The Last Thread

The rebellion last year of Ian Smith's white supremacist regime was complicated by one fact: most of Rhodesia's 220,000 whites are of British stock. Had it been otherwise, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson would not have been afraid to use British troops against "our kith and kin." Nor would Smith, whose father emigrated from Scotland, have felt it necessary to declare Rhodesia's "continued allegiance" to the Queen--and keep the Union Jack flying. But family ties can go only so far. Last week Smith suggested that the last thin thread to London would soon be cut. He would have to check with his legal advisers, he said, but it might well be that when Britain asked the U.N. Security Council to impose economic sanctions against his regime fortnight ago, "we willy nilly became a republic at that time."

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