PEER'S SON DEPORTED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14820, 25 October 1911, Page 11

PEER'S SON DEPORTED.

SHOT AT NATIVE THIEF.

EAST AFRICAN SENSATION.

[from our OWN correspondent.] London, September 15. Tiik Hon. Galbraith Cole, a son of the Karl of Enniskillen, and brother-in-law of Lord Delamere, ha« been ordered to be deported from British East Africa 011 a warrant by the Governor, acting on an Order-in-Council issued by tho Home Government, The reason given is tho alleged stirring up of strife amongst the natives, and is the outcome of the murder case recently referred to in tho House of Commons.

Mr. Cole, who is 30 years of age, and who served with the 10th Hussars during tho South African war, was tried by the Nakuru High Court in J lay last 011 a charge of shooting and killing a native suspected of sheep-stealing. The jury found him not guilty, and he was therefore acquitted.

According to the evidence a sheep was stolen on the night of April 9. On the morning of the lltli Mr. Cole and his manager, and a small party of native servants set out to follow a trail, which led them to a hut three miles away. There they found three natives plucking wool from a sheepskin. Two of the natives jumped up and ran into the forest. Mr. Cole fired at one and missed, but brought him down with a second shot. The other escaped. The third native was taken, but was afterwards let go. The wounded man was attended to, but died of his injuries. He has been given a month in which to settle his affairs. The drastic step lias roused feeling in the colony, where the settlers side with Mr. Cole. A correspondent who knows British East Africa writes to the Times declaring that tho news of the order will bo received with surprise and indignation. He says : —"If the deportation had been a right and necessary act of retributory justice,_ 110 .voice could raise tho argument of political expediency against it, but it is essentially unjust, and it is not difficult to understand the motives which have produced it. A prominent settler shoots a native; questions are asked in the House of Commons, and those who know nothing of the country and only the bare facts by cable, raise the cry of perverted verdicts and miscarriages of justice. _ The questioners are near at hand and importunate ; they are given satisfaction; a man who has done splendid work as a settler is sent forth with a stigma upon his name," and the Governor of the colony is left to assuage the bitter feelings aroused as best he can."

The Westminster Gazette gives another point of view. Its correspondent, who was in Nakuru when the Cole case was before the Courts, writes: —"The white man fired, and hit. The native was left there wounded. Some time later hp was found dead. One heard moat of Mr. Cole's neighbours censuring his action somewhat; not the shooting, however, but his failure to report to the magistrate what what ho had done.

" A word as to these neighbours: British East Africa is being colonised, in the main, by people of different social origin and environment from what obtains in most parts of Oversea Britain. The nearest approach to the class of settler was the first generation in New Zealand. Rarely will one enter an East African hotel, or even a railway station, without coming across a specimen of the educated, well-bred British man or woman. Almost on the shores of Navaisha—the mysterious lake described so graphically by Mr. Haggard, the lake whose water comes s>ncl goes none knows whence or whitherwe saw homesteads which suggested Cheshire or Yorkshire rather than a part, and a tropical part, of the Last Continent. " Oil the whole the settlers, their womenfolk particularly, are a fine folk, and although the present incident will cause a sensation among them, and indeed throughout Africa, and there will be a good deal of personal sympathy with Mr. Cole and his relatives, the more responsible colonists will feel, even if they do not say, that the Colonial Office, has acted for the general welfare."