South African troops should cross the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, he came to Parliament to have a resolution adopted to that effect. The matter was laid before our Parliament and a decision was taken in connection with it. My question now is whether it is not right, if the Prime Minister and his Government have decided that they want to send South African troops to the East, which is a totally new sphere of the war, that Parliament should be given the opportunity to express itself in connection with this matter also? When the first decision was laid before Parliament in 1939, the Prime Minister judged that South Africa should take a resolution. Let me say that if one sees how today we are drawing a circle and how the Government acted in connection with the war one is astonished. In 1939 the Minister of Finance, for example, said, and if one reads it today, one can hardly believe one’s ears—

Those were his words, and the hon. the present Prime Minister used words which are not capable of two interpretations—

Then in 1943 he brought the motion in connection with the blue oath. He then proposed to go a step further—

Just as in 1939 he felt that a decision had to be taken to go beyond Africa, seeing that that was in total conflict with his words in 1939. And in 1943 it was then decided to go as far as Italy. In 1943, nobody suspected that South Afrfican troops would go further than Italy, just over the water. Nobody had in mind that troops should be sent to the Far East. In any case the Prime Minister never raised the matter. For that reason I ask, seeing that South African troops will now be taken to entirely new parts of the world, which were not considered at all in 1943 when a decision was taken, whether that is not a reason to ask Parliament again to take a decision before the yellow oath is taken from the troops and before they are sent to Japan.

Will you remain neutral again?

The Nationalist Party clearly stated its policy in connection with neutrality. We do not jump about. We are consequential. The hon. Minister understands that even the troops who have taken the blue oath, although in their attestation they undertook to go and fight anywhere, never had in mind that they would have to go to Japan. For that reason, and in all justness towards them, I want to ask whether the Minister will not consider in the first place again giving Parliament an opportunity to express itself on the matter, as it did on two previous occasions, and secondly whether he will not make the yellow oath an entirely new attestation, apart from those which the men have already signed. The blue oath declared that a person signing it will render service for the duration of the present war and six months afterwards. But in favour of those people it must be stated that they probably never had Japan in mind, and we should like to ask these two questions, whether he will not give those people the opportunity to sign a new attestation and whether he will not give Parliament an opportunity of again taking a resolution in the matter.

There are two more points which I should like to bring to the attention of the Minister of Defence. The first is that £45,000,000 is being asked for, without anything being specified. The only thing I can deduce is that the vote is framed in that way purely and simply for one reason, namely that the Government does not want to draw the attention of the country to the manner in which money is being wasted by the Defence Department. We on this side contribute just as much to the war taxes as members opposite. But the difference is that members opposite for a long period drew double salaries and thus could pay the taxes more easily.

We are tired of that old story.

The hon. member may be tired of it, just as we are tired of paying taxes to be wasted by the Department of Defence and in double salaries for those hon. members. I should like to indicate what conditions are in the defence camps. A little while ago there was a scarcity of butter, and I think that there is still a scarcity, but you know what was done at Sonderwater? The instruction was that the ordinary soldier should receive two slices of bread, one buttered and one unbuttered, and the two are then pressed together. The soldiers simply threw away the dry slice, because they could go and get two slices ten times. In this way they used the same amount of butter, but they simply wasted half the bread.

What kind of soldiers are those?

They are the kind of soldiers who supported that hon. member. That is the type of waste which went on in military camps. It took place in regard to all kinds of military supplies, and it indicates to us what supervision there is. At Clifton an acquaintance told me that he told a soldier that he could not manage on his petrol ration and was told by the soldier that he could help him because “Jannie’s tank is full”. They are proud of the fact that they can take any amount of petrol from the military supplies to give to their friends.

Why did you not report the matter to the Government?

It is not my duty to act as a policeman for the Government.

Then it is not your duty to raise the matter here either.

We know that members opposite do hot want to hear the truth. I hope they feel ashamed of supporting that policy. But not one of them opposite rises to protest against the money of the country being wasted on such a large scale. Here again £45,000,000 is asked for. The nation is taxed to that extent and members opposite do not care at all how that money is wasted. I hope that they will adopt the same point of view in their constituencies, and then we shall not again see any of them here. Then there is another matter in which we are very interested, and in which members opposite of course take no interest, and that is the neglect of the rights of the Afrikaans language in the army. At little while ago members of Parliament visited military factories on the Rand, Pretoria and elsewhere, and it was conspicuous that there were numbers and numbers of notices, numbers and numbers of instructions, but no Afrikaans at all appeared there. Here and there a small notice board appeared in ungrammatical Afrikaans. The notices were practically all in English. Now we find that the Government opposite says that they are going back to the old policy of bilingualism. That is obviously the old policy when we were punished whenever we spoke Afrikaans. That is the old policy of bilingualism; there are two languages; the one is used and the other not. We are tired of our language being neglected and the only hope we have—it is not a hope we have in regard to this Government—is that we will in the near future remove this Government from office, this Government which constantly refuses to give full rights to our language, and that we will then be able to apply a proper policy of bilingualism.

I have drawn the attention of the Rt. Hon. the Prime Minister to the fact that a great scarcity exists in the country of certain necessities that are in the possession of the military authorities, and I have mentioned certain figures. The Prime Minister’s answer to that was that we hear all sorts of things, and that it is only tittle tattle to which one can attach no value. I rise to give the Prime Minister the assurance that everything I have said here comes from a very authoritative source. The one point is that the quantity of material that can be spared at the moment and which indeed could be made available a year ago, is very large. It is Government departments who are asking for that material just as the general public are also asking. It is not as if other Government departments were not asking for it. The Railway Administration have asked for it and have been to great pains to get some of that material. They have not been able to get it. I realise, together with the Prime Minister—I want to say that in all fairness to him—that he cannot go into all the details. He must rely on what his staff tell him, but then on the other hand we also want to tell him that when we in this House rise and tell him certain things he must not take up the attitude that it is simply nonsense, because we are very worried over the situation. We have a condition of food shortage in this country and our food problems can only be alleviated with the assistance of means that are in the possession of the military. It is true that preference should be given to Government departments as far as regards these supplies. This is absolutely true, but the thing about which all the departments are complaining is the unparalled slowness of the Defence Department. I do not know whether they are so slow at the front but here on the home front it is a misery trying to get anything from them. When we go to a Minister— and the same happens with his own supporters—he tells us that we should talk to the Prime Minister and that perhaps we will get more from him than they can, which of course is not true. We say to them that they sit with the Prime Minister in the same Cabinet and that they must talk to him. Nevertheless they tell us that we ought to speak here and that we will get more in that way. I do not believe it. But take the motor lorries of under three tons. The war cannot be won with them now and it is just those lorries that the farmers require. We ask that they should be made available to the farmers. For years we could get no fencing material. We had to buy it on the black market. Now the Prime Minister says that a great quantity is being made available, but no farmer has yet seen it. We have as yet not seen a single roll of wire. We need it very badly. We need wire and fencing poles because that will help us a great deal in view of the shortage of labour. But we do not see anything of the sort, and we cannot fence our farms. If it is available the Prime Minister should so regulate the matter that the farmers will be able to get that material. He is the one man who can regulate the matter. He is the person who can see that it is put at the disposal of the farmers. Then I have in mind pumping machinery that is so scarce these days. There are tens of thousands of units of that machinery which are very necessary in the country; there are other goods that are greatly needed in the country and our people cannot get them. Take building material. No one realises more than he does the seriousness of the position in the country in regard to the housing shortage. The position is going to be strongly criticised in the near future. And just look at the Department of Defence. We asked the Prime Minister how much building material there is in the Defence Department. The Prime Minister has stated that he could not give us the information because there is a shortage of staff and they could not correlate the information. The Prime Minister ought not to accept that excuse, and he must not be annoyed if we do not accept it. The Department of Defence ought to know what it has, otherwise we must take it that there is chaos in the Department. We know that the Department has building material, we know that it has dwellings, that it has camps, that it has barracks. It is not only the Opposition who know that but also the supporters of the Government, and neither we nor they can realise why the people who are idle in these camps cannot be demobilised and why these buildings and material cannot be placed at the disposal of the local authorities with a view to providing dwellings in this difficult period. We do not want to occasion the Prime Minister needless anxiety at this moment, because we know that he has many matters to think over, but unfortunately this responsibility rests on him and no other man in South Africa can put the position right for us. I want to give him the assurance that just a little interest on his part and an instruction from him will remedy the whole position, and we expect that from him. It should come now, he should help us now. We have held out a long time but we cannot hold out any longer. The people are suffering hunger; the people are having a bad time; they are suffering on account of lack of the necessary dwellings, and the position is becoming worse. We await the Prime Minister saying the necessary word so that the Defence Department will oblige us in respect of those essential services. If the Prime Minister does this he will be conferring a great service on his fatherland by placing those necessary things at the disposal of the people, things that are today in the hands of the Defence Department and that the Defence Department no longer require.

