On Governing Colonies; Being an Outline of the Real Issues and a Comparison of the British, French and Belgian Approach

WE have been hearing much about colonial affairs in recent years. It is certain that we are going to hear a good deal more.

The literature is already so voluminous that it is difficult even for one with some specialist interest to keep abreast of it. Worse, the real facts and the real issues are becoming blurred. From one side we get a flow of academic studies financed by this or that research grant, based, it is true, upon documents, but the docu ments are too often taken at their face value. The researchers are mostly ladies and their housekeeping instincts impose a tidiness which does not always correspond to the facts in the bush. The black man under his palm tree is one thing; papers from Colonial Ministries and Colonial Secretariats may well be more or less than that thing. From another side come the pleadings of those who see colonial questions mostly or wholly in terms of European capitalists exploiting defenceless natives. They confuse us by their concern not with what exists but with what they conceive to exist. From still another comes the clamour for heroic schemes of economic development. From yet another side there are well meaning idealists who vociferate for what they call the self government of colonial subjects. Again, from our American friends we receive both criticism and counsel, the value of which will be still greater when they can pass on to us the benefits of their own experiences in solving their thirteen-million negro problem and the problem of their financial imperialists in Central America. Last but not least, there is a rising cry of the Indian-Bengali kind from Africans themselves, educated in our schools, for what they call liberation from the white man's yoke.