Dominion so Peculiar

British justice, tramp steamers and Scotch whiskey loosely bind a diverse association of peoples. The world, struggling nervously with the problems of how to place in peaceable association even more diverse groups, finds the British Empire an embarrassment and an inspiration. Meanwhile, the Empire, a hodgepodge of real estate scattered all over the globe (see map), is changing more rapidly than ever in its confused history. Most of the changes turn around the sincere efforts of the British Government to satisfy (without exchanging anarchy for stability) colonial peoples' hopes of self-government.

Oddly enough, Stalin, Bertie McCormick and Henry Wallace all regard the Empire as peace's public enemy No. 1. Disraeli, who should have known, said: "No Caesar or Charlemagne ever presided over a dominion so peculiar." Attlee's Empire, governed largely by anti-imperialist Socialists and inhabited largely by fiercely independent "dependent peoples," is a lot more peculiar than Disraeli's.

Prize Exhibits. Of the Dominions, two--Australia and New Zealand--are Socialist, like the mother country; these, along with Canada, are more closely tied to the free-enterprise U.S. than to Britain in matters affecting their national security. South Africa is strategically British, politically split by Boer nationalism, and socially ridden by extreme racism. Eire takes full advantage of its independence; its chief importance in world affairs is as a bottomless reservoir of ill-will toward its once heavy-handed master.

Many Indies. The key to the troubles of the rest of the Empire is to be found in India and Burma, areas now in transition between colonial status and self-government. Until 1946, it was fashionable to speak of India's internal rivalries as if they were unique. In complexity, India's problems may still hold the palm (see FOREIGN NEWS), but recent months have brought the appalling realization that Britain faces in most colonies counterparts of the Indian communal strife. Whenever British rule is firmly consolidated and seemingly permanent, political conflict between native groups is nonexistent or subdued because there is no power for the natives to fight over. But when the British show signs of relaxing their grip on any colony, then racial, religious, tribal or individual competition to fill the prospective vacuum of power is intensified.

Burma, for instance, is not sharply divided, like India, along religious lines. Burmese are a homogeneous people, with a relatively high literacy rate (61% for males, 17% for females). Yet this fall, as Governor Sir Hubert Ranee tried hard to set up a native government, the Burmese broke out in a rash of major strikes and riots. Disturbances crystallized last month into violently opposed factions, one led by a former Japanese puppet, U Aung San, the other by a self-styled Communist, U Than Tun. These two young (31) men have similar political and personal backgrounds; in fact, they married sisters. Last month in Rangoon, Communist Than Tun told a TIME correspondent: "Aung San and I are not on speaking terms any more. And neither are our wives." That understatement was Than Tun's way of saying that, on the eve of self-government, a civil war (with leftover Japanese arms) might break out in Burma.

In Malaya, the long-range prospect is even more discouraging. A self-governing Malaya assumes that the people who live there think of Malaya as a nation to which they owe allegiance. At present the Malays (41% of the population) obey their scattered sultans; the Indians (13%) give allegiance to their religious communities, and the Chinese (43%) look to China.

If the British Leave--. In the African colonies, agitation for self-government has begun to discover both leaders and obstacles. A native Gold Coast spokesman, Robert Kweku Atta Gardiner, said recently in a New York speech:

"What is needed is a planned transition from an agricultural and cheap labor economy to an industrial and balanced economic system; and from racial and political servitude to ... conditions of self-government."

That is a tall order, but Gardiner is a moderate among native African leaders. In nearby Nigeria lives a more extreme and more important Negro spokesman, the fabulous Nnamdi Azikiwe, known as "Zik." In the 1920s, Zik stowed away on a ship for the U.S., where he worked his way to a LaSalle Extension University law degree by dishwashing, coal mining and boxing. Zik is owner and editor of Lagos' West African Pilot, which mixes inflammatory anti-British editorials with a heartthrob column much franker than Dorothy Dix's. (Recently a Nigerian youth wrote in to ask which of the four girls he was living with he should marry.) Zik, whose following includes several million Nigerians, says he wants immediate independence, but he may have his tongue in his cheek. One of his supporters, Ojukwu, a wealthy transportation magnate, says: "If the British were to leave tomorrow, I would be the first one down on the docks asking them to leave their shoes and their clothes behind. We don't know how to make anything and we haven't got the facilities."

The pattern of native rivalry shows in Nigeria, too. Most of Zik's followers are members of the Ibo tribe. The British say that their departure would bring the Moslem Hausa tribe down from the north to dominate the Ibos and Yorubas. (That the British have sometimes encouraged such dissension does not obviate the fact that fierce quarrels among the colonial peoples break out even where the British do their level best to create unity among native groups.)

The Old School. Some British administrators in Nigeria are of a type which has been untouched by the new Empire attitude of both Tories and Socialists at home. Recently a TIME correspondent asked British Governor Sir Arthur Richards what he thought of one of the most important native leaders. Said Sir Arthur: ''He's a bloody bastard."

Britain's new Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech Jones, would never make a remark like that. He started out as a typical Socialist Empire-baiter and has (along with most of his fellow Laborite leaders) come to the conclusion that only a long program of education and economic improvement will prepare the colonies for independence. Creech Jones approaches his ticklish job with all the earnestness and pious words of a Methodist missionary who knows he may end up in the cannibals' kettle. In the past year, as a result of reforms started by Conservative Oliver Stanley and carried on by the Laborites, almost every British colony has made some progress toward self-government. Ceylon is managing all its own internal affairs. On the Gold Coast, for the first time, natives elected by their own people will have a majority of seats in their Parliament. In the more backward colonies of Central and East Africa, native representatives will sit with whites.

So Little Time. Laudable as this progress is from a humanitarian standpoint, it does not seem to be solving the Empire's basic problem. Native opposition to British rule is moving faster than either 1) London's concessions or 2) the ability of native groups to get together and confine their rivalries within the framework of national unity. In an able series of articles in Time and Tide, Elspeth Huxley (cousin-by-marriage to Julian and Aldous) recently noted:

"Once the overlord admits the possibility of his departure--in our case positively glories in the idea--he gives himself very little time. . . . Our talk of long, slow training and education is hollow. The ferment that bubbles in India today will infect the colonies tomorrow--has already done so, in fact."

The British taxpayer is now digging up $480,000,000 for colonial education and welfare. Nearly all colonies get their defense and other British services without paying taxes; in return, Britain still derives strategic, political and commercial advantages from her possessions. But Britons who observe the antics of highly educated Moslems and Hindus in India and highly educated Zionist terrorists in Palestine are no longer sure that education alone has much to do with the question of how to make a country out of a colony which contains "plural societies."

Big Stakes. Some of the colonies (Kenya, Malaya, Ceylon) still have great strategic value in the atomic age, to the U.S. as well as to Britain. The Kremlin, which understands this, is doing its utmost to make Britain's task as hard as possible and to aggravate U.S. disapproval of the seamy side of imperialism.

In the Puerto Rican mess, the U.S. has discovered what it is to have a colonial bear cub by the tail. Britain, with a whole family of full-grown Puerto Ricos, is at least trying to find the answer. If her effort at orderly progress fails and the sun sets on the Empire fallen into chaos, the U.S. will stand to lose as much as Britain.

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