Word: britain
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Union of South Africa's aging Prime Minister James Barry Munnik Hertzog, who, with a Bible in his pocket and a bandoleer over his shoulder, fought for three years against Great Britain in the Boer War, guessed that his people would not want to fight for Britain in this one. For the Union is made up of four polyglot provinces, two Crown colonies and controls by League mandate a former colony of Germany's, and the outstanding element in its history has been the internal clash of nationalities-natives, Dutchmen, Britons, Germans-not its interest in Europe...
When World War I broke out, the Assembly of the Union of South Africa voted unenthusiastically to join on Britain's side -so unenthusiastically that there was a short, angry civil war before South Africa was able to turn on its German neighbor, South West Africa, and conquer it. After the War national lines were sharper than ever. The rise of the Hitler regime in Germany was reflected in South Africa by the outcropping of Nazi cells from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Last April it was rumored the Nazis were ready to seize South West Africa...
South Africa's Boers, however, are passionately anxious to maintain control over South West Africa. They would rather see the world's richest gold and diamond mines, the Rand and Kimberley, exploited by Britain than raped by Germany. The Boer leader who gets on best with Britain is white-bearded old Jan Christiaan Smuts, soldier of the Boer and World Wars, national hero and ex-Prime Minister...
Although the mission were too humiliated to know it, they did serve a purpose. Their presence in Rome was the occasion for a realistic suggestion from Tokyo: Japan, Italy, Britain and France ought to repay the bad faith of their erstwhile friends, Germany and Russia, by banding together to end the Hitler-Stalin plot for "Bolshevization of the world." These wooden words were put in the mouth of poor old Puppet-elect Wang Ching-wei, the Chinese ventriloquist for Japanese policy...
...week the Japanese took out their pretty fans to sharpen the wind. Politely, firmly the Government announced that if other powers wished to remove their troops from China, Japan would be honored to "protect" their nationals and interests. Next move might be less polite, more firm -an ultimatum to Britain and France...