James O. Henry, M.A., Editor, Head of
the Department of History, Biola College
itive race of man.” Since then he has located thou sands of stone tools. Some are of the earliest type known. They are chipped pebbles called Chelleans from a site believed to be of similar age at Chelles-sur-mame to the east of Paris. Others, fashioned with more care, have a double face and a razor-sharp cutting edge. Leakey has found a complete skeleton of a pleistocene sheep with a horn-span of 14 feet. ,“It was about as big as a big cart-horse,” he says. Emerging Africa “The dark continent is not now dark by any means. It is chang ing.” This significant statement, quoted from a recent editorial ap pearing in the New York Times should arrest the attention of every Christian interested in evangeliz ing Africa. The editorial stated further, “The current meeting in Accra of representatives of eight independent African states and delegations from three other Afri can groups is significant and sym bolic. Accra is now the capital of the independent Commonwealth of Ghana. . . . A generation ago such a meeting would have been regard ed as impossible. A decade ago it would have been thought highly improbable. Today it is taking place. . . . this is illustrative of the prodigious changes that are coming about in an emerging Africa. Long- held concepts of what was or was not possible have been thrown into the scrap heap.” Nationalism is on the march in Africa and with it the normal anti- foreign attitude. Perhaps an anti- Christian spirit will soon follow. This is the normal pattern. Ghana’s Prime Minister Nkrumah at the opening session attempted to find a common denominator when he de clared that “the liberation of the colonial areas was the prime objec tive of the meeting.” “Hands off Africa . . . Africa must be free,” he said. This is orthodox nationalism. Every freedom-loving American wants to see Africa free, but Chris tians must face up to the fact that
The Soviet Way Communist East Germany has tried to explain why nobody votes “no” in its Parliament. The reason is that “The government’s policies are so proper and correct tha t there is nothing to vote against.” The C o m m u n i s t P a r t y newspaper Neues Deutschland says residents of the East German village of Ro- derau had been asking why debates take place in West Germany’s Parliament but not in East Ger many’s. Narcotic Traffic Still at High Rate Narcotics smuggling is continu ing unabated and smugglers are be coming more dangerous, according to a recent United Nations report. A disquieting feature of the illicit narcotics traffic “is the armed re sistance by the traffickers in a num ber of instances,” the United Na tions Commission on N a r c o t i c Drugs reported. The Commission also noted “close links” between the narcotics traffic and other crimes, including coun terfeiting, white slavery and traffic in precious stones and metals. Mer chant seamen as well as profession al smugglers with “considerable financial backing” were said to be responsible for the illicit interna tional traffic. Gigantic Fossils Found The remains of gigantic animals, including sheep as big as present- day cart-horses and hogs with tusks like elephants, have been dug out of an ancient gorge at Olduvia in East Africa. Specimens have been brought to London for comparative study by the man who found them, Dr. Louis S. B. Leakey, director of the Coryndon Museum of Nairobi, Kenya, a distinguished archaeolo gist and fossil hunter. The gorge is in a deep cleft in the Serengeti steepe of Tanganyika. Leakey first visited the locality in 1931 with Hans Reck, a Berlin vol canologist, and within six hours of his arrival he found a magnificent stone axe showing that the strati fied layers of the gorge “were once the home of at least one very prim-
with the coming of freedom in Afri ca may also come the closing of doors to missionaries. Freedom of Speech, So Called, in Poland Professor Adam Schaff takes no nonsense from his coherts about how to make communism work. Take, for example, his attitude on the problem of Polish communist party writers and publicists who have stilled their pens because they disagree with party policy. “W hy do they not write?” de manded Schaff in an angry article in the weekly publication Polityka. “We must mobilize 30 to 40 bril liant writers, assign them to various press organs, fix the dates for them to start and put thpm to work. Re sults can be guaranteed.” One of the persons about whom Schaff was speaking commented: “In other words, compel us to write. Then all he will have to do is compel 28,000,000 Poles to read it.” Schaff apparently missed a point. It was not the writers who decided to stop writing but the party that decided that they could not be pub lished unless they conformed to party formula. This the writers concerned have refused to do, and Wladyslaw Gomulka, Polish Com munist leader, has so far rejected compulsion. The number of writers and pub licists who have disengaged from politics is small, but most were prominent in Poland’s political up heaval of October 1956 and earned the label “revisionists” by continu ing to clamor for reform. It is their former prominence that makes their silence so noticeable.
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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