When Malta's 129,649 voters approved independence by a small majority last week, their tiny Mediterranean island joined Malawi, Zambia and Tanzan* in a gaggle of emergent nations that are twisting tongues and ending any pretense of proportional representation in the U.N. Others clamoring for nationhood include British Guiana (pop. 620,000), Southern Rhodesia (4,000,000), Bechuanaland (335,000) and Angola (circa 5,000,000).
In time, no doubt, all the rest of the non-Soviet world's 40-50 million people now living under some kind of colonial administration will also join the parade, even though they mostly inhabit hundreds of tiny islands and enclaves that have few of the...