Mr. Strachey at Kongwa
• If the Minister of Food has made his sudden visit to the ground- nut area of Tanganyika out of a consciousness of the grave disquiet and unrest prevailing among the servants of the Overseas Food Corporation there he has taken a wise decision. But it would be a profound mistake for Mr. Strachey or anyone else to attribute these emotions primarily to anxieties caused by the recent debate in the House of Commons, and accentuated probably enough by the debate In the House of Lords on Wednesday. What has disturbed the more able members of the staff of the Corporation is the series of errors that have been committed by the higher management and which they were powerless either to avert or to retrieve. Lord Milverton, with his unequalled colonial experience, dealt scathingly with the Corporation's record in his speech in Wednesday's debate, and it is matter for cynical reflection that two of the soundest and most convincing contributions to public discussion of the groundnuts scheme were letters published in The Times on different days this week from the two recently dismissed members of the Cor- poration's board, Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Rosa. No one is demanding the abandonment of the groundnuts project. But the demand for a searching independent enquiry into causes of the profoundly disappointing results so far achieved is strong, is growing and will be stimulated rather than diminished by the defiant refusal presented to the House of Lords by Lord Addison and by his completely unconvincing defence of the chairman of the Overseas Food Corporation, Sir Leslie Plummer. Rarely has the weight of argument been more unevenly distributed than in the Lords on Wednesday.
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