Chronicles of Uganda. By R. P. Ashe. (Hodder and Stoughton.)
—It is astonishing how complicated politics can become, even in the heart of Africa, and one reads with a growing bewilder- ment the wheels within wheels which finally led to our Pro- tectorate. Mr. Ashe is an unsparing critic of both Captain Lugard and the Imperial East Africa Company, never, however, stinting praise where he thinks it due. He thinks, as many do, that Chartered Companies are a mistake ; and, indeed, the uncer- tainty as to how far Government was responsible for their actions had cruel and disastrous results in Uganda. To Mr. Ashe, a participator in, and spectator of, many momentous crises of Baganda history, the comparatively rough-and-ready methods of even such a patient and impartial soldier like Lugard must have seemed clumsy. We do not suppose, if the two had changed places, that Mr. Ashe would have been able to use his knowledge of the various parties with any effect. Want of decision is inseparable from such confused politics. It is a most interesting narrative, and Mr. Ashe has made the whole pother very clear to us, and has not given any unfair interpretation of the doings of the various actors in the drama played out with such varying results on the shores of the Nyanza. He is firmly convinced that his own view of affairs is the right one, with all due respect to the other parties, and his opinion carries weight. It will soon be a past chapter in East African history, thank good- ness, and we shall then be able to look back on Mr. Ashe and Captain Lugard as men who did their best for Uganda,—the one in the cause of peace, and the other by his firm and soldierly ideal to raise the native estimate of English character, and to draw the attention of British people to the country and its people.
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