Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 9 May 1940, Page 4

Timely Topics

There is nothing in the crescendo of evil that has swept over the Western world that ought to make us lose faith in the com-

'FAITH IN THE i COMMON MAN.

mon man, writes Irwin ' Edman in “Candle in the

|Dark.” It is curious how' the waves lof political methods and ideologies ’pass over the lives of ordinary people. [ Even today there is no reason to .believe that the common man in the ! countries that we feel have betrayed [the democratic ideal is so common, so [brutal, or so vulgar as his leaders. To[day in Germany and, as the writei [knows from personal experience, in Italy after fifteen years of a totalitarian regime, the plain people wish to [live a simple human life. And even ■without education, with pitiful ’means and under brutal suppressions, [the Italian peasant leads his life with , a gay and human distinction. ■ “God must have loved the common [people,” Lncoln remarked in an ofti quoted utterance, because he made so 1 many of them. The democratic hypothesis is simply that, given a chance, the common man may be a high, not a low, common denominator. For what [we call the needs of the average man ■ are those of everyone. There is noth(ing that has happened to make us be[lieve that those elements of decency and kindness, of living and letting [live, which people exhibit if they are i allowed to live without fear and insecurity, might not animate the decisions of mankind.

Discussing Kenya in wartime, a correspondent of “The Times” says: The face of Nairobi has been completely

KENYA IN WARTIME.

changed by the war. As headquarters of' the East African Force its

streets have more heavily camouflaged saloon cars, ambulances, convoys of lorries, and khaki-clad troops, European and African. than any town between the Zambesi and the Nile. It can be said that a large force has been rapidly accumulated in East Africa to which contributions in men, material, and budgetary Votes have been made not only by the northern Dependencies but by the Rhodesias, Nyasaland, and Zanzibar. Officers and men of the Southern Rhodesian Air Force, King’s African Rifles from five territories, men of the Signal corps from Britain, Africans who trekked north with hundreds of lorries from Northern Rhodesia, young Europeans born in the Dependencies, and their fathers who have already seen service in most parts of the Empire—all go to make up General Dickenson’s forces.

At least in men, East Africa has taken on the burden of its own defence and the only important unit from beyond Africa is a mountain battery from India. It has been stated that there are 2000 Europeans in uniform, and as Kenya has provided about 1400 for its own Territorial Regiment, the East African Army Service Corps, and other units, it will be seen that out of a total white population of 20,000 of both sexes and all ages, the Colony’s contribution in man-power is as high a percentage as that of any part of the British Empire.