The Meow-Meows

Twelve big R.A.F. transports landed at Nairobi, capital of Kenya Colony, one night last week, and set down the ist Battalion (800 men) of Britain's Lancashire Fusiliers. From adjoining Tanganyika and Uganda hurried a battalion and two companies of the King's African Rifles. H.M.S. Kenya, an 8,000-ton cruiser, put a detachment of marines ashore at Mombasa, Kenya's only modern harbor.

This display of armed might was Britain's answer to the Mau Mau (rhymes with bow-wow), the African secret society that threatens to wipe out Kenya's 30,000 whites (TIME, Oct. 27). Part land hunger, part savage revolution against the domineering white man and the bewildering 20th century, the Mau Mau's blind fury could, if left unchecked, turn the Crown Colony of Kenya into another Malaya. Once pooh-poohed as mere "press exaggeration," the Mau Mau have already mutilated scores of whites and "loyal" blacks, with their favorite weapon, the panga--a long, machete-like knife.

Near Nyeri last week, a Kikuyu chief and two black policemen were hacked to pieces when they surprised a Mau Mau oath-taking ceremony. Only one top Kikuyu chief survives; he is being closely guarded. Police witnesses ("Traitors," according to the Mau Mau) have had both hands cut off or were tied in sacks and drowned. A British colonel and his wife were slashed about the neck and face as they lay in bed one night.

Jomo for Jesus. Reinforced with regular troops, Sir Evelyn Baring, Kenya's newly appointed governor, felt strong enough to hit back at the Mau Mau (the Lancashire Fusiliers, noting the Mau Mau habit of nailing headless cats to their victims' doors, christened the terrorists Meow-Meows). Armored cars roared out along the main highways, spotter planes swooped low over the Kiyuyu reserve. Covered by the Fusiliers, Kenya cops grabbed hundreds of suspected terrorists in Nairobi's native quarter, pounced on scores of others lurking in forest hideouts.

The biggest prize of all was Jomo ("Burning Spear") Kenyatta, the black-bearded Kikuyu who runs the Kenya African Union (K.A.U.). A London-trained anthropologist still legally married to a blonde Sussex schoolmistress, Kenyatta (baptized Johnstone Kamau) spent the '30s in Moscow as a student guest of the Kremlin, returned to Kenya to spread the Red gospel. K.A.U. (membership: 100,000) ostensibly seeks home rule for Kenya, but is more likely a screen for Communist and anti-Christian propaganda among Kenya's 5,000,000 blacks. In the hymnbooks used in 300 bush schools supervised by K.A.U., Jomo Kenyatta's name has been substituted for that of Jesus Christ. Charged as the "leading spirit" of the Mau Mau movement, Kenyatta was packed off to a "not very comfortable" billet in the North Kenya desert--miles & miles of sunbaked lava crumbling like broken biscuit. With him, under guard, went most of the staff of K.A.U. What Next? Governor Baring's anti-Mau Mau drive seemed at first sight to be working--though the government freely admitted that the Kikuyu tribe remains "sullen and unpleasant." Yet few Kenyans believe that force alone will stamp out the Mau Mau. In the British House of Commons, Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton told M.P.s that Mau Mau terrorism is "carefully planned, centrally directed, and its object is to destroy all authority . . ." Lyttelton added that he was leaving for Kenya this week, to see for himself.

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