There is another point that I should like to bring to the notice of the Minister of Defence, and that is in connection with the officers who have been sent out to address meetings in connection with the demobilisation of soldiers. I do not know exactly what" is happening at those meetings, but I understand that the officers have gone out to discuss plans with the public as to how the soldiers who are being demobilised can be reabsorbed in normal life. If that is the object it is of course very good that the public should be called on to assist. Everyone is in favour of that and I think it is desirable to send out officers to meet all classes of the public and to reveal the plans of the department and to secure the co-operation of the public. I want to mention a case here which the hon. member for Rustenburg (Mr. J. M. Conradie) would have pithily described as an example of differentiation. Two officers came to Humansdorp. The one was chairman of the Demobilisation Committee and the other was chief liaison officer at Port Elizabeth, a colonel and a major. They inserted an advertisement in the local paper that they would hold a meeting in Humansdorp and in the advertisement they indicated that at that meeting they would explain demobilisation plans and answer relevant questions. The advertisement said that it was a private meeting to which only supporters of the S.A.P. Party would be admitted. Now I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether that is his policy? Is he going to ask the public as a whole to co-operate in connection with demobilisation, or must we accept that instructions have been given to his officers to hold private S.A.P. meetings and that these officers can be used to act in such a way. What is the policy of the Government?

Was it a notification of the meeting?

I shall read out the advertisement in the Humansdorp Advertiser of the 1st January, 1945. It runs—

Then follow the names of the officers concerned who were to attend the meeting, and what I have already described. There also follows a reasonable translation in Afrikaans. It was clear that it was a private meeting of Government supporters. I notice the hon. member shakes his head. I am glad that he is giving me information, but I would prefer to have it from the Prime Minister. If he will intimate that he agrees with me and that it is another sign of the dissatisfaction of this member about the conduct of the Government, I want to say that it is the second welcome sign of that nature that we have had from him today, and we may hope that he will continue on the right road.

At Rustenburg nothing of the sort has happened.

But it has happened at Humansdorp.

That shows that you do not look after your job.

The hon. member for Rustenburg showed signs of commonsense with two observations that he made and he has really given us reason to hope that one of these days there will be an improvement in the representation of Rustenburg. But I am afraid that interjection of his was very disappointing and induces us to drop those expectations that we had begun to cherish.

I do not want to detain the committee for long, but I wish to raise a few points with regard to the blue oath. I think that when the blue oath was introduced, although it was a general undertaking for service all over the world, it was solely on the understanding that it referred to overseas countries in Europe. Reference was made to overseas, but the whole idea was Europe; with the result that if the Prime Minister is going to send people to the Far East, it was never in the thoughts of the forces when they took that oath. They did not understand it that way. We are glad of the statement made by the Prime Minister that before he will send people to the East they will take a new oath according to a new attestation form. We accept his word. But I met an officer and he told me that he was simply ordered to hold himself prepared to depart for the Far East, without the idea of a new oath being explained to him. There may have been a misunderstanding. I mention this single case, because it is the only one that has come to my notice. But if there is one case, the Prime Minister must not blame us if we think that there will be more than one case. Whether it is really an undertaking by the Government to give those people whom they are sending to the Far East a new opportunity of taking an oath, we must accept it according to the statement of the Prime Minister. But then it must be done without those soldiers being victimised in the least, so that those who go will really be volunteers. Those units should not perhaps be afraid that they will be discharged if they do not take the new oath or that they will be reduced in rank. I think that the Prime Minister must be very candid in this respect. The battlefields of the Far East are very difficult ones. We know that it is a very unhealthy area. Our forces in South Africa are not very big and we dare not act recklessly with regard to our manpower, especially not with our young boys. If anyone is sent to the Far East, he must be given the opportunity really to exercise a free choice as to whether he wants to go or not, without the least fear on his part. Then there is another matter which is not quite clear, and that has reference to the prisoners of war. Those men who have been set free after years of captivity, well, we can understand that many of them are intensely desirous of returning to their relatives and dear ones, and we should like to know whether the Prime Minister will find the necessary shipping space to give these liberated prisoners of war preference in returning to their relatives, and that they will not anew be saddled with further military duties which must first be completed by them. I consider that they are entitled to leave and that the opportunity should be given to them to visit their families. I do not plead that they should be discharged completely, but I think that they should be given a few months in which to visit their families so that they can for a change taste the sweets of freedom. Then I want to plead that the time has dawned for total demobilisation for the natives and coloureds in the army. We on this side feel that a blunder was committed when natives were armed and sent to the front to fight against Europeans. We know that few of them will return without certain aspirations and inspirations. They are disciplined as soldiers; they have the aspiration to improve their position, and then the day is not excluded when in future they will want to have a test of strength with the Europeans in South Africa. Personally I think that the Government should not commit a second blunder by keeping these people in the army longer, especially where they are not required any more. Still less must they be sent to the Far East. The position of the European in South Africa will be threatened. We are only a handful while there are millions of them. I wish to warn the Prime Minister to face the matter very seriously. I then come to the question of the distribution of surplus war material. Certain companies had preference and made enormous sums of money. I would not like to see that the same group who became enriched by providing the State with this material will again derive the benefit in connection with the sale of this surplus material. Somebody told me that there are 100,000 suits of white clothes which have been sold. Tenders were asked for and a certain person submitted a tender of 3s. per suit. But somebody in one or other manner received information about that tender and simply submitted the tender of 3s. 2d. per suit, while the suits were worth between 11s. and 12s. each. He bought them all at 3s. 2d. per sluit. We mention these things in order to persuade the Government to be more careful and wise in the distribution of this material, so that it will not land only in the hands of certain capitalists and companies who have already been enriched in the past, but that this should be prevented and that the opportunity should be given to the public as a whole to buy some of those supplies. [Time limit.]

