Invasion by Lion-Men

Tom Marealle, the tall, cheerful king of 300,000 Chagga tribesmen, was one of the first to recognize that Kenya's Mau Mau terrorists were spilling over the border into Tanganyika Territory. Last week one of Tom's ebony tribesmen had seen something moving among his coffee trees and, thinking it was a mere lion, he had charged it with his spear. Instead of a lion, a lion-man sprang out and pointed a pistol at the charging Chagga. The pistol misfired, and the Chagga's spear drove through a Mau Mau terrorist, whose hair was plastered with red clay into the shape of a lion's mane.

Chief Marealle, whose peaceful, prosperous tribe owns 12 million coffee trees on the southern slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,500 ft.), picked up his telephone and flashed a warning to the British authorities. Then the chief drove off in his car to interview mountain villagers, who had frightened tales to tell of other lion-men, slinking through the forests in the direction of Arusha, a town that lies exactly halfway between Cape Town and Cairo.

Pursuit by Posse. To Tanganyika's able governor, Sir Edward Twining, 54, the news came as no surprise. Last fall, when Mau Mau "missionaries" began administering their bloodcurdling oaths to the Kikuyu tribesmen who live on the border of Kenya and Tanganyika, Twining's police rounded up 6,500 suspects and packed them off to detention camps. The Mau Mau vowed revenge, and last week's invasion was their way of getting it.

The lion-men got more than they bargained for. Tanganyika's Africans (who own all but i% of the land in the territory) oppose the Mau Mau. King Marealle's warning roused the coffee farmers, black and white alike; they quickly formed a posse, which was soon reinforced by a contingent of Masai nomads who came up from their grazing grounds among the salt lakes and craters of the Great Rift Valley. Posse and terrorists met head-on near Arusha.

The Chagga did most of the fighting, and the Mau Mau ran away, leaving rifles, pistols and five prisoners behind. After them went the Masai. They caught one terrorist on a bus bound for Kenya; he had cut off his lion mane, but the telltale scars of Mau Mau oathtaking could plainly be seen on his arms.

"Pretty Mean Savages." At week's end Governor Twining flew to Arusha, proclaimed martial law in three frontier forest reserves. "We are dealing with desperate armed gangsters," the governor said. Tanganyika's whites agreed, but unlike their blimpish neighbors in Kenya Colony, some of them understood that the Africans themselves (notably, the prosperous Chagga) are equally interested in keeping the terrorists out. "The Mau Mau made a big mistake in sending this invasion force," said one white official, and a Chagga farmer agreed. "They looked like savages to me," he said.

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