THE FUTURE OF EAST AFRICA [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] .
SIR,—While accepting Mr. J. H. Driberg's courteous dis- claimer of a contemptuous attitude towards the settlers of Kenya, I think he has fallen into the error of assuming that a small poll, which in this country would infer apathy, neces- sarily does so in colonies where conditions are entirely different. It might, for example, be the result of a rainy season and impassable roads. With sixteen years' intimate knowledge of the colony, I find his repeated allegation that " only a minority of the Kenya- settlers is really concerned in the opposition to the White -Papers " wholly incredible, and am convinced that it is erroneous.
Mr. Driberg interprets my previous -letter as showing that " in general estimation " there is not even a secular sanction for our trust in Kenya. I, in • turn, must in self-defence protest that there is no phrase -in the letter which will bear such an interpretation. On the contrary, the whole point of it was that having regard to the weight of the secular sanctions of that trusty the application of the word " sacred " to it was superfluous. I refrained from criticizing the more extreme doctrine of the sanctity of the trust as expressed in the White Paper, "that Government is irrevocably respon- sible for the maintenance of its trusteeship '? ; and it is Mr. Driberg himself who by •defending the "-legal transfer of trustees " in the case of Jubaland has definitely repudiated
that doctrine. But there is surely nothing particularly sacrosanct about a trust which can be transferred at will. • The question at issue is whether a " legal transfer of
trustees is in certain circumstances admissible, as the settlers of Kenya contend, or whether " Government is irrevocably responsible for the maintenance of its trustee- ship," as Lord Passfield has declared, reaffirming the Duke of Devonshire's uncompromising words in the 1923 (Indians in Kenya) White Paper—" Government are unable to delegate or share this trust." Our Government quietly shelved these words when the cession of Jubaland became politically expedient.
What exasperates the friends of Kenya is the pretence that a trust which can be delegated wholesale to Italy cannot legitimately be even shared by the settlers of Kenya, where the standards of conduct towards backward races are excep-
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