The hon. member for Moorreesburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) asked some further questions which are of great interest to us, and we should like to know whether the Minister will now reply to them. The matter which I raised on Thursday has been repeatedly discussed, namely that of superfluous supplies. The hon. member for Mayfair (Mr. H. J. Cilliers) asked a question in this connection, and it would also appear from what was said by the hon. member for Vredefort in amplification thereof that the estimated value of superfluous transport lorries which could be released to the public amounts to approximately £200,000. Why should these goods be exposed any longer to the sun and left to rot, whilst there is such a shortage of transport lorries? Then there are tractors to the value of £50,000 which have been declared superfluous. In reply to the question of the hon. member for Mayfair, the Minister of Economic Development said that the tractors are of the type known as the gun tractor, but that they can also be used for other purposes. According to the explanation, they can be used for agricultural purposes. Why cannot these goods be made available to the farming industry in South Africa? The public outside are in need of them and are anxious to know. Suggestions have been made, particularly by the hon. member for Kroonstad (Mr. A. Steyn)—sound suggestions —and we hope that the Minister will pay attention to them and that these supplies will not again be disposed of at enormous profits. We are being asked here to vote £45,000,000. No particulars are given, it is not stated that this amount is needed for one purpose and the other amount for another purpose. The nation is beginning to tire of the haphazard fashion in which money is voted in this House. We want to know what the money is being expended on. For example, I asked the Minister why the natives are still being kept on in the military camps. The hon. Minister answered me very briefly. I have a letter here from my constituency in which a protest is made against natives still roaming about in uniform and idling away their time. They say that even on the stations and on the benches, etc., the natives in uniform oust the Europeans. The natives simply gad about. They want to know why the natives are still retained and of what use they are to the country. The hon. Minister said that it is difficult to dismiss them for they do not really want to return to their former employment. But if they were to be discharged from the army, they would be compelled to return and to work on the farms. I hope that the hon. Minister will reply in more detail on this point.

In regard to the question of supplies, I would like to bring a few points to the attention of the Minister. The first is that today a great shortage of transport facilities exists. There is practically no municipality in South Africa which would not do everything in its power to obtain some of these transport lorries and troop-carriers which today could be released by the Department of Defence. The municipalities need them for transport purposes. For years they have not been able to obtain these vehciles. Here is a golden opportunity. There is a great shortage of transport facilities, especially on the Witwatersrand—truly in all the centres where industrial development is taking place great difficulty is being experienced in this connection. The position is such on the Witwatersrand today that mine workers, owing to lack of public transport facilities, are obliged to make do with motor cars. We know how difficult it is to obtain petrol for private cars. Ordinarily a number of them use the same car, but they are still not able to eke out on their petrol rations. The Department of Defence can be of great assistance here by releasing vehicles to municipalities for this purpose. I think, however, it is wrong that these vehicles should fall into the hands of motor dealers, for its is unnecessary. Every vehicle the Department of Defence possesses and which it is desirous of getting rid of, will be taken over only too gladly by the municipalities or even by persons who have private contracts with the municipalities in connection with transport. Secondly, we know the shortage that exists of transport facilities on the platteland, and the railway buses— this is the continual complaint—are not able to cope with the position in view of the limited transport vehicles available. Again there is the heavier type of motor vehicle which the railways can take over. It is unnecessary that should have to go through the hands of any motor dealer. And then we come to tractors. I know that the Department of Lands will shortly have the task of placing a large number of settlers. I was on the Commission in connection with that matter, And our greatest problem was where to find the necessary machinery, tractors and transport vehicles. Every transport vehicle, every tractor, which the Defence Department can spare today and no longer needs for the prosecution of the war, would be taken over only too gladly by the Department of Lands. Then I come to another type of transport vehicle, and that is the armoured car. The chassis and wheels of the armoured cars are ideally suited to this country. For heavy transport from farm to farm and from the farm to the railway station, you could not improve on them. Those armoured cars can carry a tare of 12,000 to 20,000 lbs. We have never before had the opportunity of obtaining such transport vehicles for the farming community which are relatively light and which can be drawn along by a few animals or a small tractor. They are an excellent transport vehicle. Further I would like to point out that there is a great shortage of motor-cars, not only as regards people on the farms, but also in the towns. It is unnecessary to distribute the motor-cars through the motor trade. The public will be prepared to buy each of the vehicles direct from the Department of Defence. We know that the motor trade will not distribute the vehicles for nothing. They will not be satisfied with a small profit. They have been spoilt in this country, they have been pampered, and become accustomed to making enormously high profits. The public would be glad of the opportunity of being able to obtain the transport vehicles at a reasonable price, and I think that the making of huge profits should not be permitted. The hon. Minister of Defence said that his department is not a business concern, but that they would be only too glad to place the goods at the disposal of the country. Well, it is possible to fix the prices for the vehicles by appointing committees, and in this manner the department can dispose of the mass of material without any difficulty, and the public, who have been robbed for years of the opportunity of obtaining transport vehicles, will have the chance of acquiring them. When everybody will throng to obtain the articles at reasonable prices, why does the State go ahead and hand over the goods to people who are going to speculate with them? Why should the public be fleeced once again? It is necessary, and I want to stress this fact, that the Minister should issue instructions to his department to compile a list of supplies and then to release them to the public. One man, for instance, should not be allowed to obtain three or four or five transport lorries, but limit the amount so that no one is able to buy more than two at the most. Within a relatively short space of time, with a minimum of difficulty, the Department of Defence will be in a position to get rid of these goods, and they will not be superfluous after the war, and will have disposed of a mass of material. It does not only apply to transport vehicles, but also to other articles which the department will want to get rid of after the war. I would suggest that the Department of Defence should simply state “here are the articles which we want to sell and the prices”, and then let everyone buy directly from the Department of Defence. Then the public will not be deceived or fleeced and excessive profits will be avoided. It will be to the benefit both of the public and of the department.

The hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) and others spoke about demobilisation plans, and I would like to bring a few points to the attention of the hon. Minister of Defence. We who live here in the town and who are Members of Parliament, have people coming to us practically every day with their difficulties. Some time ago we raised the question of the granting of clothing and equipment allowances to soldiers.

The hon. member can discuss that under the Vote “Demobilisation”, Vote No. 29.

I think this question falls under the Department of Defence.

Is the hon. member referring to soldiers who are still in the army?

The case I want to deal with is that of the soldier who this week is still in the army, but who will no longer by there next week. Supposing a man comes and tells me that he has spent five years in the fighting lines. Next year he will no longer be a soldier.

