Pare
BACK FIONI
THE JUNGLE I
THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, JANUARY 1955.
IT'S GOOD TO BE BRITISH!
by TOM STACEY
As I moved across 'foreign 'Africa and saw what I saw, I grew very proud of being British. I also got very angry at those Britons who seem to be ashamed of our Colonial Empire and what we strive to do therein. By the time I got to Uganda I was determined to lay forth in my last article just what a magnificent example the British are setting out there, I am therefore blowing Britain's trumpet as hard as it deserves to be blown.
A
+
It was a 32- But, although a stranger, with increase in Kikuyu population bob a night, his British education he soon aggravating African race fears. found himself acting as scribo Fifty years of British medicine coffee in the and adviser to the whole town. has caused that increase, if lounge establish-
it had been French or Spanish, ment. I didn't Those French Africans hed Kikuya would not have trebled;
an African could they 60-to-1 had no idea AVING at last nosed give ourselves
we had be so wise. It could only have my way through chance. After all,
happened with a British boy." British Africa from not been accepted by one the Atlantic in the west to hotel in 5,000 miles travel- Uganda in the east, I met a ling serosa Africa, and in Belgian fine, upstanding, the colour-barred
Briton,
H
man:
45 Congo we had been ac- pipe-smoking years old, in a pair of khaki customed to abuse and even shorts. And all he could do assault in requesting a meal was sigh at me.
at a restaurant.
Nevertheless, we trudged up gravel drive between the beds of scarlet gladioli, and to The manager's office.
"Oh, what lot," he the
LA signed, "we British have to learn from other nations' colonies, I'm sure. I've never been elsewhere in Africa than British
territories friendliness
but from what one hears
[
I cut in here. And bogan to relate to him little personal experience which I had met with just
a few days before. "It was the frat British town we had reached with an hotel in it." 1 began...
There We were, my Cambridge graduate African friend and I, footsore and weary, just pining for a hot shower, a meal, and a bed,
or
He took us without a word, No: whispers, provisos, respectability proofs, We got from the other guests. And that evening. sip. ping our coffer-in-the-lounge, all of us had a cosy pow-wow about African education,”
"Nice to hear it," admitted Khaki Shorts. "But they do May the social services — education...
"Ahem," I began.
++
"Do you think it is mere chance," I pounded at Khaki Bhorts, "that of the four university colleges In colonled equatorial Africa (which la lem tha a third under the Union Jack), thres are British?"
Khaki Shorts was pensive; "But they never gel the troubles we have in our ter- ritories Buganda bust-upa. rowdy self-government de- manda in Nigeria. Man Mau..
I countered sharply....
FIERY
There's a hery young African friend of mine who is a leader of the anti-Government Con- gress Party here in Ugandin. He British Governor's polley, with extreme injustice, as Fascist.
once
described the
That young African is now t Cambridge on
would have alarmingly diminished (as has happened in French Equatorial Africa),
Khaki Shorts still looked unconvinced,
"But surely you found," he mused, "that British prestiro has got very low...."
"Begging your pardon,” sta 1. "but you Are utterly wrong..
"
THE GOLD
Everywhere
we went we found the name of Britain ad- mired. Take one of the 370,000 registered contradados (forced labourers) of Portuguese Angola, or a French African imprisoned without trial on the word of a white (it's common). How do
view they
the
and liberly painstaking justice they hear of in Briush territories?
of the
DLD LOW'S ALMANACK
chiangs
ROYAL ACADEM
TV
Lord ("Outrage") Hailsham and Graham ("Golden Mustard") Sutherland meet at: the Tate Stadium To decide, in The customary-
manner of settling at disputes, whether
The Churchill portrait is a masterpiece..
PROPHECIES FOR 1955
World Copyright by arrangement with the Manchester Guardian
COMMUNISM'S NEXT
TARGET-INDIA?
Naga By James Crichton
It all sounds similar to the birth of the Vietminh in Indo- China.
