Intelligence services continued monitoring Kenyatta, noting that he was politically inactive between 1939 and 1944. In Sussex, he wrote an essay for the United Society for Christian Literature, "My People of Kikuyu and the Life of Chief Wangombe", in which he called for his tribe's political independence. He also began—although never finished—a novel partly based on his life experiences. He continued to give lectures around the country, including to groups of East African soldiers stationed in Britain. He became frustrated by the distance between him and Kenya, telling Edna that he felt "like a general separated by 5000 miles from his troops". While he was absent, Kenya's authorities banned the KCA in 1940.