The benefits granted to soldiers on discharge fall under “Demobilisation”.

I do not doubt the authenticity of your ruling, but these are matters which the Minister of Defence as Commandant-General of the Union should know.

They fall under “Demobilisation”.

But the Minister of Defence ought to know what is going on.

The hon. member may not discuss demobilisation any further.

Then I want to draw attention to another matter. During January there was a cadet officers’ training camp at Roberts Heights, which was attended by cadets from all over the country and I have been told by more than one of the officers that they received their training there in English only, and that not a word of Afrikaans was spoken throughout the course which lasted either 14 days or three weeks. This is the sort of thing which is generally experienced when coming into contact with these men, namely that Afrikaans is practically not used at all in the Department. The language medium is English and no instructions are given in Afrikaans. Now I want to ask the hon. Minister whether it is going to be his policy in the future to ensure that when men are trained for our own air force the instructions will take place in both languages and not only one language? It is a disgrace that this position should obtain, but it is so with Afrikaans—it is the attitude which is adopted by the officers—Afrikaans is just a sort of language and need not be used—it is unnecessary to use both languages for it is a so-called technical training. If this is impossible for the staff who are there today giving technical instruction, then courses ought to be created where such people can be trained, even perhaps at the universities by people who know the technical terms, so that we can have a bilingual air force. There may have been reasons in the past, but where we are going to have our own air force and are going to train the personnel, it is imperative that Afrikaans as a medium should gain its rightful place. Numbers of young men who come from Afrikaans medium schools, particularly here in the Cape Peninsula, have also told me that they were astonished to find that they could not receive their training in Afrikaans.

Where?

At all the schools where the men are trained. Hon. members over there will not believe it. They do not investigate the position, but simply take it for granted that what we say is not true.

I was there myself,

Then you must have been deaf. Quite possibly the hon. member spoke English to the Afrikaans-speaking people there.

My instructions were in Afrikaans.

I have met numbers of young men who have been trained there and who have told me that the instructions are all given in English. It is the general opinion. A month ago a boy from Pretoria received his training there and his parents told me the same thing. But hon. members do not investigate matters. They simply take for granted that instructions are given in both languages, while that is not the case. We want a thorough training in both languages, and that they do not receive. The head of the staff could not testify to the fact that his services are 100 per cent. bilingual. You have only to come into contact with the Castle. You can find nobody there who can speak Afrikaans. You are sent from pillar to post. You approach somebody and request assistance in order to solve a matter, and you are sneeringly asked “can’t you speak English?”

What did you say?

I can speak English, but the hon. member over there has never learnt to speak Afrikaans for he has nothing but contempt for all that is Afrikaans. The hon. member has never contributed anything towards achieving co-operation and a sound understanding between the two sections of the population. He stands for the non-Europeans and views matters through coloured spectacles. If we were to discuss the coloureds and natives, he would immediately be on the alert and offer his contribution in the matter. You have only to go to Wynberg Camp and you will encounter exactly the same position. I want to ask the Minister to have this matter thoroughly investigated, for particularly those who join up from the platteland do not feel at home. Only this morning a man came to see me at my office who is on the point of being discharged, and although he wrote to the Department in Afrikaans, the reply was written in English. This man is not thoroughly bilingual. He had to come to me to be told the contents of the document he had received. I then asked what the position was, and he said that the soldiers there come into contact with a strange element. He is a man who almost lost an eye in the war and he is treated in this manner. I would like the hon. Minister as Commandant-General to give instructions to the heads of his Department to the effect that bilingualism should be upheld in the Defence Department. It is definitely not carried out. It does not only apply here, for if you go to Pretoria and come into contact with high officers, you encounter the same position. I do not know whether all the binligual officers are away and it is only the unilingual ones who are left behind in the bases. One almost comes to the conclusion that the bilingual soldiers have gone to fight and that the English-speaking unilingual soldiers have stayed at home. The young men from the platteland have to come into contact with the class of man who cannot understand him. I would like the hon. Minister to give attention to this matter.

I think it is time to reply to the large number of questions that have been put to me. If I do not reply specifically to every member who has spoken it must not be taken as disrespect for that member. The same points, the same questions have been put over and over again by hon. members, and I do not want to detain the House unnecessarily by repeatedly dealing with the same points. I will be as brief as possible. Hon. members will recall that I really traversed the whole ground last week when questions were put and I answered them. Let me begin with the point that was mentioned by the hon. member for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie). He asks what our language policy is. Our policy is, and I shall do my best to see that the policy is carried out, that both languages are equally studied and honoured in our Defence Department, and that such things should not happen as the hon. member says has happened. If any such things come to light, such as the hon. member has stated, I shall be glad if they are brought to my notice.

May we let you know?

If the hon. member presents to me the case of the man whose English was defective and who was in difficulty, if he will come to me personally I shall investigate the matter. I should like there to be equal treatment of both languages, but today I have listened over and over again to complaints that are being made here; hon. members hear things from the public, but there they remain. They are not communicated to me. If they are communicated to me I shall follow them up.

Just telephone the Castle and speak Afrikaans.

If such cases are brought to my notice I shall do my best, because it is our policy to see to it that equal rights are accorded both languages. The hon. member for Krugersdorp (Mr. van den Berg) has returned to a matter that I repeatedly dealt with. His point is that there is a great shortage of tractors and motors amongst the public and municipalities. Why cannot they be sold direct? The hon. member cannot expect that we as a Department of Defence, should trade with these things. A firm regulation has been laid down, and it is virtually the law of the land, that if the Department of Defence no longer requires a certain thing it should be transferred as speedily as possible to the Department of Economic Development. That department has a complete organisation for that, and it is working very much on the lines that have been suggested here this afternoon. The hon. member for Oudtshoorn (Mr. S. P. le Roux) has for instance asked why prices cannot be fixed and measures taken whereunder the great majority of the goods could be divided, so that they will not be bought up by certain persons. So far as I have gone into it, that policy is being followed by my colleague; where something new is taken over from us, from the Department of Defence, the price put on it is the cost price at which Defence got it. If it is something that has never been used it is disposed of at the price at which the department bought it on a big scale. That is the price that is put on that article. Where an article has been used and worn to a certain extent, the price is reduced in proportion to the use. Those are the prices at which these articles are sold and the public can obtain them at these low prices. À disposal bureau has been created.

Can the public get into direct contact with them?

Yes, they can go to the Disposal Board. It should however be remembered that up to date the demand from various departments for these articles has been surprisingly large. Thousands of lorries and armoured cars have already been taken over by the various departments. The demand has hitherto been great and the public have not yet had an opportunity really to come into it, but hope we shall soon reach the point when the Government departments will be more or less satisfied and have enough for their requirements and that then the balance can be disposed of to the public. Everything that we can do to help the public will be done. We know what needs exist and our desire is to get rid of the stuff. The longer we keep it the more it depreciates and we want to get rid of it as soon as possible at reasonable prices before the goods deteriorate and lose their value. The channel is there for the disposal, but my department cannot be expected to act as a dealer in these goods.

Can a man buy a motor car or anything else if he has not a permit?

No, that is not the point.

