" THE BRICK WALL "
SIR,—In the course of many thousands of miles of travel in West Africa during 1944-5
I was frequently an imposed guest of many of those about whom Mr Maurice Gordon writes in your issue of March 1st, and I inevitably passed through a good many of his " Brick Walls." I do not think that their builders have put them up to save themselves from their own misgivings. They were trying to hide from the world, but not from themselves the hopeless inadequacy of the resources in money and men that were available to them. They were intended as a screen from the perpetual " perhaps better not " in pre-war days of Mr. Mother Country who had himself grown so old and got so understaffed that he had no leisure to make his own case, and that of rather more than one-third of the whole colonial Empire which lives in West Africa, before Parliament. The Brick Walls were not built out of smug satisfac- tion on the part of the " Coasters," but against complacency at the seat of Empire. Many of the younger men, the promising first-fruits of improved methods of selection, do not seem to have the capacity to build Brick Walls. If they are not powerfully reinforced by an adequate flow of first-class recruits and administrators, and if their capacities to do their jobs are not increased by a generous provision of air services throughout West Africa and between West Africa and London, they will not be able to " take it " as the " Old Coasters " have taken it. For the Brick Walls that Mr. Gordon denigrates were the props of our administra- tion when misguided economies imposed from London made a construc- tive colonial administration impossible.—Yours very truly,
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