- It is one of the most abominable chapters in the history of our times; one of the most abominable chapters in the history of our dealings with inferior races.
Few who have really studied the history of South Africa will be disposed to quarrel with this tremendous indictment by a statesman of ripe experience and wide knowledge, not prone to the use of extravagant language. And few who are acquainted with the splendid South African work of Sir George Grey, Sir Marshall Clarke, and Sir Godfrey Langdon, can fail to realise how different that history might have been if men of their stamp had controlled its more decisive phases.
I propose to recall two recent and typical examples illustrating the particular Section of the history, of contact we are now examining. The first is concerned with Rhodesia, the second with German South-West Africa.
••••••
Between the Zambesi and Limpopo rivers stretches a country some 148,000 square miles in extent, i.e., just about three times the size of England. It is now known as Southern Rhodesia. In 1911 it contained 23,606 whites, 744,559 African natives, and 2.912 Asiatics and other "coloured persons" In the twenty-four years, 1890–1913, it yielded 6½ million ounces of gold, valued at £25¼ millions sterling.
In the middle of last century this country was occupied by a ruling African people, calling themselves the Amandebele (since corrupted into Matabele) "the naked men with shields." They had conquered and incorporated other tribes, the Mashonas and Makalakas, who were the descendants, or the successors, of many ancient peoples inhabiting the country when the Phœnicians [or as some think, Arabs of the pre-Islamic period] were drawing from it large quantities of gold, and covering it with those remarkable monuments which still continue to be a fertile subject for scientific disputation.
When, at a later date, it became necessary in the interests of certain parties, to paint the Matabele in the light of brutal conquerors, much was heard of the cruel treatment inflicted by them upon the Mashonas. An impartial authority has, however, placed it upon record that under the Matabele, the Mashonas increased both in numbers and in cattle, always a sure sign of the prosperity of a South African people. "They say them-
