should have arisen in our hearts towards the men who have disinherited
us; but is it always just? Personally, and in private life, they
may be far from being inhuman or unjust; they may be rich in such
qualities; at most they remain men and brothers who differ in no way
from the majority of us. We made certain laws and regulations; they
took advantage of them for their own success; they have but pursued
the universal laws of the business world, and of the struggle of
competition. It was we who did not defend ourselves, and must take
the consequences. As long as any of these men merely use the wealth
they extract from Africa for their own pleasures and interest, we
have not much to complain of, and must bear the fruit of our folly.
The speculators who rule in Mashonaland were wiser than we; they
ordained that 50 per cent of all gold mining profits should go to
the government, and they retained all diamonds found as a government
monopoly. We were not wise enough to do so, and the nation must
suffer. But poverty is not the worst thing that can overtake an
individual or a nation. In that harsh school the noblest lessons and
the sturdiest virtues are learnt. The greatest nations, like the
greatest individuals, have often been the poorest; and with wealth
comes often what is more terrible than poverty--corruption. Not all
the millionaires of Europe can prevent one man of genius being born in
this land to illuminate it; not all the gold of Africa can keep us from
being the bravest, freest nation on earth; no man living can shut out
from our eyes the glories of our African sky, or kill one throb of our
exultant joy in our great African plains; nor can all earth prevent us
from growing into a great, free, wise people. The faults of the past we
cannot undo; but