Within the last seven years Britain has shed political responsibility for most of the areas she formerly governed, and France for all. With the waning and extinction of political power over Africa by former colonial countries, would it not be appropriate to disengage culturally as well?

The case is arguable. To survey the cultural confusion and desolation left in the wake of the withdrawing colonial powers is a deeply disturbing experience. It disturbs not merely the thoughtful Westerner, but, much more profoundly and lastingly, the sensitive African. Chinua Achebe shows the beginnings of disintegration in Things Fall Apart. Ferdinand Oyono in Le Vieux Nègre et la Médaille and Une Vie de Boy shows the growing cultural disorientation. Achebe, again, in No Longer at Ease and Cyprian Ekwensi in People of the City take the process a stage further into the cultural confusion and jumbled values of urban living in modern Africa. Surely the tale of harm is long enough; it is time to withdraw, with bowed heads. It is the West that is in need, of cultural and spiritual regeneration. Why send our disenchantment, our aridity overseas? Let us put our own house in order. If any African wishes to come and make his own gleanings amongst us, let him be welcome, but let him be warned that the pickings are thin.

But the snug haven of withdrawal is no longer open today. Suzerainty has gone but interdependence between states has taken its place. No country can withdraw into political isolation. Britain is still politically involved in Africa, and Africa in Britain, and the involvement will increase. Cultural withdrawal makes even less sense than the spurious neutrality of political disengagement. Cultural interrelationships will grow closer, and will provide the setting and much of the matter of political interdependence.