PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLSON
WHEN I was a boy, headmasters went on being headmasters until they became bishops or certifiably insane. So pliable has our public-school system been rendered since the War that headmasters today are almost indistinguishable from human beings. They are capable, even, of the most romantic impulses. And I confess that I was both startled and delighted when I heard that the Master of Marlborough was off to Makerere. Lord De La Warr's Commission on higher education in East Africa (quorum pars parva fui) have indeed been fortunate in the support which has been given to their recommendations. They found an immediate and most forceful ally in the Governor of Uganda, Sir Philip Mitchell. Tanganyika Territory, and even Kenya, were not permanently hostile. The missionaries of every denomination (to whom African education owes so deep a debt) displayed sympathy and vision. The Africans themselves were both enthusiastic and reasonable. And Downing Street positively purred. As a result Makerere College (which seemed destined at one time to be little more than a poor relation of Achimota) can look forward, under Mr. Turner's guidance, to becoming a real African University. The appointment of so out- standing a Principal marks an important date, not only in the education of the African, but in the development of the trustee theory of colonial administration.
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