The newspapers say that the dealers get the goods because they have permits.

I believe not. I have never heard that permits are required by anyone who requires the goods and buys them from the Government. This is also an answer to the question that the hon. member for Heilbron (Maj. P. W. A. Pieterse) put last week and again today. He has put the same question. This is the reply to him, too, and it is the reply to the hon. member for Vredefort (Mr. Klopper). He mentioned the same point. We know about the terrible scarcity, we know about the needs of the public in respect of transport and motor cars as well as for fencing wire and building material; we know all about it. The hon. member is under the impression that we have an amazing amount of building material on our hands. We have not got so much building material, but what we have is being used. The House knows that a large number of military camps —and this is being done by Defence— are being reconstructed for civilian purposes. There is such a demand for housing and the shortage is so great that I think that we shall have to reconstruct a large number of our camps and convert them for civil occupation. There are already such camps in the Peninsula. There are such camps in Johannesburg and Pretoria, and this is being done everywhere, and I think that the reconstruction that we are now carrying out in Defence will in a great measure help to solve the housing question. For that we require material and the little material that we have on hand is largely being used for such purposes. As far as fencing is concerned we have sold great quantities already.

Many farmers have already got it.

Yes, much of it is being sold to farmers. I cannot give the particulars to hon. members. I know that this policy is being followed. I know what the need is, and I know how I have week after week and month after month spurred them on at the Defence Department to push things along, because I know how serious the need is. Hon. members also know that in respect of making motor lorries available, we have met the public. Some thousands of these vehicles from Defence are being used by the public for the conveyance of products and for a hundred and one purposes. Where we can help we do help and the best way to help will be to get rid of these goods.

Will the co-operatives be able to handle these goods with a view to selling them to their members?

My hon. friend will have to discuss that special arrangement with my colleague. When his vote comes up in the estimates all these questions can be put to him, and I am convinced that he will be in a position to answer them.

Will exorbitant profits be prevented?

If the policy is followed that I have spoken about here, namely, that the price is fixed—the original price and the reduced price for the used articles — it will eliminate excessive prices. A question that has been mentioned repeatedly here is the question of rifles. Let me just utter a word of warning. The hon. member for Oudtshoorn (Mr. S. P. le Roux) has a soft spot for his Mauser, as many have, for historic reasons. But let me just sound a note of warning. I do not know how many there are, but it may be there are still some Mausers, but the ammunition question is extremely important. We are not manufacturing Mauser ammunition and I fear that hon. members will find after the war as well that no Mauser ammunition will be manufactured. I do not know what openings there will be in Europe and elsewhere for the manufacture of Mauser ammunition, but I should like to direct this word of warning to the public. It may be they will obtain rifles from us or elsewhere but they will not be able to obtain ammunition for them.

Is it not possible that we shall manufacture Mauser ammunition after the war?

No, there is no mention of that. The more sorts of ammunition you make the more expensive it is. We will stick to the standard type, and it is the standard type that we need.

Has Mauser ammunition not been made in the course of the war?

Not by us.

But by the Allies.

What has happened in that respect I do not know. It can happen that there will be a certain amount of opportunity to secure Mauser ammunition in that way.

Is it possible to make that?

No, it requires entirely new machinery. Our machinery has been erected for the manufacture of Lee-Metford ammunition. Hon. members will know that the manufacture of small arms ammunition is more difficult than the manufacture of ammunition for guns.

But Kynoch’s could make it.

Then I wish the hon. member luck, and I hope Kynoch’s will be able to help him.

It is not a question of congratulating one. Do you admit that Kynoch’s make it?

I have not information on the point. They may have made it before the war but I do not know whether they are making it now. Then there is another point on the question of rifles. Several hon. members have mentioned the question of heirlooms. They have asked whether it is not possible to regain possession of rifles which are prized by the owners for historical reasons. Many such rifles have already been returned to the public. They were bought from them and they were sold back to them. They can get them back if they have the right numbers. Hon. members will realise that when it comes to a question of thousands of rifles you cannot go and look up which rifle belongs to whom. But if they have the number we shall do our best to allow these heirlooms to come into their possession. The hon. member for Moorressburg (Mr. F. C. Erasmus) put a series of questions to which I shall reply. His first question was this. How much was expended on intelligence services? I can give no answer to that. The hon. member’s understanding of the matter is that our intelligence services are not related to military operations, but they are an integral part of them. The whole of our intelligence work in all our theatres of war is our information service.

This is a home service.

Is it not an espionage service?

I have nothing to do with the political aspect. My information service is purely of a military character.

But you have political officers in the army?

These are army instructors. You know that we have an organisation in the army to keep our young men on their toes. You do not fight every day. For every day that you fight you are perhaps ten days out of the fighting, and the big question is to keep the young minds occupied, and we have an extensive system of schools and lectures. This is our education department in the army, but the whole intention of it is to develop the young men, to keep their minds active and to train them for the future. Many of the lads are for the first time receiving a first-class education and many of them are writing their examinations and I think some of them are working for their degree.

Has it anything to do with foreign politics?

No, except where it is a question of a debate such as, for instance: “What do you think of Socialism?”, “What do you think of Communism?”, the sort of academic questions you discuss in debate, and these are the questions in which our young people take a lot of interest. Those are the questions discussed there, but so far as I know, and in accordance with my instructions, nothing of a party nature is included in these instructional courses.

But my objection is the propaganda.

But everything is called propaganda today, however necessary it may be.

But resolutions have been taken endorsing your policy.

I cannot help that. They are not doing that with my approval. The instructions of the officers in connection with the information bureau is to avoid anything with a political complexion. In our army there is not only one political party. There are many soldiers at the front who certainly do not belong to my party and who differ from me a great deal; you have Socialists, you have Labourites, and I should not be surprised if you had Communists, you have Nationalists and Saps, and the whole idea is to take a line that will not cause offence to any party. The second point asked by the hon. member is this. What about camps that are being built here? The answer to that is clear. The air force camps have all been built by the Union Government.

What about Wingfield and Malagas?

Malagas is a fleet air arm camp. It has been made by the British Government. The British Navy has built it. But after the war it will eventually be our property and we are now working out the financial arrangements to determine what we shall have to pay to obtain it. The principle on which I have worked is this, that all permanent buildings and installations that have been built in South Africa will be the property of the Union Government so that we shall not have unnecessary duplication of the sort of questions, that we have had in the past. Everything that we have built is the property of the Union Government, or will be our property, and we are now working out the financial arrangements. Then the hon. member asked why we did not have a new resolution taken by Parliament regarding the troops who are going to the Far East, and his argument is that the Far East was not intended in the original resolutions that we took, and that there should be a new attestation and a new resolution by Parliament. The hon. member is not correct. What is described as the blue oath, namely the attestation for general services, applies to everything. It applies to Europe or any part of the world where there may be a war in which we are involved, and consequently a new attestation is not necessary. The whole question was thrashed out when we approved the blue oath or the attestation for general service, in Parliament.

But the troops did not then have the yellow oath in their minds.

