British Dependencies and Mandated Territories in Africa

Abstract

ANY anxiety which may have been aroused by tentative suggestions relating to a future redistribution of Colonies and Mandated Territories in Africa, to which reference was made in NATURE of February 15 (see p. 249), should be dispelled, at least for the present, by the very definite pronouncement made by Mr. J. H. Thomas in the House of Commons on February 12, which stated in precise terms that no such proposals would be entertained. It is reported, however, that some misgiving is still felt in East Africa, and it is expected by leaders of the German movement in Tanganyika, according to a dispatch from the Nairobi correspondent of The Times in the issue of February 15, that Herr Hitler will make “a precise and firm demand within a few months”. The same dispatch quotes from the East African Standard a passage to the effect that while the Colonial lands are theoretically the possessions of the Government, their future is not merely a matter for international negotiation. They are the inalienable homes of millions of people residing in, and developing them, who are wards of the British race. So far as concerns the Mandated Territories only, it might be argued on the other side that the mandate recognises these inalienable rights of the inhabitants, irrespective of the power in whose hands it may be vested. Past colonial history, however, and the conduct of administration by the mandatory powers since they accepted the responsibility, shows on an impartial view that under no Government, not even excepting the present administration of the Belgian Congo, of which too little has been heard, has so near an approach been made as in the British Territories to a complete adaptation of the methods of administration and of the efforts to develop the civic and social capacities of the individual to the cultural status of the African as revealed in the scientific study of his institutions.