Challenge, Then Shoot

Through Nairobi's crowded Indian bazaars and squalid Negro quarter sped an ugly rumor: all Negro nursemaids had been ordered by the Mau Mau to murder white babies in their charge. The whites, hearing the rumor, took no chances. By train, by road and plane, hundreds of white children were sent to friends in Mombasa, 300 miles away on the Kenya coast. It was the tensest week since the Mau Mau emergency began. Nairobi's 16,000 whites were frankly awaiting a big Mau Mau attack. Probable Mau Mau Dday: April 8, when the court verdict on London-educated Jomo Kenyatta, alleged leader of the Mau Mau, is delivered.

The whites' political leader, Michael Blundell, returned from London conferences with Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton, talking less moderately than he once had. Said he: "We must now face the fact that the Kikuyu tribe [1,250,000] is in a state of rebellion. There should be summary justice." Day & night, Nairobi's white Home Guards patrolled the city streets and suburbs under new orders: "If you see any numbers of Negroes assembling and get no quick, satisfactory reply to your first challenge, shoot immediately and to kill." Troops and police in armored cars drove into the Negro section of Nairobi, rounded up 7,000 Kikuyu, arrested 300 after "screening."

Explained a white senior army officer: "We believe the Mau Mau supreme war council has secret headquarters here in Nairobi. The Kikuyu drive taxicabs and buses, work in hotels and nightclubs. We believe these Kikuyu are Mau Mau spies who tell the Mau Mau war council where and when to strike. They overhear and report all white conversations, and know all our dispositions and plans."

Upcountry in the Kiambu reserve, scene of last month's village massacre, a Mau Mau gang, brandishing keen-edged pangas, set fire to native huts. But instead of panic-stricken people rushing out to be cut to bits by the attackers' arms, an alerted Home Guard opened fire, killed 21 Mau Mau. In the same area, a platoon of 20 Negro soldiers of the King's African Rifles, led by a white officer, saw a Kikuyu woman furtively carrying sacks of food into the forest. Following the woman, the soldiers engaged a gang of 100 Mau Mau in a two-hour battle in which 24 Mau Mau were killed, including a Mau Mau oath administrator who was wearing women's clothes as a disguise.

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