The Induna's Wife - Bertram Mitford

And over and above such fanciful flights it was a tale to set one thinking—if one had never thought before—of the senselessness of deciding offhand the morality of this or that deed which helpeth to make history from one hard-and-fast point of view, and that point of view the British; or of stigmatising even a savage potentate as a treacherous and cruel monster, because he is not particular as to his methods when it becomes a question of preserving his nation’s rights and his nation’s greatness, what time such are threatened and invaded by Christians, whom subsequent events show to be the reverse of models of uprightness or fair dealing themselves. And it was even as old Untúswa had said: “You white people and ourselves see things differently, and I suppose it will always be so.”

Yes, it was a fitting episode in the annals of a warrior nation, that tale of fierce wars, and intrigue, and sturdy loyalty, and even of a chivalry, not exactly describable by the term “rude”; most of all, too, was it a tale essentially human, showing how the same desires and motives enkindle the same actions and their results in the heart that beats beneath a brown skin as in that which beats beneath a white one. And therein, perhaps, lay its greatest charm.