BLACK AND WHITE IN RHODESIA
Would not presume on your space to answer the charge made by Mr. McCarty that a part of my previous letter was ridiculous and hysterical. The verdict can be left to those who read letters carefully and dispassionately.
Some effort should however be made to deal with the argument that the dominating trouble in race relations is fear; not of black for white, but of white for black.
Problems of human relations are seldom reduced by easy aphorisms; surely not when the relations are complicated by a difference in colour among the humans. The late Lord Llewellin said of this prob- lem that it is one that is indeed perplexing mankind.
Are the settlers wrong to fear that all that they have built up, both materially and spiritually, might be swept away in a storm of barbarism? Were the brave men wrong who have gone forth to do battle through- out the ages through fear that their dependants might be enslaved? (Forgive this naughty invitation to your readers to affirm that all blacks are enslaved by the whites.) Was Mr. McCarty wrong to have fought against Hitler, presumably for fear of what Hitler would do if he did not? Is it so wrong to look to the right and left before crossing the road for fear of being run over? Mr. McCarty is right in suggesting that the black need have no fear of the white.
Conscious though I am of the barrenness in quot- ing the thinkers of the past to refute the slogans of this modern age, I venture the well-known words of Burke—Tarty and provident fear is the mother of safety.'—Yours faithfully,
CHRISTOPHER. CONSETT
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