Offer of Surrender

From the dark forests of Kenya, where leopards prowl, the commander of the Mau Mau terrorists sent a letter to Nairobi. "It is only peace we want. We cannot live without food," wrote Dedan Kimathi, the scarfaced Kikuyu schoolteacher who is the brain behind the Mau Mau. "If the police and soldiers are withdrawn, the fighting will stop at once."

Kimathi's letter seemed evidence that the tough, Malaya-style policy of General Sir George Erskine is beginning to pay off. Since June, when the British government sent Erskine to take charge of what was fast becoming a big colonial war, 3,000 British regulars have been ringing and starving out the Mau Mau in the Aberdare highlands. Low-flying aircraft strafed their hideouts; Kikuyu labor battalions pierced the bush with military roads that brought armored cars and cannon within range of the guerrilla redoubt. It was ruthless pressure, and the time had come for Erskine to demand surrender.

Swooping low over the Aberdares, R.A.F. planes scattered government leaflets with a message for the Mau Mau chieftains. "Only starvation and death await you if you continue the fight . . . To arrange surrender of your gangs, come out of the bush in daylight, waving green branches . . . We will insure that you are justly treated."

Erskine was confident that his promise of just treatment would bring results. His orders are not only to smash the Mau Mau, but to try to restore harmony between Kenya's 30,000 white settlers and its 5,000,000 Africans. But Kenya's militant settlers make less and less distinction between the 1,200 armed desperadoes who make up Kimathi's gangs, and the 1,000,000 frightened Kikuyu tribesmen from whose midst they sprang.

Meeting under a huge Union Jack in Nairobi's Memorial Hall, angry whites last week deplored Erskine's policy as appeasement. They accused his British regulars, who have killed more than a thousand Mau Mau, of being "soft" to the Kukes. Governor Sir Evelyn Baring, who had joined with Erskine in the appeal to the Mau Mau, withdrew a little, promised the settlers that Nairobi will offer "no general amnesty."

Possibly because news of the settlers' unyielding wrath had trickled back to the Aberdares, not one Mau Mau deserter appeared at the edge of the bush to wave a green branch. General Erskine's optimism noticeably declined. Grimly, he let it be known that the war would probably drag on for at least ten months more.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.