TANGANYIKA

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 February 1937, Page 5

TANGANYIKA

BISHOP CHAMBERS INTERVIEWED

[FEB PBESS ASSOCIATION.]

WELLINGTON, February 22

Considerable progress has been made by missionaries in pioneering Christianity and civilisation in Central Africa, according to the Rt. Rev. G. A. Chambers, Bishop of Central Tanganyika, who arrived from Sydney to-day by the Awatea on a visit to the Dominion. Bishop Chambers said that African leadership was one of the great needs of the future. The people were a virile, attractive race, who were realising their need for education. Everywhere chiefs were aking for schools for native boys. Australian nurses in Africa were kept very -busy. In addition to healing the sick and caring f° r lepers, the nurses were training African girls in the profession. Bishop Chambers said that he has often been asked when Herr Hitler would get back Tanganyika. He could never conceive of Tanganyika going back to Germany; it was not likely that the British Government would give this country back to Germany and so bring two Powers like Italy and Germany so close to her East African possessions. Germany’s attitude towards the Jews seemed to him to make it impossible for her to be trusted with a mandate which required impartiality of treatment to all races. This did not seem to be her present faculty. Africans were, of course, non-Aryan and therefore might be subject to any kind of treat-1 ment. At- present, German settlers j had every opportunity of entering the territory and' raw materials could be obtained in any quantity for which payment was ready to be made. There was no restriction on German (colonists going to Tanganyika at present, but. the fact that before the Great War there were only 5000 Germans in the colony did not show that Tanganyika could give any relief to the surplus population of Germany. The Germans in Tanganyika now were a law-abiding community and worked with the British happily under the present administration. The native population, as far as it was vocal, was quite contented under the system of indirect rule through chiefs, which the British administration had established.