DOUGLAS HYDE'S

Mau Mau and Russia
KIKUYU workers are leaving the farms of European settlers in Kenya, first eating their sheep and then packing up their maize and taking it with them as they set off to join the crowds of their fellow-tribesmen who arc doing the same thing.
And they go believing that they are massing for a great war in which they will have Russian help.
This interesting sidelight on present developments in Kenya comes to me from a CATHOLIC HF.RALD reader in Nairobi. She gives in her letter actual details, with names of Kikuyu who have said this, and the farms on which they were employed.
was told by a departing Kikuyu that they would soon be returning as there would be a vita mkubwa (big war) in which the Russians were coming to help them. The same thing was said by the Kikuyu workers on a neighbouring term as they, too, packed up and left.
"Those who have any idea where Russia is or what Russians means," writes my correspondent, "are, to say the least of it, few and far between. so obviously this must have been told them by some one who is in touch with a Communist organisation."
It has, in fact. seemed probable from the start of the troubles in Kenya that the Communist influence is at work in Mau Mau and that among those responsible for it are some, at least, who have studied the tactics of the Communists of Malaya and have applied them to African conditions.
Just a 'clash'
INCIDENTALLY, on the day last "week when other papers ran headlines about the appalling massacre of Kikuyu men, women and children by Mau Mau, the Daily Worker, which from the start has supported Mau Mau, headlined the same story "Kikuyu raid police, free 173 prisoners."
The paper, of course. made no reference to a "massacre" but caned it, instead, "a clash between Kikuyu tribesmen and African chiefs, exchiefs, police and members of the African home guards organised by the white settlers."
It will be recalled that in this "clash" the raiders set fire to huts in which were sleeping women and children, having first sealed their doors. Children who escaped from their burning homes were strangled as they ran to the fields for safety.
A lesson
ONE lesson which, it seems to me, needs to be learned both here and in Kenya is this:
Far too many Europeans since the present emergency began have said or written that "We have got to make the Kikuyu more frightened of us than they are of Mau Mau."
We cannot compete with terrorists when it comes to frightfulness and even to pretend to do so is as foolish and provocative as it is unChristian.
Austin strike
IHE strike of Austin motor workers was never just a Communist plot. The ineptitude of the non-Communist leaders in the union concerned, and the determination of the Austin management to fight the industrial war in the bad old ruthless way was all that was needed to create a situation which played right into the Communists' hands. The Communists had only to sit back, wait for the strike to happen, then work behind the scenes to prolong and extend it.
It was a gift to them and one which should never have been made —all the more so because both the employers and the union leaders must have known that the Communists have for months been working for, and preparing for trouble in the motor industry. Our car industry ig vital both to Britain's export trade (which means to our national stability) and to our defence. It is an obvious target for the Communists for whom economic collapse and military defeat provide longed-for moments of opportunity.
Happy morons
'THERE was a time when the court" tryman working in the fields and his craftsman cousin carrying on his trade in the town or village both found fulfilment in their work.
As they worked they were able to feel a pride in the job they were doing and to believe that they and they alone could do it just like that. Through it they expressed themselves as intelligent individuals.
But man's view of man has been degraded. The result has been the degradation of his conception of work—and the further degradation of man. The happy craftsman has been replaced by the happy moron.
These thoughts are prompted by a reading of Niall Brennan's The Making of a Moron (Sheed & Ward, 10s. 6d.). I recommend this book to all who are, or should be, interested in what is happening to millions of their fellow-men in industry today.
Experiments in the use of the labour or morons (people of substandard intelligence) have shown that they are able to do a good many of the jobs on which intelligent men are engaged, a lot better than their allegedly normal workmates, In other words. the work has been so degraded that the ideal worker is the half-wit,
The author makes a good point when he observes that it is not just that much modern work is monotonous because it is repetitive—the actor's work is repetitive, too, hut it is not monotonous.
The problem goes deeper than the experts on industrial problems usually care to look.
His staff
TLlKE the personal note on which the April issue of the journal of t h e Westminster Association o f Catholic Trade Unionists ends.
"Your editor, and his staff," it says, "will be married at 10 a.m. on April 11 at St. Ignatius's, Stamford Hill. . . . We shall be very glad of your prayers, and if any of our ACTU friends would care to come to the service and the Mass it will be a joy to us both.
"But I regret it will not be possible to publish a May edition of ACTU. We arc sorry—there ain't time."
YOUR DAILY MASS GUIDE April 5-11
Sunday, April 5. Easter Sunday, d. 1 el. Proper Prf. (White.) Monday, April 6. Easter Monday, d. I cI. (White.) Tuesday, April 7. Easter Tuesday, d. 1 el. (White.) Wednesday, April 8. Easter Wednesday, sd. (White,) Thursday, April 9. Easter Thursday, sd. (White.) Friday, April 10. Easter Friday, ad.
Saturday., April 11. Easter Saturday, el. Proper Prf. (White.) '