Our Colonial Trust
THROUGHOUT this book Major Simnett shows himself conscious of the need to explain and apologise for the dependence of colonial peoples on " foreign government, however well-intentioned." He concludes explicitly: " The world has now to realise that the Colonial relationship, which has subsisted more or less unquestioned for centuries past, can no longer be recognised as necessary and permanent but is essentially transitional and terminable—" His purpose is to persuade doubters here, and critics in America, that the ideal, and to a great extent the practice, of the British Empire have conformed to the standard required of a trustee. For all the author's enlightenment, the method chosen—a rather photo- graphic picture of the Empire as it is, or lately was—has its weak- ness. The angle of approach is inevitably that of the central power rather than that of the people most concerned. It is perhaps only a lapse that there are old-fashioned references to German and even French " encroachments " that needed " watching." But our " most loyal " (and " desperately poor ") West Indians, and many Africans, will rub their eyes to read that the standard of living of the tropical peoples can (not must) be raised—and at the incidental dictum that even a slight improvement " would obviously make a tremendous difference to the total volume of (world) trade." The poverty and backwardness of the colonies are the very root of the matter. Most critics of the Empire still need to be made to understand the ele- ments of the problem—the brute facts of physical nature in the tropics. The process often described as the " exploitation " of the colonies has normally been a fight against natural poverty ; against malnutrition, which makes the people easy victims to malaria and sleeping sickness and a host of other ills ; against ignorance due to the isolation in which the peoples have so long been sunk. There are reasons enough for the poverty of the colonies. The slow pro- gress made under our benevolent rule is thus understandable, not perhaps always equally excusable.
At the same time, Major Simnett is on the side of the angels, almost always aware of the vexed questions, and eminently reason- able. He may be over enthusiastic about progress in very back- ward parts, and silent about the complications present in older and much more advanced places like the Gold Coast Colony. But he is all for meeting the claims of the more progressive elements every- where. He is particularly sound on the need for common inter- colonial and international action to combat the locust and the tsetse fly, and to promote health and education and general welfare
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