it proved impossible to decide between the claims of rival cities.  Cape Town is the mother city of South Africa.  Pretoria may boast the memories of the fallen republic, and its old-time position as the capital of an independent state.  Bloemfontein has the advantage of a central position, and even garish Johannesburg might claim the privilege of the money power.  The present arrangement stands as a temporary compromise to be altered later at the will of the parliament.

The making of the Senate demanded the gravest thought.  It was desired to avoid if possible the drowsy nullity of the Canadian Upper House and the preponderating “bossiness” of the American.  Nor did the example of Australia, where the Senate, elected on a “general ticket” over huge provincial areas, becomes thereby a sort of National Labor Convention, give any assistance in a positive direction.  The plan adopted is to cause each present provincial parliament, and later each provincial council, to elect eight senators.  The plan of election is by proportional representation, into the arithmetical juggle of which it is impossible here to enter.  Eight more senators will be appointed by the Governor, making forty in all.  Proportional representation was applied also in the first draft of the constitution to the election of the Assembly.

It was thought that such a plan would allow for the representation of minorities, so that both Dutch and British delegates would be returned from all parts of the country.  Unhappily, the Afrikanderbond—­the powerful political organization supporting Mr. Merriman, and holding the bulk of the Dutch vote at the Cape—­took fright at the proposal.  Even Merriman and his colleagues had to vote it down.

Without this they could not have saved the principle of “equal rights,” which means the more or less equal (proportionate) representation of town and country.  The towns are British and the country Dutch, so the bearing of equal rights is obvious.  Proportional representation and equal rights were in the end squared off against one another.

South Africa will retain duality of language, both Dutch and British being in official use.  There was no other method open.  The Dutch language is probably doomed to extinction within three or four generations.  It is, in truth, not one linguistic form, but several:  the Taal, or kitchen Dutch of daily speech, the “lingua franca” of South Africa; the School Taal, a modified form of it, and the High Dutch of the Scriptural translations brought with the Boers from Holland.  Behind this there is no national literature, and the current Dutch of Holland and its books varies some from all of them.  English is already the language of commerce and convenience.  The only way to keep Dutch alive is to oppose its use.  Already the bitterness of the war has had this effect, and language societies are doing their best to uphold and extend the use of the ancestral language.  It is with a full knowledge of this that the leaders of the British parties acquiesced in the principle of duality.