“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.”
“Government encouragement of inter-tribal slave-traffic. The
monstrous fines levied upon villages tardy in their supplies of
foodstuffs compel the natives to sell their fellows—and children—to
other tribes in order to meet the fine.”
“A father and mother forced to sell their little boy.”
“Widow forced to sell her little girl.”
[_Irritated_] Hang the monotonous grumbler, what would he have me do!
Let a widow off merely because she is a widow? He knows quite well that
there is nothing much left, now, _but_ widows. I have nothing against
widows, as a class, but business is business, and I’ve got to live,
haven’t I, even if it does cause inconvenience to somebody here and
there? [_Reads_]
“Men intimidated by the torture of their wives and daughters. (To
make the men furnish rubber and supplies and so get their captured
women released from chains and detention.) The sentry explained to
me that he caught the women and brought them in (chained together
neck to neck) by direction of his employer.”
“An agent explained that he was forced to catch women in preference
to men, as then the men brought in supplies quicker; but he did not
explain how the children deprived of their parents obtained their
own food supplies.”
“A file of 15 (captured) women.”
“Allowing women and children to die of starvation in prison.”
[_Musing_] Death from _hunger_. A lingering, long misery that must be.
Days and days, and still days and days, the forces of the body failing,
dribbling away, little by little—yes, it must be the hardest death of
all. And to see food carried by, every day, and you can have none of it!
Of course the little children cry for it, and that wrings the mother’s
heart.... [_A sigh_] Ah, well, it cannot be helped; circumstances make
this discipline necessary. [_Reads_]
“The crucifying of sixty women!”
How stupid, how tactless! Christendom’s goose flesh will rise with
horror at the news. “Profanation of the sacred emblem!” That is what
Christendom will shout. Yes, Christendom will buzz. It can hear me
charged with half a million murders a year for twenty years and keep its
composure, but to profane the Symbol is quite another matter. It will
regard this as serious. It will wake up and want to look into my record.
Buzz? Indeed it will; I seem to hear the distant hum already.... It was
wrong to crucify the women, clearly wrong, manifestly wrong, I can see
it now, myself, and am sorry it happened, sincerely sorry. I believe it
would have answered just as well to skin them.... [_With a sigh_] But
none of us thought of that; one cannot think of everything; and after
all it is but human to err.
It will make a stir, it surely will, these crucifixions. Persons will
begin to ask again, as now and then in times past, how I can hope to win
and keep the respect of the human race if I continue to give up my life
to murder and pillage. [_Scornfully_] When have they heard me say I
wanted the respect of the human race? Do they confuse me with the common
herd? do they forget that I am a king? What king has valued the respect
of the human race? I mean deep down in his private heart. If they would
reflect, they would know that it is impossible that a king should value
the respect of the human race. He stands upon an eminence and looks out
over the world and sees multitudes of meek human things worshiping the
persons, and submitting to the oppressions and exactions, of a dozen
human things who are in no way better or finer than themselves—made on
just their own pattern, in fact, and out of the same quality of mud.
When it _talks_, it is a race of whales; but a king knows it for a race
of tadpoles. Its history gives it away. If men were really _men_, how
could a Czar be possible? and how could I be possible? But we _are_
possible; we are quite safe; and with God’s help we shall continue the
business at the old stand. It will be found that the race will put up
with us, in its docile immemorial way. It may pull a wry face now and
then, and make large talk, but it will stay on its knees all the same.
[Illustration:
“Made on just their own pattern”
]
Making large talk is one of its specialties. It works itself up, and
froths at the mouth, and just when you think it is going to throw a
brick,—it heaves a poem! Lord, what a race it is!