Mr. Winston Churchill was entertained by the National Liberal Club
on Saturday evening last, and made a very interesting speech. After touching on the record of the Government, Mr. Churchill described his tour, which he defended on the broad grounds that first-hand knowledge was valuable to all who were responsible for taking a share in the large decisions of Colonial policy, and that it was important to convince officials on the spot—to whose energy and self-sacrifice he paid a very proper tribute—that the transference of January, 1906, did not mean any falling off in sympathy or interest at headquarters. Mr. Churchill extolled the beauties and the climate of parts of the East Africa Protectorate and Uganda, but was careful to point out the drawbacks of these district regarded as a white man's country. Our African possessions would need grants-in-aid for some time to come, but he believed this expenditure would prove reproductive. It was, however, most important that we should be faithful to our responsibilities as trustees for the native races, and he gladly bore testimony to the way in which our civil and military officers construed their duty towards them. In speaking of the civilisation of Uganda Mr. Churchill freely acknowledged the debt we owed to mis- sionary enterprise, while his view of the British Indian diffi- culty was substantially that maintained in these columns,— viz., that the action of the Transvaal Government, however regrettable, was entirely within the authority conceded to them by the House of Commons. At the same time, he hoped that some compensation might be offered by the open- ing of certain areas in the Equatorial Protectorates to the enterprise of Indian colonists.
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