GOLD IN KENYA
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sim—The unintelligent placidity with which people have unqUestioningly accepted the contention that the gold in Kenya must be mined is astonishing. A few weeks ago The Spectator wrote : " No one will deny that the gold must be mined." The rest of your readers having remained silent, feel compelled to raise my lonely voice against this thoughtless assumption.
Consider what will be the course of events in Kenya during the next few years. Many natives will be evicted from their' property with more or less evil results ; thousands of the worst kind of men in the world will descend on the unfortunate. place ; thousands of labourers will grunt and sweat and disembowel the country, leaving it useless for future genera- tions ; machinery will be imported and railroads constructed, at vast expense ; joint-stock companies will be formed, and an amount of capital sufficient to rehouse half the population of London, will be squandered in order that a few bears, like_ the red men on the coast of Coromandel, may scalp one another on the tondon Stock Exchange.
On the other side of the balance-sheet there will be a few. tons of a rather dull, unattractive yellow metal, totally unlit, for any practical purpose except for one to which it is highly
unlikely that it will ever be put : namely to be coined into a small round token of wealth. Probably it will be kept in bars for a time in the vaults of the Bank of England, and when it finally crosses the Atlantic, it will be accompanied by special detectives all the way and have a guard of soldiers as far as
Victoria Station.—I am, Sir, &c., ANDREW G. Gn.cu T. 20 Norfolk Square, Hyde Park.
[The Government of Kenya, with the Colonial Office behind it, may he assumed capable of seeing that the mining opera- tions are carried out under other conditions than those that our correspondent suggests.—En. The Spectator.]
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