THE COLONIAL EFFORT

A BROADCAST BY

THE RT. HON. HAROLD MACMILLAN, M.P.

(.Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Colonies)

28th JULY, 1942

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¥ WANT to tell you a story. It is about an African. I have never
I seen him or, I’m afraid, the country he lives in ; but the story was
I told me by one of our people in the Colonial Office who knows the
|man well, and the place he comes from. He is of the Nandi tribe

and calls himself the Son of Kibet. He was born in a village in an
outlying district of Kenya, far from civilisation, far from the railway.
His job, like David’s in the Bible, was looking after his father’s flocks
and herds. His longest journey was to the nearest township to sell
hides : his village was his world.

Then one day when the threat of war came, and the local regi-
ments—the King’s African Rifles—were being increased, a recruiting
ceremony took place in his village. He joined up as a volunteer.
There was in fact no need for conscription and the Son of Kibet
counted himself as lucky—there was so much competition.

So off he went to a training depot. He met new people, saw new
faces, ate good food, put on weight and learned to be a smart soldier.
First he learned his drill ; then he learned the complicated mechan-
ism of modern weapons, the rifle, the Bren-gun, the mortar, and so on.

And then he saw service. He went to the East African campaign
with his comrades from West Africa and Rhodesia, with South
African and British regiments. He was in at the crossing of the Juba
River. He drove up with General Cunningham’s troops in those
great forced marches through Abyssinia ; and with that liberating
Army he entered Addis Ababa.

Now he has gone to another part of the Colonial Empire thousands
of miles away from his home. He has gone to Ceylon, and there, like
David, again he stands ready for any invading Philistine. He will
go> back home after 1callwar- He will go back a different man.
He will have seen the world ; we shall depend upon men like him to
help us to develop and train and educate, to teach new agricultural
methods, and bring new industries and life and progress to East
Africa.

On a farm not very far from the Son of Kibet’s village lives Mrs.
—shall we call her—Brown. I know her and I know her husband.He served with me in the last war. Now, like all his friends in Kenya,
he has rejoined the Army. After the last war, he went out and settled
in the Kenya Highlands ; and into his farm he has put his wound
gratuity, his pension and all his small savings. He has seen bad times
and good, like all farmers ; but he has carried on all through.

Now he has left it to Mrs. Brown, and there she is, managing the
estate with the help of her African headman, superintending the
workers—there has always been good labour on that farm, for the
Major was a good employer. She looks after the maize and the wheat
and all the other crops ; sees to the cattle ; fills up the forms—for
there are Government forms in Africa as well as here ; she wrote and
told me so the other day, and also told me what she thought of them.
There are few amenities now. No petrol for joy-rides—it means a
lot of loneliness when your nearest neighbour may be five, ten or
fifteen miles away. But Mrs. Brown carries on with her work. She,
like the Son of Kibet, is holding the fort and doing her war job.
None of us can do more.

I have told you about these two people because I don’t think we
all realise just what the people of the Colonies are doing in this war.
We know a great deal, of course, of what our own boys are doing by
air and sea and land. We see the workers in the factories and on the
farms. Men and women, young and old. And we know, too, a great
deal of what is being done by the people of the great Dominions—
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, by the people of
Newfoundland and Southern Rhodesia, and by the people of
India. But the people of the Colonies-—the emigrants, planters,
settlers—they are all in it too. They know that it is their battle as
well as ours. Their future depends upon our common victory ;
they are doing their best to see that it comes.

Some of the Colonies came to us originally as military and strategic
outposts. Like all outposts they have been points of danger. Some we
have lost—Hong Kong, Singapore, North Borneo. They will be
recaptured. Others hold—Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus. In the whole
war there has been no story which has stirred us as the story of the
Battle of Malta. And the defence has not only been put up by our
fighting men of all services, but by the Maltese troops, and backed
by the splendid, heroic, unbeaten resistance of the Maltese people.

Now, I think of some other people from the Colonies I have met,
and I have' met them myself over here. When I was at the Ministry
of Supply I used to go round a good many factories, and I used to see
some of the skilled technicians from the West Indies hard at work
making munitions. They were very good tradesmen, artisans, andengineers. One man in particular, I remember, who solved a tech-
nical problem in a workshop which had baffled many British engineers
of considerable skill arid experience. That shows you the kind of
quality they are. But they are not only making munitions ; they are
using them—in the Air Force.

