3 APRIL 1953, Page 4

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

ET me not be misunderstood when I say I am very glad that Mr. Michael Blundell has gone back to Kenya. I am glad he has gone because he is so much needed there. No one who heard his most effective broadcast last week or one of the addresses he gave to private gatherings could fail to be greatly impressed by the liberal strain which permeated the realism 'inseparable from the outlook of a participant in the grim Kenya struggle. As leader of the settler group in the Kenya Legisla- tive Council he has the responsible and exacting task of restrain- ing by suasion men who are impelled almost irresistibly to a sharpening of racial antagonism by the hideous tragedies enacted daily. Leaving his own family, like all white families outside the few urban centres, in nightly peril, Mr. Blundell has felt it right to pay a brief visit to this country. Its effect, and a valuable one, will have been to increase sympathy with the whites in Kenya in their danger, and confidence in their capacity, so far as Mr. Blundell is representative of them, to face the crisis with restraint as well as courage. 1 believe that he does, in fact, speak for four-fifths of the Kenya whites.