The war was in progress and we had everything in mind, but notwitstanding the attestation for general service the Government considered it wise that, seeing that in the first instance we had not the Far East in mind, we should not compel the men to go there if they were not agreeable, and the existing attestation thus remains notwithstanding the fact that we shall again give them a chance to refuse. I want to give the assurance to the hon. member for Namaqualand (Lt.-Col. Booysen) that there will be no victimisation. He asks whether those who are going to the Far East will not suffer thereby. That is absolutely not the case. The numbers who want to go to the Far East are larger than we shall require. In the Air Force thousands more have volunteered than we need. But there is no further oath necessary; no further attestation is necessary. What is legal has already been passed by Parliament with the reservation that we shall not compel people to go to the Far East. The men who go there will be technicians, men on the little ships, members of the Air Force, etc. It may be that we shall send a small unit of other troops just to have the flag of South Africa there.

Is it not reasonable to give Parliament an opportunity to discuss that matter?

No, that is not necessary. We have already discussed the question at length. There are a number of other questions into which I shall not go deeply. The question was again asked about Italian prisoners of war, the two classes, for which we have not the slightest responsibility. We are only doing that at the request of the British Government, which in turn is acting at the request of the Italian Government. And we are doing what they have asked us.

Are there not still two Italian governments?

No, there are not two Italian governments. There may still be a Mussolini section, but I do not think the hon. member will take that very seriously. Then the question was repeatedly asked, especially by the hon. member for Gezina (Dr. Swanepoel) about laxity and waste of money. In this connection let us not forget that we had many difficulties in previous years over this state of the accounts when we were very much in arrears on account of the shortage of audit staff. We had great difficulties, but the difficulties no longer exist. The select committee has now complimented us. Brigadier Kearney, who is now at the head of that organisation, has got a feather in his cap. They have thanked him for the fine work, and there is no doubt that we have overtaken all the arrears. All the accounts are in order and the laxity that the hon. member is talking about is just so much street gossip. Someone comes and says something, and it is blurted out as if it was gospel.

Can you give the House the assurance that all the reconstructed accounts have been examined?

I take it that they are all in order, and if they are not the Auditor-General will tell us. I knew that we were far behind. We began in 1940 with a shortage of almost £100,000. I knew that we would get it all rectified, because we have the documents and to a great extent the documents that are required to enable us to examine the accounts. Of course we have had a good deal of difficulty but the difficulty has not been removed. I think I have now dealt with all the points of interest.

Can you tell me nothing further in connection with the position at the Bloemfontein air port?

I should like to go into that. I feel that if there is anything wrong and it can be rectified we ought to do it. After the discussion we have had here I decided to go into the question carefully and to see whether we could not use the native camp for something else. I do not want to occasion unnecessary inconvenience to the public over a matter of that sort.

Bearing in mind the announcement by the Prime Minister that certain imperial institutions will be taken over by the South African Government after the war and the fact that there is an idea of expanding the South African fleet. I want to ask the Prime Minister whether there is no possibility of going a step further through the Imperial Government and enquiring about the purchase of the naval station at Simonstown. We feel that Simonstown is remaining an English possession, and unless we have Simonstown as a naval base, South Africa with the best will in the world cannot build up a fleet that signifies anything. The Imperial Government was so friendly and generous as to lease various strategic points to the United States of America, although it was only for 99 years. If it does that for America we feel that we stand a little closer to the Imperial Government than America. Why not then also grant this favour to South Africa? Will the Prime Minister not take steps in this connection? He can approach the Imperial Government with reference to Simonstown. Another matter over which there hangs a veil is the naval establishment in Saldanha Bay. We do not know whether this is a South African undertaking or an American undertaking.

It is a purely South African institution.

The Prime Minister states that it is a purely South African institution. Fine, we are glad. We are doing too little in regard to coastal defence. There have been works on the mountain ridges— fortifications and otherwise, but precious little has been done; it is a drop in the bucket.

We are doing a considerable amount.

I want to say that if money is being spent on coastal defence we on this side of the House have no objection to offer. We will welcome it with open arms. We are in favour of money being spent on coastal defence. But now we find that here only a small hillock is being fortified. Our coast is lying wide open. Is it not time that we fortified every possible landing place?

Port Nolloth would never serve for that.

Yes, the word “never” is of course a big word, and the Prime Minister and I have only a few years to run, but the growing generation will give very serious thought to coastal defence wherever there is an opportunity for it. We ougt to devote attention today to our bays, to our coastal railways, all with an eye to defence. What will avail us if we sit here in Cape Town where we are fortified; the enemy will not attack us here; he will attack at weak points. I consider that we are concentrating on certain points and we are spending a great deal of money on certain points while we are forgetting the other parts. We appreciate the great works at Robben Island, although we do not know anything about them. Nothing is told us about what is being done there, and of course we will not be allowed to visit these places. The Prime Minister should take us more into his confidence. We are proud of this undertaking but we should like to know more about it and we should also like to see it personally. I would have liked to have said something about rifles, but so much has already been said about it. I feel that the Prime Minister must begin to take steps to assist the farmers. In parts of the Transvaal the farmers have no rifles at all. In the vicinity of the Kruger National Park there are lions and other vermin that do a great deal of damage. The farmers are sitting there without rifles or ammunition. Hon. friends have spoken here about the North-West, but we have not the same difficulty. In the Northern Transvaal the farmers are actually sustaining damage, and they need rifles and ammunition there to protect themselves against damage and loss. We are asking the Government to meet us in this respect, and not for one section only, and I believe if the Prime Minister undertakes to help these farmers he will not draw any distinction between Government supporters and the others, but that he will work out a comprehensive plan so that all the farmers who are producers can be assisted. The need is great. We have in mind the terrific increase in the number of baboons in those parts. They have become a plague, and it is difficult to destroy them except with a rifle. Our request is therefore urgent; even if no one else is assisted, the farmers in the Northern Transvaal should be met in this connection.

I have twice mentioned the explosion at the magazine in Pretoria, and it looks as if the Prime Minister is not taking any notice of it. We feel very deeply on this matter and we understand now that the commission has not been instructed to make an enquiry as to why the Government allowed the magazine to remain in a thickly populated area.

A judicial commission has been appointed which will enquire specially into that point.

Very well. Then I shall not speak further on that.

Vote No. 5.—“Defence”, as printed, put and the Committee divided:

Ayes—74.

Abbott, C. B. M.

Abrahamson, H.

Acutt, F. H.

Alexander, M.

Allen, F. B.

Ballinger, V. M. L.

Bawden W.

Bell, R. E.

Bodenstein, H. A. S.

Bosman, J. C.

Bowen, R. W.

Bowker, T. B.

Burnside, D. C.

Butters, W. R.

Carinus, J. G.

Christopher R. M.

Cilliers, H. J.

Cilliers, S. A.

Clark, C. W.

Connan, J. M.

Conradie, J. M.

Davis A.

De Kock, P. H.

Derbyshire J. G.

De Wet, P. J.

Dolley, G.

Du Toit, A. C.

Du Toit, R. J.

Fourie, J. P.

Gluckman, H.

Goldberg, A.

Hare, W. D.

Hayward, G. N.

