A CANKER IN IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." J
SIR,—As one who lived, in an official capacity, for many years in Nyasaland, I desire fully to endorse—with the reservation of his suggested curtailment of leave—the letter of "One who Knows" in your issue of the 19th inst. I am also in full accord with your note appended to the letter of "D. S. S." in the same number.
The " canker " which, as your correspondent shows, exists equally in Nyasaland with British East Africa would be greatly lessened, if not entirely healed, were officials encouraged by the Home and Colonial Governments—and this can only be done, as you suggest, by giving them adequate pay—either to marry, or to take out their wives if already married. A married man gives up much in accepting an official appointment in these outposts of the Empire, even if he takes his wife out with him, has infinitely more at stake, and is much more likely, from a health point of view, to prove an efficient public servant than a single man, who, oftenyoung, in full vigour, and without any control, finds hill vent for the play of his animal passions in the tropics, with very often attendant disastrous results to his health, and consequent efficiency. As I hope to show, exemplified in my own case, neither the Home nor Colonial authorities do anything to induce an official to take out his wife, either by increasing his pay or by making him any allowance towards her passage.
When coming home on leave from Nyasaland in 1900, on bidding his Majesty's Commissioner good-bye I intimated to him that on my return from leave I intended to bring out my wife. He answered me by saying :—" Of course, I cannot prevent you doing so, but the Foreign Office [Nyasaland was then under it] never intended sending married men out here." On reaching England some little time after, a high Foreign Office official wrote to me and asked if I was aware that his Majesty's Commissioner did not approve of men taking out their wives with them, as it impaired the mobility, and there- fore the efficiency, of an official. I, however, took out my wife, and on reaching the administrative headquarters was told by his Majesty's Acting Commissioner that because I had brought out my wife I must expect no special consideration on that account. This, of course, I neither expected nor asked for ; in fact, shortly afterwards I was posted to a station where I remained with my wife for two happy years, and this in spite of the fact that our nearest white neighbour was two days' distance away, and that my wife never saw a white woman for ten months. I mention this latter fact to show that even women of refinement and culture are not to be deterred from accompanying their husbands where duty calls them to the uttermost parts of the earth, as you say, to "face hardships, solitude, and the risk of life from dangerous climates," little known to those who remain in the homeland. Without help, either in the way of increased salaries or what amounts to the same, assisted passages for wives both ways, it is a very heavy call on the poor pay meted out to junior officials in our Protectorates to take out a wife. Many cannot afford to; hence in a great measure the " canker."—I am, Sir, &c.,
NYASALAND.
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