Sir Charles Eliot, Commissioner for British East Africa, has published
through an interviewer a most interesting account of a journey through British East Africa, Uganda, the Upper Nile country, and the Soudan. Perhaps the most important fact in his narrative is that he travelled in safety, met nowhere with hostility, and for long stretches was on a good road. The mischief done by the Dervishes is still visible, but the people are aware that they will be protected, and are slowly returning to the riverside villages. The Paz Britannica has been fairly established, and is producing its invariable result. That seems to us the true justification of our presence in East Africa, and we are rather sorry to see that Sir Charles argues in favour of the idea that the uplands can be colonised because Europeans can cultivate and their children can thrive. There are plenty of lands under the King's flag better suited to British colonists, who, as we have argued elsewhere, if they do not suffer from the climate, suffer from their surroundings and their comparative isolation. They tend to become a ruling caste, and greatly increase our difficulties in the way of protection. We do not want to be perpetually sending expeditions to protect or to avenge small groups of British settlers who happen to have come into conflict with black multitudes.
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