THE TABLET, February 27th, 1954 VOL. 203, No. 5936

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

ru u u a i ic u as a n c w a n “ ^ !

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FO U N D ED IN 1840

FEBRUARY 27th, 1954

N IN E P EN C E

The Germans in Europe: The European Defence Community as the Only Policy

Welfare and Taxation: I : The Present Load o f Taxation. By Colin C lark

Lamennais the P rophet: The Centenary o f his Death. By Roland Hill

The French Dominicans : Background to the Recent Changes. By Lancelot C. Sheppard

H O W Catholic is Austria ? : I : The Inheritance and the Present

A Stone for G o lia th : On Language and Metaphysics. By Dom Illtyd T rethow an

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages, by Kathleen Edwards ;

Christ Recrucified, by N ikos Kazantzakis ; Fiesta, by Prudencio de Pereda ; The Sage o f Canudos, by Lucien M archal ; On Top o f the World, by Patricia Petzoldt ; The English Philosophers, by Leslie Paul ; Window on China, by Raja Hutheesing ; The Trinity in Our Spiritual Life, by D om Columba M arm ion ; The Catholic Way, by Theodore M aynard ; and Blessed Are They, by F rank Baker. Reviewed by W. A. Pantin, Illtud Evans, O.P., Lady Chorley, Edward A. Sillem, Wilfred Ryder, Mgr. H.

Francis Davis, Edward Quinn and Godfrey Scheele.

GOOD GOVERNMENT IN AFRICA T HE small group of M.P.s who have ju st reported on Kenya have done a useful piece o f work, which we are particularly glad to recognize a t a time when it also seems im portant to draw attention, as is done later in these notes, to the great numbers of Members of whom so very little in the way o f personal qualities is required by the party machines which more and more dominate in our democracy.

The Kenya Report is a disturbing document, which says, in essence, that the Mau Mau trouble is worse, and not better, after so much energetic and costly repression : that, in and around Nairobi itself, the Mau Mau secret authority runs through the Kikuyu, and that the Government has not yet found a way o f mobilizing and leading a solid public opinion, regardless of race, even against a movement of such primitive bestiality as Mau Mau is.

The Report condemns the lawless reprisals taken by the police. It is admittedly easy for the visiting M.P., “ Paget, M.P.” o f the old ICS, to pass these judgments ; but it is necessary that they should, ju st as it is necessary for the ultim ate authority in Whitehall to enforce standards which are extremely difficult to live up to on the spot in the nervous tension and immediate acquaintance with horrors. It is always difficult to chose language which shall maintain what ought to be the permanent view o f British public opinion, without seeming to under-estimate the strain being endured by those engaged in this sort of struggle. We very much hope that there will not be a settler reaction against the Report ; and that if there are settlers who are inclined to criticize in particular the Conservative Members, they will reflect th a t it is a great thing to have had a unanimous Report, and that there are good hopes that this will not become a t any stage now an issue in party politics.

The reversion of the Kikuyu to savagery of the kind it was hoped that British rule had banished for ever is not, perhaps, very surprising when we recall that white settlement in Kenya is only half a century old. We are tempted to smile the smile o f greater political maturity when we hear General MacArthur saying the Japanese have learnt democracy and become good democrats in five years o f intensive tuition. But many people here are equally naive about African democracy ; and the Commission, like many other Britons, are faced with the dilemma that a political programme seems psychologically necessary which is mistaken on every other ground. There are individual Africans who can usefully be invited into the world o f administration, but they are very few and highly exceptional. They ought to be invited, ju st as Africans become not only priests but Bishops in the Catholic Church, where there is no colour bar. But they ought to enter expecting, as the priest and Bishop expect, to administer something they did not invent and cannot essentially alter.

The great weakness of our modern conception of progress, as consisting in an ever wider franchise and more power to more loosely elected individuals, is that politics is presented to them not as administration but as invention, and for that the peoples of Africa are quite unready. It is doubtful if the most highly matured and politically educated peoples can keep from doing themselves great damage if they adopt the theory that the radical transform ation o f society by majority rule is something they are fully entitled to attem pt, regardless o f the past.

The proposition may be advanced that any place like Kenya, which is to be a society of three main races and of many diverse tribes, can only prosper if it is established from the outset that it must be governed in accordance with a written Constitution, guaranteed from London, severely limiting the rights o f the different groups. Those rights have in fact been limited from the beginning, to the great discontent of European settlers, who should all the same be thankful now that they had not gone very far down the slippery slope which leads from legislative councils through unofficial majorities to elected assemblies.

The M.P.s, like other observers, testify to the great courage