Rhodesia: Independence at 5 O'Clock?

One of the knottiest problems that British Prime Minister Harold Wilson inherited when he took over last October was the matter of Rhodesia, the self-governing colony bordering South Africa. Once part of the Central African Federation—whose two black-ruled regions last year broke away to win separate nationhood—Rhodesia's white supremacist leaders have looked with longing to Verwoerd's apartheid state for support, now threaten to declare, unilaterally, their independence from Britain. To try to head them off, Wilson dispatched Commonwealth Relations Secretary Arthur Bottomley in search of common ground between Rhodesia's two varieties of freedom-loving people —the European minority, which wants...