But this time not ane but soven Southeast Asian states
British to Bunna are overgrown and affected. and fit only for a mule, there are stranger quarrels,
For
severu) ` years
earnest
sub-
Dimapur, India. Why is it the lads of French
CIRCLE of sneak across Cumeroons
the
tribesmen pull their border with false passes to at-
black striped sarong- tend British schools In Nigeria? IL because they know that like longyis around scarred bins; dye-plants for longyis are from their own country suth-legs in a misty
bamboo arce; and the salt party from
The others fre Manipur THE BOY
wards to the Belgian Congo a village perched among the the plains is late. a Governinent Wh
Tripura, Bihar, West Bengal, majority cholarship grant, for which he is in trading companies and mountains dividing India,
responsible
There are new problems such
stretching to Andhra and fel it Was The
as whether their hills should be striplings educated at mission Travancore-Cochin In the Photo Peter was an average had entered British African
been talking of 16-year-old Governor who signed the rat Government service are held by Burma and Red China.
the schools have ruled by plainsmen from British African boys brought
southwest of the Indian He
for schoolboy who got into trouble festion of the scholarship.
and freedom They suck Geross on necount of their edu-
through massive
buildings Commumiem
continent. the Nugas. This is talk which over dowry money back home axolained: "If we are to have
rellability.
straws dipped in pots of in faraway Delhi.
the old men and hard to grasɔ, in Sierra Leone. So he took to political opponents--and I wel- cation and
That is why in almost every milky rice liquor and talk one of the huts of the emigrant of the old, head-hunting
The Communist Then The Change
argument "Misters" (as British boys in
does not make sense to them, non-British Africa are alled), days and the present hard
Their villegü .conomy has you will find a picture of King times. George VI or the Queen stuck
THEY complain that past trou- always been commune, vage bles were settled costly. A cwns land, rice is held in village on the mud walls.
chicken's entrails strung across stores, and every young man on One Gold Coaster I stayed lie six other Indian states a path kept off evil spirits. Gun- marriage can require his neigh with in Buta, Congo, had paid in a 1,700 miles are where powder, made with saltpetre bours to build him a house,
his heels and turned up in a como them for heaven's sake small French Equatorial African let's see they are educated” trading centre.
He began there as a photo- As for bicu Mau, let's agree grapher with a 109, camera, that it la the result of a violent
A reflection of good taste
BORN 1820
STILL GOING
STRONG
Johnnie Walker
FINE OLD SCOTCH WHISKY
ACGREG D'E
South of their blue ranges
a matchbox of smuggled gold dust for a magazine photograph Communism
is
government
un'
the
hen-droppings, from
Rigid Policy.
E Nagn's experience is a symbol of what is happening those other states. There LS racial, cultural' or connamic unrest among politically
mature people, caused by the changes In Asia. Then groat come the Communists, efficient ly organised with their combat parties and a rigid policy line. they aro contesting for Soon "maturing crisis" which they hope will finally break loose
charged
they just The new freedom their muzzle-loaders,
"understand. It has been Then the first change came. The mountains echoed with the feeling of untest ever since the But they reflect only on what roar of axle-to-axle guns as the gunfire, its fever and the money British fought banzal-shouting it brought, faded from the hills "Well," he smiled, “let's to problems; the young men do not Japanese. After victory they left to leave the high bamboo once leadership while they await the
and the Indians came, And now,
more to the call of the barking when the highways carved by the deer,
of Prince Charles,?
march..
Khalil Shorts' face at last began to uncloud.
and spilt a bottle of British beer."
they can see. There are familiar
catch enough rats in the spring traps near the communal rice
The Fat Man Yearned
To Play Love Scenes
T
HE
By THOMAS WISEMAN
Hollywood career obsessed with the phobla that all golden
ergan to play Italian
of Charles Laughton his clothes would fall off while opera on," celted Laughton. illustrates the maxim be was on the stage.
that nothing succeeds like excess. Excessive lack of beauty in his case,
over the whole continent.
So they accept the Naga National Counell, although Its In Manipur the demand is also members are still mainly, the for responsible government young and educated. Since it based on discontent since the we forme, all parties have state lost its legislative as come through, the hills to make embly on incorporation into the ists of supporters of freedom Republic of Indle. In the last for the Naked from Delhi's twelve months the Communista rule.
have worked hard here and aro ahead of, their confederates in the Naga billa,
Not In Peace
-
In Tripura, the Communista adjust their technique to the THE villagers were busy burn- greater political maturity of the ing new hillside felds for people. Instead of a direct the next corn and rice Grop. appeal to tribal, Independence They had already forgotten the they call for a "United Front" start of the Council and its aim. of existing parties. and their warrior minds can- not bother with long-haired. ideas. So the plebiscite failed.