Hemming, G. K.

Henny, G. E. J.

Heyns, G. C. S.

Higgerty, J. W.

Hofmeyr, J. H.

Hopf, F.

Howarth, F. T.

Johnson. H. A.

Kentridge, M.

McLean, J.

Maré, F. J.

Marwick, J. S.

Moll, A. M.

Molteno, D. B.

Morris, J. W. H.

Neate, C.

Oosthuizen, O. J.

Payn, A. O. B.

Payne, A. C.

Pocock, P. V.

Raubenheimer, L J.

Robertson, R. B.

Russell, J. H.

Shearer, O. L.

Smuts, J. C.

Solomon, B.

Sonnenberg, M.

Steenkamp, L. S.

Stratford, J. R. F.

Sullivan, J. R.

Tighy, S. J.

Ueckermann, K.

Van den Berg, M. J.

Van der Byl, P.

Van der Merwe, H.

Van Niekerk, H. J. L.

Van Onselen, W. S.

Wanless, A. T.

Warren, C. M.

Tellers: G. A. Friend and W. B. Humphreys.

Noes—32.

Bekker, G. F. H.

Boltman, F. H.

Booysen, W. A.

Bremer, K.

Brink, W. D.

Conradie, J. H.

Dönges T. E.

Erasmus, F. C.

Erasmus, H. S.

Grobler, D. C. S.

Klopper, H. J.

Le Roux, J. N.

Le Roux, S. P.

Luttig, P. J. H.

Malan, D. F.

Mentz, F. E.

Nel, M. D. C. de W.

Pieterse, P. W. A.

Potgieter, J. E.

Serfontein, J. J.

Stals, A. J.

Steyn, A.

Strauss, E. R.

Strydom, J. G.

Swanepoel, S. J.

Swart, C. R.

Van Niekerk, J. G. W.

Vosloo, L. J.

Warren, S. E.

Wilkens, J.

Tellers: J. F. T. Naudé and P. O. Sauer.

Vote No. 5.—“Defence”, as printed, accordingly agreed to.

On Vote No. 6.—“Treasury”, £83,600,

I move—

Agreed to.

House Resumed:

The CHAIRMAN reported progress and asked leave to sit again; House to resume in Committee on 27th March.

I move—

This Bill deals with a relatively small group of people—I believe not more than 100—who are serving the State but who do not form part of the public service. It will be applicable to officials who form part of the administrative staff at schools falling under the Union Education Department; that is to say, the reformatories, the industrial schools and the trade schools that fall under the Union Education Department. Those persons fall under Act No. 29 of 1928, for which my friend the hon. member for Piketberg (Dr. Malan) was responsible. Under that Act the conditions of service are determined on the recommendation of the Public Service Commission, and this implies that as far as salaries and conditions of service are concerned they are treated on the same basis as members of the public service. They do not however form part of the public service that was created by the Act of 1923. They serve the State, but they are not members of the public service, and this means that as officials they are limited to that small group of posts. They cannot gain promotion outside that group, nor can they be transferred to other departments, or even to the head office of my own department. They are restricted to that small set of appointments, and this implies that there are limits beyond which they cannot go. Of course this is not in their interests, and for that reason they have long urged that this alteration should be made. Nor is it in our interests that they should be placed in this restricted field, because it is sometimes in the interests of the department to transfer such officials to the head office of my department. These people will benefit by this alteration and the department will also benefit by it, and for that reason this legislation is proposed with the object of incorporating them as part of the public service. They will then be entitled to the same rights in regard to increments and promotion as ordinary members of the public service. Everything that is necessary to protect their present privileges has been done. The only alteration that has been effected has been to give them the opportunity to be transferred to the head office of my department or other departments, and in that manner they gain the opportunity of improving their prospects. I move.

Motion put and agreed to.

Bill read a second time; House to go into Committee on the Bill now.

House in Committee:

On Clause 2,

I wonder whether the Ministser could not omit the Afrikaans word “pos.” Of course he means appointment. The word “pos” is only a literal translation of the English word “post”.

It is the word that has been used up to now.

Yes, it may have been used up to now, but it is troublesome, and I should prefer to see the Minister alter the word.

I have the same feeling, and I shall go into the matter with the legal advisers.

I should like to ask the Minister whether the teachcers who are now receiving an enhanced status in these schools will be treated as ordinary teachers.

No, these persons are not teachers.

Do they not give instruction?

No, I thought I had explained the position. This Bill does not deal with teachers but with members of the administrative staff of those schools.

But are they not also teachers even though they are only school-masters?

No, it is the administrative staff, the clerks and other people.

I understand.

Clause put and agreed to.

On Clause 4,

On the motion of the Minister of Education, an amendment was made in the Afrikaans version which did not occur in the English version.

Clause, as amended, put and agreed to.

The Title having been agreed to.

House Resumed:

The Chairman reported the Bill with an amendment.

Amendment considered.

Amendment in Clause 4 (Afrikaans) put and agreed to, and the Bill, as amended adopted.

Third reading of the Bill on 27th March.

I should like to bring a few points to the attention of the Minister of Native Affairs. These are points that have been brought to my notice and in respect of which I have also had experience in my district. Yesterday I again met a few persons, not supporters of my party, but of the party of the Minister of Native Affairs, who feel concerned over the position that has developed here in Cape Town. These are English-speaking people and they asked me what we are doing in Parliament that we should allow natives to come in here in such numbers. On Saturday it again happened that we saw a train come in packed full of natives, who came out of the train in such a stream that they simply had to make way for these great numbers. We feel that whenever the public comes with these complaints and ask that an end should be put to this difficulty, we have the right to expect the Minister to take action with a view to stopping these things. In this case the Minister has the power and also the right to do this. The public, not only those with Nationalist feelings but the whole of the public in Cape Town and in other towns, feel that an end must come to this. It is bringing tremendous difficulties in those parts where the natives are crowding and we feel that an unhealthy position is being created. We know that the Minister always does his best to help us and that in this case he is also doing his best to prevent a further influx. In the neighbourhood where I live there is also a big influx of natives. There are various locations in the vicinity and they are streaming from all sides into the towns. I have had experience in connection with the matter. I have myself gone to look for labourers for my farm, and I have obtained promises from them that they would work for me at the wage I offered. When I went there to take them over the chief told them that they should not work on the farm but that they should go to the mines. The chiefs are responsible for the natives not wanting to work on the platteland. The Minister ought to be in a position to compel the chiefs not to do these things. He ought to establish a depot in that area so that the natives who want to work can report. When a farmer or a townsman requires someone he would then be able to go to the depot of the area to make application and he would get natives in that way. What is happening now is that the natives are streaming into the towns, where they look for employment, and if they cannot find employment they do not go to the farms because the chief says to them that they should not go to the farms but to the mines. That is the big cause of the shortage of labour on the farms, and I hope that the Minister will go into this matter. If the Minister institutes such depots in my neighbourhood and also in others it will have a very good effect. All the people who are prepared to work will report there and the farmers and the townspeople can make application there through the commissioner of native affairs in the district. They can make application at the depôts, and if there are people who wish to work they can be apportioned between the farmers and the other employers who need their services. Then we shall have more native labourers on the farms, but as the position now it is is impossible for the farmer to carry out his farming properly. Today and on Friday I received letters from people and from farmers’ associations asking whether there cannot be a solution arrived at so that they can get more labourers in their areas. The application can be sent in, and when the applications are received from a man who wants a few labourers, his requirements can be satisfied. As matters are now proceeding things are becoming worse and worse. The Minister has stated that he does not know how he can put a stop to the influx to the towns. If the Minister takes these steps and carries out the wishes that have been expressed on this side of the House he will find that there is very likely a chance to improve the position. It will be a very good thing to regulate the position in such a way that the people on the platteland get labourers and so that this influx to the towns shall not be so strong. If things go on as they are at present we shall have more people putting questions as that English-speaking person did yesterday: What is Parliament doing? I could not answer and I merely passed it on to the Minister, because it is his duty. I hope that the Minister will see his way clear to improve the position.

