Background

Against the barbaric savagery of the Mau Mau, Kenya's Britons fight back with the efficient weapons of the 20th century, and occasionally with a passion that matches that of their attackers. Last week, while the R.A.F. blasted the Nyeri forests with 1,000-pound bombs, which were supposed to scare the Mau Mau out of their hidden lairs, British justice took up the subject of two overzealous officers accused of matching the Mau Mau's cruelties.

In Dar es Salaam, capital of the neighboring British protectorate of Tanganyika. 19-year-old Brian Hay ward and a handful of African 'troopers under his command were found guilty of 1) .tying up Mau Mau suspects with thongs round their necks, 2) whipping the soles of their feet, 3) burning their eardrums with lighted cigarettes. Hay ward was fined -L-100 ($280) and jailed for three months, but the English judge did not think that the soldiers should be judged too severely. "It is easy to work oneself up into a state of pious horror over these offenses," said he, "but they must be considered against their background. All the accused were engaged in seeking out inhuman monsters and savages of the lowest order."

Another Briton, Captain Gerald Selby Lewis Griffiths, 43, was court-martialed in a wooden hut in the heart of the Mau Mau badlands. He was accused of murdering a captured Negro forest worker suspected of belonging to Mau Mau, and of ordering his African rifleman to "shoot anyone you want, so long as he is black." Griffiths told the court that he kept a Scoreboard in his officers' mess, recording the number of Mau Mau kills and captures. His company was aiming to raise its total to 50 kills, and to encourage his men he offered them a five-shilling (70-c-) bonus for every Mau Mau shot. Welsh Sergeant Major William Llewellyn, an eyewitness, testified that Captain Griffiths fired at one of two prisoners until the bullets "practically poured out of the man's stomach." And as he fired, said the sergeant, the captain shouted: "When the [Mau Mau] killed my horse, it screamed longer than you will scream . . ."

The captain insisted that both prisoners were trying to get away, and the military court accepted his story. He was judged not guilty.

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