It has a sort of pitiful sound, although they are only blacks. It carries me back and back into the past, to when my children were little, and would fly—to the bush, so to speak—when they saw me coming.... [Resumes the reading of chapter-headings of the Consul’s report]
“They put a knife through a child’s stomach.”
“They cut off the hands and brought them to C. D. (white officer) and spread them out in a row for him to see. They left them lying there, because the white man had seen them, so they did not need to take them to P.”
“Captured children left in the bush to die, by the soldiers.”
“Friends came to ransom a captured girl; but sentry refused, saying the white man wanted her because she was young.”
FROM PHOTOGRAPH, IKOKO, CONGO STATE
“Somehow—I wish it had not laughed”
“Extract from a native girl’s testimony. ‘On our way the soldiers saw a little child, and when they went to kill it the child laughed, so the soldier took the butt of his gun and struck the child with it and then cut off its head. One day they killed my half-sister and cut off her head, hands and feet, because she had bangles on. Then they caught another sister, and sold her to the W. W. people, and now she is a slave there.’”
The little child laughed! [A long pause. Musing] That innocent creature. Somehow—I wish it had not laughed. [Reads]
“Mutilated children.”