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By Root 806 0

During the summer months, aside from a few messages from the Tasman governments, the Dominions also had little to say about the deteriorating international situation.47 The high commissioners working in London were similarly restrained and appeared to have run out of angry observations to make.48 The volume of communications passing between London and the Dominion capitals had not slowed, it was just that it had little to do with how this political alliance might function if the worst happened and the newly agreed security guarantees were tested. As the 'July rush' abated many officials in the DO went on leave but the lull was quickly shattered by the surprise announcement that Germany and the Soviet Union had concluded their non-aggression pact.49 With the notable exception of the New Zealand representative Bill Jordan, the Dominion high commissioners found this news difficult to accept, and they were roused once again to demand that every effort be made to hold further negotiations with the German leader Adolf Hitler.50 Even the mention of 'appeasement' remains a source of intense emotion to some historians, but in these daily meetings there was no shortage of support for the idea that the Führer should be given whatever was needed to induce him not to go to war. Any chance of securing support for this was destroyed by Stanley Bruce, and his clumsy attempts orchestrated from Australia House to apply pressure on the Polish authorities and make them accept Germany's demands. All this did was to much reduce the British prime minister's confidence in the Australian, something which was apparently 'never very high' to begin with.51

South Africa's support was, however, now at last a subject of very real discussion and there were serious doubts. Fortunately Clark had not shared in the general sense of stupor that had blighted the spring and summer's consideration of this potentially calamitous matter. Since the memorandum's publication his comments made to London had actually given little reason to suppose that it could be assumed automatically that the government in the Union would blithely follow the British lead. In a telegram sent during the last week of August, the DO was again warned, only now even more urgently, that this was most definitely the case, particularly as support for the Nationalists had gained ground in the preceding weeks. The Nazi-Soviet pact, it was reported, could also have a considerable impact, creating the feeling that there had been 'mismanagement' on the part of the British government, and encouraging people into the arms of those who favoured neutrality.52 Clark's information had been consistently clear; under Hertzog's leadership there was no sense of 'common belligerency' among sizeable elements of local opinion. Many within the large Nationalist Afrikaans-speaking minority, of which the South African leader was one of the more moderate members, were openly sympathetic to German actions in Europe.53 Hertzog had stated his position publicly at the 1937 Imperial Conference and afterwards when he had rejected the idea of his country's involvement in any future European war but such warnings had not been heeded in London. Even in the hitherto all-confident FO, there were now those willing to admit that the situation had 'suddenly' become worrying.54

As Smuts remained a firm supporter of the need to oppose Hitler all was not lost, however, and he quickly became the central figure in events that unfolded in Cape Town during the first days of September. Despite considerable tensions and even the apparent risk of civil war, he was able to force a parliamentary debate to resolve the impasse that had formed between him and Hertzog. Subsequently he would be criticized by the country's Nationalists for what they described as his ambiguity; he had actually been just as consistent as Hertzog in saying, from at least mid-1938 onwards, that it would be in the South African parliament where the matter would be decided, whether there would be war or neutrality. This view, as quickly became clear, was entirely