The British West Indies is the largest group of colonial possessions in the New World, and in 1958 will become an independent nation with dominion status. Composed of seventeen major islands and approaching a population of three million, there is probably no more interesting combination of peoples and landscape on the globe.

Presently grouped with the British Carribean possessions are British Honduras in Central America and British Guiana in South America. But these will remain crown colonies, and will not join the new federation.

As every tourist folder says, the Caribbean is a land of contrasts. Froude can write of standing on the waterfront at Kingston in Grenada: "The off-shore night breeze had not yet risen. The harbor was as smooth as a looking-glass and the stars shone double in the sky and on the water. The silence was only broken by the whistle of the lizards or the cry of some far-off marsh frog. The air was warmer than we ever feel in the depth of an English summer, yet pure and delicious and charged with the perfume of a thousand flowers."

Yet one prominent English statesman called Jamaica an "imperial slum."

The same element of contrast strikes visitors, at least those who do not patronize the luxury hotels imported from Miami Beach and completely isolated from the life of the islands.

One is first struck by the lushness of the tropics and the tepid warmth of the climate punctuated daily with tropical downpour--until the luxuriance creates a sort of ennui.

The almost universal helpfulness and solicitude of West Indians make the islands a delightful place to visit. Almost everywhere one can find "guest houses" where one will be fed and bedded and regaled with local lore at anywhere from $3.00 to $7.00 a day.

Currency in Jamaica is sterling, other islands use the West Indian dollar, worth about 69 cents US, and known to all as the "BeeWee" dollar. Travel is particularly inexpensive in the summer because the "season" of the big rich is between January and March.

Night Perspective

But by night the whole perspective changes. Walking alone, one is confronted with crowds of people standing and, so it would seem, jeering with a mixture of envy and sarcasm. Or one meets a series of full-breasted and gold-toothed women who slither up and ask the perrennial question.

Romance, therefore, stays in the cocktail lounge for the most part. Rather one sees sordid slums, drab barracks in the oil fields, or one senses an incipient brutality at times, and a certain fatalism in the people mixed with an unquenchable joie de vivre.

Part of the problem stems from being in between two worlds. With a history of civilized government as long as our own and with an exposure to the apparatus that developed nations have--automobiles, refrigerators--and yet with chronic over-populations, a lack of marketable natural resources, and a demoralizing lack of opportunity for western-quality education, a natural frustration and discontent is generated. This was best expressed by a native who said bitterly to me, "I'd rather be a lamp-post in New York than the governor of this whole damned island." This sort of ambition can be seen as well in the plaintive glances into shop windows.

This discontent is furthered by by having comparatively the best education in the Caribbean. Having smelt the fruit, they find it unattainable.

The church has many adherents due to the main centuries of missionary activity in the area but one doubts whether it has any value to influence conduct besides being an emotional purge e.g. it is estimated that 70% of all births on the island are illegitimate.

The culture seems very much American-oriented; "hot" jazz, "rock and roll," and American movies dominate. The only calypso one hears outside of the tourist traps comes off of Belafonte records. (This isn't quite true. Calypso is native to Trinidad and is heard at great length at the spring festival there when hundreds of of tents spring up and one master alternates with another in competition in composing these engaging ditties.)