Big Chief Oliver

The people of the Achewa, Tonga and Angoni tribes of British-protected Nyasaland are poor fieldworkers with neither money nor power. Yet, mite by mite, they collected $5,000 to send five of their chiefs to London with a message for the "great white mother," Queen Elizabeth. The message was a protest against the British government's plan to federate Nyasaland with Northern and Southern Rhodesia into a Central African dominion (TIME, Feb. 9). "We are afraid Southern Rhodesia will swallow us down," said their spokesman, Chief Somba.

Some in flowing robes, others in college blazers, the chiefs offered to kneel and touch Her Majesty's heel, the highest honor a Nyasaland chief can pay. But they did not get to see her. Instead, an all-white conference, after first devising a web of constitutional safeguards to protect the Africans' rights, approved federation, with or without the natives' support. The chiefs had to be satisfied with a call on Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton. Last week, their money spent and their mission a failure, the chiefs left London in discouragement, and disillusioned about Lyttelton. "He did not behave like a man who sits near the Queen," said Acting Paramount Chief Gomani. "He frowned and was angry before he heard us. He lied when he said our people were so ignorant that they did not understand federation. He was rude. He did not listen to us. We were disappointed, and we must go back to our people and say that the man who sits near the Queen had no time for their chiefs."

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