African Affairs by Elspeth Huxley

Unfortunate Biafrans: even their death-rattle has been drowned by the rumble of the tanks in Prague. Suddenly, the scene shifted from West Africa to central Europe, but it is the same drama: the crushing of a small nation struggling for freedom by a large one as determined as ever were the Nazis to apply a final solution. The battlefield, in both cases, has been sprayed by the spectators with dense clouds of fine and ringing words of condemnation, considerably less effective than a whiff of napalm. So hopes of freedom for the East and Central European peoples, and hopes of survival for the Ibo nation, seem to have been snuffed out in a single week.

There are, of course, differences. The Western powers have not openly and actively assisted the Russians to crush the Czechs, whereas one of them, namely Britain, did provide this useful aid in crushing the Biafrans by means of a supply of arms to General Gowon’s federal government. More, Mr. Wilson’s men chose the very week when General Gowon launched an all-out attack on the Biafran heartland to announce an interest-free loan of £10 million to the federal Nigerian government in Lagos.

EH

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Elspeth Huxley

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Unfortunate Biafrans: even their death-rattle has been drowned by the rumble of the tanks in Prague. Suddenly, the scene shifted from West Africa to central Europe, but it is the same drama: the crushing of a small nation struggling for freedom by a large one as determined as ever were the Nazis to apply a final solution. The battlefield, in both cases, has been sprayed by the spectators with dense clouds of fine and ringing words of condemnation, considerably less effective than a whiff of napalm. So hopes of freedom for the East and Central European peoples, and hopes of survival for the Ibo nation, seem to have been snuffed out in a single week.

There are, of course, differences. The Western powers have not openly and actively assisted the Russians to crush the Czechs, whereas one of them, namely Britain, did provide this useful aid in crushing the Biafrans by means of a supply of arms to General Gowon’s federal government. More, Mr. Wilson’s men chose the very week when General Gowon launched an all-out attack on the Biafran heartland to announce an interest-free loan of £10 million to the federal Nigerian government in Lagos.