A few months ago I went to see the lumbermen from British
Honduras. At home they cut down great mahogany trees many feet
thick, working in the dense forests in sweltering tropical heat. Now
they are cutting the trim plantations of larch and pine for pit props
for our mines. They have to stand the cold and snow of a Scottish
winter. When'they first saw the snow they thought it was rice falling
from the sky. But they have stood it very well, and they are doing
splendid work. If any of them by chance are listening now, here are
my best greetings.

I could take you round the world—the doctors and technicians
from West Africa, the troops from Cyprus, the first Colonial Con-
tingent to see service abroad, the West African Frontier Force, the
Palestinian battalions, the Mauritians, the Ceylonese. All these are
serving one way or another, in the Air Force, the Army, or the Navy,
or with our industrial workers.

More than that, the losses that we have had have not depressed
our Colonies, but rather spurred them on to greater efforts. They
are making great contributions towards the material resources
of war. Food of all kinds to feed the Armies of the Middle East and
to send home to us. Wheat, rye, maize, rice, oilseeds, groundnuts.
They are working to replace the lost rubber of Malaya.

And as for minerals, think of the list. Aluminium for our aero-
planes ; wolfram ; tin ; graphite ; copper ; zinc ; mica ; man-
ganese ; chrome ; iron-ore ; industrial diamonds. From the Gold
Coast; from Sierra Leone ; from Nigeria; froni Northern Rhodesia ;
from Ceylon ; from British Guiana ; from Cyprus ; from all over
the world they come. In every Colony the great production drive is
going on, day and night.

So I would like to say to you ; if you see a man in uniform in the
street, with a dark skin and a smiling face, think of the Son of Kibet
—don’t pass him by. Stop him and ask him what Colonial territory he
comes from. Give him a welcome. Have a chat with him, and make
him feel that he is coming home. You will find that he will know a
great deal about England. He will know about Westminster Abbey,
and the Houses of Parliament, and Victoria Station, and the London
Docks. He will want to go to Buckingham Palace. He will know
about our regiments and our ships, and he will perhaps know moreabout our history than you do. He will certainly, I am afraid, know
a great deal more about us than we know about him. And remember
that when he goes back home he is going to tell them over there
what sort of a time he has had.

The Colonial Office and the Government cari do some things, but
only on official lines. They can provide rest camps and welfare huts
and clubs, and so on. But that’s not the real thing. The real welcome
can only be given by one man to another. Give him that, and send
him back a convinced Ambassador of Empire. For, you know, we
can be pretty standoffish, and sometimes pretty rude without mean-
ing to. Let him understand that we don’t mean it, and what we
really mean is friendship and comradeship.

The peoples of the Colonies number sixty million. They are of
every race and creed. They have reached different stages of progress,
from primitive to highly-civilised and cultured people. They cover
great areas of the earth. They are scattered over fifty-five separate
territories. Their problems are all different from one another. Their
rate of advance cannot be the same. Perhaps British Governments
in the past have neglected them.

To be quite frank, it has not been Governments or the British
people as a whole, but certain individual men and women who were
the pioneers in the story of Empire. Their names will five for ever.
Think of Africa, and you think not of Colonial Secretaries, with few
exceptions, but of names like Livingstone, Mary Kingsley, Rhodes,
Goldie, Lugard. After the war we haye got to go ahead together,
but the foundation of our plans must be knowledge and sympathy.

For there is a great job to be done. We have to press forward
with education ; health services ; transport ; roads ; railways ;
agriculture ; mining ; industry. Those are the material things.
But they can only prosper if they are based upon a real understanding
of the heart and mind. There will be differences of opinion here and
over there as to the particular solution of particular problems. But
that makes no difference to tfie purpose in view. Make no mistake.
The Colonial Empire is not going to break up. Indeed, it is only
really just beginning.

We must see to it that the comradeship and partnership which are
growing up between us during the war continue into the days of
peace. For don’t let us think they will be easy days ; they will be
difficult and exacting days. And the whole concern—the Colonies
and ourselves—must stand together, for security, for trade and for
a common ideal and purpose of life. The pioneer days lie behind.
The great days lie ahead.

(17409) Wt. 25120/P2776 1,190 8/42 K.H.K. Gp. 8/9 .