NATIVES IN AFRICA AND CYPRUS
Sta,—Although I labour under the disability of not knowing the qualifica- tions for writing about the natives of Africa possessed by Mr. Moore Bennett, who contributes a letter to The Spectator of February 15, I have no hesitation in challenging his irresponsible pronouncement that in Kenya, Uganda, Belgian Congo, the Portuguese African territory, the two Rhodesias and the Union, "there are perhaps the most discriminatory and ferocious laws of any against natives who may have the misfortune to exist in British territory." I leave it to others to reply to Mr. Moore Bennett, if they think it worth while, for some of these territories. I wish to speak only of the Union, and I should like to know on what grounds he bases his wholly extravagant and mischievous allegations. The state- ments on South-West Africa which he mentions were made by the Union High Commissioner in London, Mr. Heaton Nicholls, whose principal life-study has been native and coloured problems in South Africa and elsewhere. He is, and always has been, a man strongly and actively sympathetic to the well-being and aspirations of the races whom Mr. Moore Bennett so clumsily seeks to champion ; also, he is a man of high integrity and incapable, whether for official or any other reasons, of saying or writing anything the truth of which could be the least in doubt. So much for the declarations to U.N.O. which Mr. Bennett attempts to impugn.
Now for policy towards the natives of the Union proper. Anybody who has followed that policy dispassionately, and has watched its liberal development under the enlightened direction and influence of General Smuts, supported by recognised champions of the coloured and native peoples like Mr. Jan Hofmeyr, will face with equanimity any realistic and balanced comparison of it with what is practised by Europeans in any other part of the world upon non-Europeans, not excluding the negroes of the United States! Mr. Moore Bennett concludes by smugly warning us: "There are many foreign observersin our Colonial Empire closely watching our ways and methods of exploiting our unfortunate African subjects." Pray, who are these "foreign observers"? One is tempted to exclaim: "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone."—
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