THESE two publications together with an article by Mr Welbourn in the May I96I issue of Race 1 provide a challenge to the Corfield Report on Mau Mau published in June ig60.2 This latter caused little stir when it appeared since it seemed merely to reinforce the findings of the trial of Kenyatta in I952-3. Though the Corfield Report was noted in the press it was not then submitted to any detailed scrutiny. This was unfortunate since, as the Governor of Kenya acknowledged in giving reasons for maintaining Kenyatta's detention, the Report has deepened European fears of Kenyatta, among both administrators and settlers in Kenya. Now Mr Delf's and Mr Welbourn's writings show the need for a re-examination of the Report and its pre-suppositions. The Kikuyu occupy a central position in Kenya's inhabited area. Their land stretches north from Nairobi to Mount Kenya, their sacred mountain, and their population of I million comprises a fifth of the Africans in Kenya. From the arrival of the first Europeans conflicting views have been taken of the Kikuyu. Corfield quotes (p. 38) the early administrator, C. W. Hobley, describing them as 'a very turbulent and treacherous tribe', against which Welbourn (Race, PP. I3-I4) sets Miss Perham's 'very different picture': she records Lugard as finding the Kikuyu 'honest and straightforward' and believing that the happy relations possible with 'this most friendly tribe' had been ruined in two years by mishandling.3 These assessments may reflect less the Kikuyu than the personality of the writers, though it may be of some significance that the explorer Joseph Thomson, the first European to have dealings with the Kikuyu, reported of them a reputation which tallied more with Hobley's account.4 Burke's warning about judging a whole people should be borne in mind as we note the increasingly bad name the Kikuyu were given by the British. The antagonistic generalizations have taken some curious forms. Dr Carothers almost prejudiced the reader against the Kikuyu in the opening pages of his generally admirable report:5 he picked up Tracey's view that the Kikuyu have little music in them, and we all know: