Very well, it was liberal. It was not much short of a penny a week for each nigger. It suits this consul to belittle it, yet he knows very well that I could have had both the food and the labor for nothing. I can prove it by a thousand instances. [Reads]
“Expedition against a village behindhand in its (compulsory) supplies; result, slaughter of sixteen persons; among them three women and a boy of five years. Ten carried off, to be prisoners till ransomed; among them a child, who died during the march.”
But he is careful not to explain that we are obliged to resort to ransom to collect debts, where the people have nothing to pay with. Families that escape to the woods sell some of their members into slavery and thus provide the ransom. He knows that I would stop this if I could find a less objectionable way to collect their debts.... Mm—here is some more of the consul’s delicacy! He reports a conversation he had with some natives:
Q. “How do you know it was the white men themselves who ordered these cruel things to be done to you? These things must have been done without the white man’s knowledge by the black soldiers.”
A. “The white men told their soldiers: ‘You only kill women; you cannot kill men. You must prove that you kill men.’ So then the soldiers when they killed us” (here he stopped and hesitated and then pointing to ... he said:) “then they ... and took them to the white men, who said: ‘It is true, you have killed men.’”
Q. “You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being shot?”
All [shouting out]: “Nkoto! Nkoto!” (“Very many! Very many!”)
“There was no doubt that these people were not inventing. Their vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement, were not simulated.”
Of course the critic had to divulge that; he has no self-respect. All his kind reproach me, although they know quite well that I took no pleasure in punishing the men in that particular way, but only did it as a warning to other delinquents. Ordinary punishments are no good with ignorant savages; they make no impression. [Reads more sub-heads]
“Devastated region; population reduced from 40,000 to 8,000.”