Monty aides Again
FIELD-MARSHAL THE VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN is at it again. Wherever there is a country whose rulers' actions against their own people are, even by the standards of the twentieth . century, outstandingly vile, we may be sure that sooner or later he will turn up to be flattered and persuaded by a case whose mendacity he is un- able to recognise. And then he comes to the re- quired conclusion, whether it be that the starving masses of China are in fact well-fed, or that the black helots of Verwoerd's racialism really enjoy the unspeakable indignities visited upon them. And then he returns to tell us all about it; and the Sunday Thnes, though its embarrassment grows with every one of the offensive screeds he pens on returning from some particularly noisome dictatorship, still feels impelled to print them.
The latest concerns another visit he has paid to South Africa (entirely at his own expense, he pathetically, proudly, tells us). It exemplifies in its third paragraph the faults of Lord Mont- gomery's approach to such trips. Speaking of the farcical `Bantustan' experiment, designed to show people as naive as Lord Montgomery that the South African Government really intends to allow the Africans self-government, he says: 'The South African plan, as the Prime Minister, Dr. Verwoerd, told me in an interview on my arrival, is to create within the Republic a number of self-governing areas for the Bantu, in which Europeans will have no political rights.' Is it quite impossible to get into Lord Montgomery head the simple fact that, in saying this, Dr. Verwoerd was not telling the truth?
Almost certainly. But. if it could be done, it would save hint from some of the things he says later. It would help him, for instance, to avoid his contemptibly patronising description of Chief Luthuli, and his pitifully naive acceptance, from some of Dr. Verwoerd's tame chiefs, of claims that he rejects when made by Luthuli. And it would help him to see the wickedness, cruelty and degradation in the system of apartheid, whose facts he ignores in favour of the false theories propounded to him by its controllers.
*Aia. THOSE: IN FAVOUR? Presented by C. H. Rolph, with an introduction by John Freeman. (Andre Deutsch. 21s., Paperback 6s.)
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