"Tactical Line”
the
Wallace said he would. But
But they have not been: left Until he was 21 he worked In they fell out when Laughton
in peace. Down in the plaina N the other hand, in Bihar, In dark they in Wallace's coffee-ship politicians
explait peasant turn as bell-boy, cashier and refused to appétr
glasses and European, trousers grievances
against Land- kitchen clerk at Claridge's. His next play.
have been agitating. To the lords. But whatever -tac- grandfather was a buller.
By the time he was 32 Laugh- the hill peoples are a reservoir thes they Line Laughton yearned to play
the aim la the But Laughton's will to succeed ton was making $2,500 a week of untapped power.
same..to capture the allegiance love-scenes with Garbo and was so strong that he triumphed in Hollywood. He is not en
of the peasants and Last year they hold an Assam armed revolution, Dietrich. Producers cast over his physical shortcomings easy actor to direct. Alfred Provincial Conference, and of Communist Party of India is him as hunchbacks, human and in due course turned them Hftobock has sald:
course the Communists wego int mokr
convinced in Ita Tactical Line" assets. The Ume monsters, maniacs and ame when he was himself en-
there, much concerned with the mat mark the final overthrow
Naga murderers. They considered playing a buller and taking tea Laughton pleture; the best they gitimate fears of the
of Nehru government, him ideal for such roles. with people like Dean Inge and can hope for is a chance to
And in all their agitation tho Winsten Churchill. But the referee,***
: The Communists suggest place on such occasions was
two enemic they fight aro autorems and regional govern- the Savoy. He stayed away
ment for the Nagan, They have Britain and America. For India from Claridge's.
taken over direction of the is, regarded" as being undlex Nara Council and are fulfilling "colonial", domination of Britain, cir pledge to build a strong and America la reviled as the Comminder party in the hills.
If he kissed a women on the screen, it was usually only to administer the' Kiss of Death,
"All Hollywood lot him do was to frighten children," says his blographer Kurt Singer in "The Charles Laughton Story" (Robert Hale, 15#.).
For doing this he was paid handsamaly. As the Hunchback of Notre
Top of the tree
"Diractors can't
•
rect Д
Whon director Julien Duvivier congratulated him and his wife, Bisa Lanchester, for the realistic way they had played a loving busbred and wife in his film, Laughton aald: "I let my wife stosi a scene from me ence in while Just to keep peace In
Bernard Shaw, after seeing him play in Pygmalion at drama the famBy."
chrol, had told him:
Dame he collected "Young man, whatever your US$75,000 tax bald. It helped name is you were horrible as my take the ating out of being Higgins, but nothing will stop fumed into a creature of un- you from getting to the top of bearable deformity by the studio the tree in a year." make-up departement.
A story-teller
Laughton dorives his greatest satisfaction not as a fim actor, story-teller Shaw was not far wrong, Not but as a plate em But money and fame did not much fater, Edgar Wallace wrote In this phere he has broken entirely Ioure him to being a play especially for him.
every previous record in the Fucked
United States. upon as the Great Grotesque.
Art collector
Wham-: Laughton "eclled “on- Wallace at his luxurious mon- Mark Twain netted $228,000 sion, he found the author from
tours. Wingbor wobring a boavy allk dressing- Churchill was paid $2,500 gown; there were three dicta Iochure, Laughton receives up phones on his deck.
to $4,000, night-reading from the Bibe, Shakespeare, Dickens and a dozen other major and
For he
a Romantle, i've written in play for you" Laughton, ungainly and fat since wald Wallsen, "thore 'a: chlichood (because of a infl-achallet glandular disorder) lives in a funerais;" house full of beautiful paintings, there will He bought a Ramole $85,000; bodies. I'm givin refused to elit for $150,000. Volour mat
be
* An a' child he had a pai
He able to speak, those tander love pankages which; "ha; mar- never affected lava' Mim serip change
people"
POCKET CARTOON By OSBERT LANCASTER
[CHARITY BALL
enemy of world peace.
The anti-American line sponsored by Moscow, where the [C.P.I." jeaders want to have written for them the, gospel - of the Teotical Lane"; to... which they have chung ever minion, 2);
Tho anti-British dine is locally,' · Anapred. Fortunately the difficulty, of deciding which Sa the chlet "enemy", "her crusted trichfork in the 60,000 hand-core" of the Party
But withought it; saay be yang before the Matur