Gunther's Grand Tour

...However, the effect of John Gunther's work will not only be to provide us with information...

...That the pace of African events has already outdistanced Mr...

...Gunther has provided us with nothing less than a desk encyclopedia on Africa...

...This, however, is no reproach, because, where Mr...

...Gunther's swiftly moving pen-North Africa is merely the most striking example-does not diminish the value of Inside Africa...

...While conscious of the implication of world tension, he continues to present facts objectively...

...For as a commentator on international affairs John Gunther possesses what has become an unusual virtue...

...Thus, because Russia is the enemy of Britain and France, themselves the "enemies" of nationalist Africa...

...Gunther's conclusion here is that, so long as colonial powers misrule, Soviet exploitation of any local situation is a possibility...

...7. Tomorrow's Africa will be largely leftist, because white rule has been largely based on economic as well as political exploitation...

...8. A third world war would almost certainly break European strings to Africa...

...5. Much of Africa does need further tutelage, but this will be possible only if trust is established...

...Too often, the result has been abstract sympathy for the peoples struggling to be free, and material support for the colonial masters...

...3. Race relations are the basis of present frictions...

...With regard to American policy toward Africa, he outlines the contradiction with which policy-makers are now faced-the need to remain on good terms with colonial peoples as well as with their masters...

...6. Bungling and disharmony are draining the reservoir of good will which the whites presumed they would leave behind them when their job was done...

...However, since this is the part of Africa with which the West has had the most contact, and about which it is consequently the best informed, this sketchiness is forgivable...

...Gunther had never shone the light of his reportorial lamp in their all-too-dim little corners...

...Russia is to be regarded as a friend by Africans...

...Saturated as we are becoming with repetitious printed matter concerning the only continent of the five that succeeds simultaneously in "blazing," "fermenting" and "awakening," John Gunther's Inside Africa would be welcome if only for the fact that it delivers a definitive 952-page quietus to the overworked "travelogue" approach to African problems...

...With imagination, a flair for seizing the essential elements in each situation, and the patience to sift through tomes of information to pick out elusive and valuable facts, Mr...

...9. Africa is almost completely defenseless militarily, and is the richest prize on earth...

...Some may skip to their loss, but many will dip to their profit, and if few read the book from cover to cover Inside Africa will still for a long time to come stand as the concordance to that as yet untitled African history book of the future that is now so dramatically in the making...

...Gunther and his research team have compiled, their compilations have included the must essential and revelatory material...

...4. To stay peaceably, the white man must make economic concessions...

...Africa is asking for help-or else!in increasingly insistent tones...

...John Gunther spells out that the United States should take a much bolder position, announce its unshakable faith in freedom for all peoples, and enormously multiply our assistance to Africa in the fields of technical aid, education and the like...

...This is a small instance, no doubt, but we can hardly escape the conclusion that those who wish to perpetuate the obscurity surrounding conditions in so many parts of "darkest" Africa will soon have cause to wish that Mr...

...Gunther's lively account of his own experiences, much of the substance of Inside Africa will be familiar to those who have had access to the same source materials...

...Gunther, who else needs to tell us that the West must awaken from its political siesta...

...He is a man of moral stamina whose writing is free from the effects, ultimately weakening for the West, of an overdose of "strategic thinking...

...If one single serious criticism can be leveled at a useful and unprecedented book, it is that the West Mrican section-as the author himself admits- -has been somewhat skimmed...

...Revieiwed by Keith Irvine Editor, "Africa Today" Swirling down upon us, in the Congo-sized onrush of Africana, comes a huge hippopotamus of a book, bearing all before it...

...Gunther then proceeds to summarize the forces operating for and against Communist advance in Africa...

...Apart from Mr...

...After Mr...

...Gunther's brief but shattering conclusions are: 1. Africa is astir with anti-colonial nationalism...

...Here he outlines a fundamental problem which is of intrinsic interest because African conditions are unique...

...In some instances, whole pages duplicate what has already appeared elsewhere...

...American, American-Negro, British, French and white-South-African writers (among others) having worked and re-worked the fertile field, after John Gunther's prodigious project has been published no new approach to the Grand Tour remains-until an African writes us a book about his continent...

...On the other hand -apart from the fact that democratic patterns of landholding in tribal Africa do not facilitate the Communist task, as did landlordism in Asia-African Moslemism, in general, is a strong deterrent to Communism...

...it will also influence, in some degree, political developments affecting Africa...

...These conclusions form a warning which has, over the past few years, been repeated many times...

...Only the other day, when a recalcitrant South Africa was attempting to stop the UN Trusteeship Council from discussing conditions in Southwest Africa, one delegate invoked Mr...

...Gunther by quoting a passage from Inside Africa to show that a nine-o'clock curfew was being imposed on Africans and that no single secondary school for Africans was to be found throughout the length and breadth of the land...

...2. Africa most needs development and education...