Two More

"Do not spend time converting me to the principle of independence. That is agreed to now without further ado." So said British Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod three weeks ago to delegates from Sierra Leone. Britain's earliest (colonized in 1787) possession on the West African coast. Last week, after notably amicable discussions, Macleod and Sierra Leone's Prime Minister Sir Milton Margai announced that come April 27, 1961, the 2,500,000 Sierra Leoneans will be free.

Though occupying an area the size of Ireland, Sierra Leone is relatively rich (diamonds, iron ore), achieved fame of a kind after Novelist Graham Greene served there as an intelligence officer during World War II, used it as a setting for The Heart of the Matter. As a going-away present Britain agreed to $21 million in loans and aid. Signing the agreement, Prime Minister Margai said fervently: "We hope we shall never be in a position for Her Majesty's government to regret what we have done here. We shall ever be friends of Britain."

With much more of the air of a hastily arranged divorce, Britain last week agreed to turn loose British Somaliland as of July 1 so that it can unite with Somalia, the Italian-administered U.N. trusteeship territory which will achieve independence or the same date. Inhabited chiefly by goats and sheep, and with no major mineral resources, Somaliland is economically almost worthless and politically one of the most backward of all British territories. Local self-government was not attempted before 1953; in its first voting last year for 13 elective seats, authorities in one district could not find any tribesman willing to become a candidate. But to hold on to the colony promised more trouble than it was worth, since its Somalis have been agitating to join French Somaliland to form a single Somali nation at the mouth of the Red Sea.

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