EAST AFRICAN SENSATION.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 12615, 18 November 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

EAST AFRICAN SENSATION.

DEPORTATION OF PEER'S SON

DRASTIC OFFICIAL ACTION. *

LONDON, September 15. The Hon. Galbraith Cole,-* a son of tho Earl of Enniskillen and brother-in-law of Lord Delamere, has been ordered to be deported from British East Africa on a warrant by the Governor, acting on an Order-in-Council,,issued by the Home Government. The reason given is the alleged stirring up of strife amongst the natives, and is the outcome of the murder case recently referred to in tlie Hout* of Commons.

Mr Cole, who is thirty years of age, and who served with the 10th Hussars during the South African War, was tried by the Nakuru High Court in May last on a charge of shooting and killing a native suspected of sheep-steal-ing. The jury found him "Not guilty," and ho was therefore acquitted. According to the evidence a sheep was stolen on the night of April 9th. On the morning of the llth 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 liim down with a second shot. The other escaped. The third native was taken in .the beat, 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 has roused feeling in the colony whsre the settlers side with Mr Cole.

A correspondent, who knows Briti-k East Africa, writes io the Times declaring that the news of the order will be received with surprise and indignation. He says: "If the deportation had been a right and necessary, act of retributory justice, no voice could raise the argument of political expediency against it, but it is essentially unjust, and it is not difficult to understand the motives whioh have produced it. A prominent settler shoots a native;, questions are asked in tbe 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 woi*k as a settler is sent forth with a stigma upon his name, and the Governor of the colony is left to assuage tbe 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: — "Thi white man fired, and hit. The native was left there, woundj&d. Some time later he was found dead. One heard most of Mr. Cole's neighbors censuring his action somewhat; hot the shooting, however, but his failure to report to the Magistrate what he had done. "

"A word as to. these neighbors. British East -Africa is being colonised, inthe 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 ari 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— tho mysterious lake de_crib(sd so geographically by Mr Haggard, the lake whose- water comes and goes non« knows whence or* whither — we saw homesteads which suggested Cheshire" or Yorkshire rather than a part and a tropical part, of the Lost Continent. On the whole, the settlers, their women folk particularly, are a fine folk, and -although the present incident will caues a sensation among them, ahd 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."'