I will at once admit that I am not an expert on native affairs, but I should like to mention certain matters in connection with the natives so that the Minister may make plans, go into the matter and make provision for them. Hitherto natives have been unknown in the South-Western Districts. When I was a child we used to run away when we saw one. Today the platteland is crawling with them. This is the position. In the district where I live there are several hundreds, if not thousands. Natives are not like coloured persons, they are not people who work, not half a dozen of them work; they are organised gangs.

Are you referring to the position in the towns?

They all live in the town; they do not work. All they do is to obtain liquor illegally and to deal in dagga. The thing has become so bad that the police are beginning to throw up their hands and say that they cannot control it. If you see a native woman who looks rather stout you will find that she has a lot of the stuff on her. The natives do not come there to work, but they come because they think that it is a happy-go-lucky country where it is not necessary to work, and if they work they do not work for 3s. or 4s. like the ordinary coloured people. The natives in the districts where I am do not work for less than 4s. 9d. or 5s. a day; and they only work for two or three days. Then they have earned sufficient to buy food and for the rest of the period they are idle. The natives are in the service of the divisional council and of the Irrigation Board, where they assist in repairing drains and on work on the roads. Usually they work only three or four days and the rest of the time they do nothing. The divisional council and the Irrigation Board provides them with a place to live, where they erect a sort of hut, and they carry the hut along with them, though in most cases they are accommodated in tents. They will not work for less than 4s. 9d. a day. If they cannot get that they take their blankets and strike out for Cape Town. Almost weekly I come from my town the other side of Worcester and drive to Paarl and on every occasion, whether it is weekly or every fourteen days, one sees them trekking. Sometimes you get them with their blankets, sometimes they have clothes on, sometimes they have practically nothing on. They trek here and there. Some of them trek to the town, others trek back from the town to the platteland. Those are the natives. They are not like coloured people. It is seldom that you get a coloured person who breaks into a house. The coloured person may perhaps steal a bag, or a riem, or a fowl or sometimes slaughter a sheep or a goat, but they are not really thieves. The man who breaks into a house is the native. Things are beginning to be serious. People are beginning to be worried over the position. It is not only in Cape Town but in the whole of the South-Western Districts, and the natives you get there do not intend to return, as in the old days. In the old days you got a native who remained for a year or two and then returned to his home. Now they come with their women and their children and they have no intention of going back. You are creating a problem that is very serious. A few weeks before I came down to Parliament the police came and talked to me. There had been talk in the town about the illicit liquor traffic and there had been fighting going on in the area where the natives Uve. The police said that they simply could not do anything about it. Liquor smuggling is going on. There are fixed prices. The other morning a coloured labourer reported at 7 o’clock and he already smelt of liquor. The canteens do not open before 10 o’clock. I asked him where he had got his liquor and he said he got it in the location. Later he told me that he got it from the natives. They provide the coloured people. There are fixed prices. For a bottle of wine that costs 1s. in the canteen they have to pay the native 2s. Then the coloured person gets it on Sunday or Saturday or early in the morning, when the canteen is closed. I take it that what is occurring in Robertson is also occurring in other places. A procedure must be created to put an end to this. We have no right to demand a pass from a native. He is not a coloured person. The coloured people do not hate the Europeans; they only want to be Europeans; but the natives hate the Europeans and we are developing a very difficult state of affairs through the natives that are coming here. If they do not bring their women with them they live with coloured women. In that way you are getting a new mixed breed. Therefore I regard it as my duty to bring the position to the notice of the Minister. The natives work in the factories. The factories on the platteland do not want to come into disfavour with the farmers. The result is they do not engage coloured people but natives, and the natives get 6s. a day. That is under the wage scales applying in the factories. The result is that the natives stream there from east and west, and everywhere they are on the move. The Minister knows that we had difficulty at Ashton at the canning factory, but the factories are obliged to get the natives because they cannot get coloured people. There are 27,000 to 30,000 coloured people in uniform. And when they return they do not go to the farms. They also try to get lighter work in the towns and so long as the money holds out they do not work. Consequently the factories are obliged to take the natives into their service and the police say they can do nothing about the position. On the farms the people have to wait until the coloureds are suffering hunger before they offer themselves for employment. The native does not work on the farm. He knows it is hard work, he knows the hours are long. The hours are not those that rule with the divisional council, but they only work for a certain number of hours and where the wage is much higher. The native has no expense because the divisional council provides a place where he can stay, and all the factories do the same thing. They are obliged to do that if they want labour. In this way you have a continuous stream of natives going hither and thither, and the native that does not work simply steals, and he steals goods. What is going to be the end of it? Look at the road between Worcester and Cape Town on any day. One lot are trekking to the platteland and the other lot are trekking to the towns. It appears to me that when they get into difficulties in the town they move to the platteland. Then if they get into difficulties on the platteland they take the road back to the town. There is no control as far as the police are concerned. There is no protection for the people living on the farms. If they cannot get work on the farms and they have no food they begin to trek and eventually they have to steal. The police are not in a position to exercise any control. They cannot protect the people on the platteland. The police are so limited in number that they are not in a position to provide protection. I want to ask the Minister whether he cannot formulate a plan. We hear that they are now going to have a reception depot erected near the town for the natives that come here. The natives will be able to report there for work, and in that way they hope to regulate the stream a little. But half of them who come here do not want to work, they want to steal. Once they know that control is being exercised they will go to another place. If they know that on reporting to that registration centre they will be sent to a place to work they will never go to it. They are living now in “pondokkies” and if better housing is provided and there is a registration office they will trek to another place and establish another “pon-dokkie” village there. It does not help matters to regulate things here if you do not exercise control in the native territories. It will not help at all. A registration centre will not amount to anything here. The natives will trek from one place to another, and if they are in difficulties in the town they will trek to the platteland. There is no control. They come now with their women and children to the towns and the cities and most of them live in only one way, and that is by the illicit liquor traffic, and also by dealing in dagga.

At 6.40 p.m. the business under consideration was interrupted by Mr. Speaker in accordance with the Sessional Order adopted on the 25th January, 1945, and Standing Order No. 26 (1), and the debate was adjourned; to be resumed on 27th March.