The Liquidator
From a Correspondent SALISBL-RY 'WHEN we talk of the government today it' is the territorial government. Not long ' ago it would have been the Federal government.'' This remark by a European businessman from, the Copperbelt applies equally to Northern and Southern Rhodesia. It registers accurately the,4' process over which the Home Secretary finds self presiding. It would be wrong to suggest that Mr. Butler is himself hastening it; on the con- trary, he is concerned to prevent a procession turning into a stampede. His method so far has been softly to recognise the inevitable.
He chose his press conference in the garden of Government House at Lusaka' on Tuesday to bury by faint disparagement the idea of a further full-scale Federal review conference. Two or three times, almost gratuitously, he went out of his way to mention it only to point out that he could see neither time nor place for it in his pre sent programme, so far as he has one. By the end of the performance it was clear that for 'Federal Review Conference' one should read 'study by my team of advisers.' Mr. Butler, in short. is tactfully gasthering to himself the reins of decision.
It was significant in this context that, having hitherto been wary on the subject in public, he should now choose to remind the public of the Lord Chancellor's pronouncement on March 26 that secession lay outside the Federal Govern- ment's powers and was a matter for Westminster alone. It is now general here to talk of Sir Roy Welensky's Government as having another ■, ear to run at the outside. On the economic side Mr. Butler's determination to preserve close relations 'at any rate between Northern and Southern Rhodesia and possibly with Nyasaland' is mani- fest. But on the political side he is inevitably here as a liquidator. Whether Sir Roy will acquiesce has yet to be seen.
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