LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
NATIVES AND NEW IDEAS SIR,—Now that so many people are fighting literally for their ideas of a "New and Better World " and such other well-meaning phrases, may I, a young member of a growing country, intercede on its behalf for a better understanding between us? The country I love and live in and am fighting for is Southern Rhodesia, with a war record that will stand comparison with any.
The greatest test we had to stand was the one when nearly two thousand airmen from your land fell upon us in 1939 for the new Air Training Scheme. Here we got our first rude shock. Overjoyed beyond all sense, everything was opened to receive our Mother Country's youth. So much so that the Legislature had to pass a law 'against over entertainment. But we found that the young men on the whole continually criticised us in comparison with their own city or town in England, and even now many do still. But that test was overcome. Now many have settled in our land. Now I have returned the visit and come to England. Well- meaning people have deluged me with books on the Colour Bar, its cruelty, and our selfish treatment of the natives. In return I wish to make myself bluntly understood, even at the risk of offending some of the narrow- minded or misinformed.
First, the all-important Colour Bar. Briefly, your books criticise and rant, but not one mentions the fact that there are young boys and men of European descent in Rhodesia who have their own ideas. May I say for the coming generation that (1) we do not beat or whip our natives— there is a £75 fine if you do—(z) we are working for the benefit of our country and have a scheme of total education for the native. Under this, in three generations they will be capable of equal rights through knowledge and wise teaching.
Remember, it has taken English people 2,000 years to become civilised to today's standards. The native is a savage with r per cent. exceptions. Science, experience and plain common sense has taught us in Africa that interbreeding is absolutely a failure. My father has been the friend of the natives for 25 years and I since a child. We both have studied these questions and are determined to benefit the " downtrodden " savage, but not to exterminate them by forcing our Western ideals upon them.
The missionary has come out, and is our biggest enemy. He has made natives wear clothes and cover up women's breasts and, like the Apple of Knowledge, has taught them Western. shame. Shame! Their morals were splendid. Now, because the white man does not like it, he must hide and become conscious of a shame he never knew—narrow- ing and almost destroying that morality they once possessed, and many die of pneumonia.
Then as to marriage and faith. A native has a field. To hoe (plough by digging with a " badza " or hoe) this he needs six women The Church says marry one. So he does! He then finds out two things. He cannot be faithful to one wife—loving is an important thing, as is the breeding of healthy mites from more than one wife to create good stock —and he has to hire five women to hoe his field. So he promptly marries—by barter—the other five. It costs him nothing then for his field, and he has a big family. Dutiful to his conversion, he trots his Christian wife to the church on Sunday, and in hiding he creates and worships his pagans. To him a hard.material thing like hail and thunder, 8c., is a tangils!e god. To him our God is obedience on Sunday to a religiously glorified ma.t in white robes bowing to a box. The priest has 500 converts—on paper. One in fact, and then usually because it is a servant devoted not to God but the priest. Thus driven to see wickedness where none existed, and by forcing Western ideals on a savage, we are harming a good man, physically and morally.
We, my father—now dead one year—and I, had 6,000 natives working under our control. We have studied them from very close observation. My father held the record for both well-fed and length of service of all native employers. When he died over 6,000 natives—many from far distant districts—were at his graveside. A compliment paid once before— to Rhodes!
Yet in England books still come out. Do you want to know what we firmly believe? We believe that many write these books to incite sympathy for their own cause only. The ignorance displayed therein shows only a Comic Cuts type of knowledge. My cry is, leave the governing to the peop''e on the spot—we are all Socialists in a sense.
Secondly, the treatment here of the Services—especially as to pay— incites only our bitterness, for all the energy expounded on helping the " poor blacks " in other countries would be far better spent—with its money—on cleaning up the really depressing poorer areas of this, the cultured, civilised Mother Country. If the Empire is to hold fast, look -ye all to your own troubles, and help outside only when called upon by those there.
I hope this plain speaking will help. If I may say in conclusion that just as you cannot compare the desire of a human, rational animal to a bird who dies and knows not why, so you cannot compare a simple savage's life—free from business greeds—to our over-industrialised life.— Sincerely yours, IAN MCDOUGALL. Rhodesia House, 429 Strand, London, W.C. 2.
P.S.—I speak only of our natives. East Africa and other States are under Whitehall, as is, indirectly, India and Ceylon. In any case, Easterns are more civilised than our Bantu.
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