Uganda -- again

Once again violence brings appalled attention to Uganda, the fertile land that has known so much strife and tragedy since the days when Winston Churchill called it the pearl of Africa. The reports say that government troops killed 55 refugees and injured a hundred others in an unexplained two-hour attack on a missionary relief camp. It was a grim echo of last year's bloodshed, when the army attacked people allegedly supporting guerrilla adherents of ousted dictator Amin.

Earlier last month word came from Uganda that no one was starving in the drought-stricken northern part of the country where a quarter of a million persons were threatened with famine earlier in the year. But the prospect of another crop failure may call for extending emergency food aid beyond the present expiration date in August.

All honor to the official and private relief agencies that have persisted in aiding the hungry and the homeless whom so much of the world forgets except when overt events make the headlines. And honor, too, to those individuals in better-off countries who have been adding their mites to finance the effort.