Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/56

 have now declared the Lippert Concession to be valueless as "a title deed to the unalienated land."

Meantime friction increased between Lobengula and the Chartered Company, whose manager in Africa was the famous Dr. Jameson, author of the armed raid into the Transvaal, and eventually Prime Minister of the Union. Lord Knutsford, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, called the attention of the High Commissioner at the Cape to a statement published in London to the effect that everything possible was being done to provoke Lobengula. The trouble was first confined to the Company's dealings with the Mashonas. We obtain some indication of the Company's methods from the fact that the High Commissioner found it necessary to remind the Company's manager that, "no death sentence can be carried out without warrant." The reminder did not appear to inconvenience the Company's officials. Shortly afterwards a Mashona chief and his people having been credited, rightly or wrongly, with stealing cattle belonging to some white settlers, the chief's village was attacked by the Company's armed forces, the chief himself and twenty of his followers killed, and 47 head of cattle "lifted." This affair drew further expostulations from the High Commissioner, and from the Secretary of State for the Colonies: "The punishment inflicted in this case," wrote Sir Henry Lock, "appears utterly disproportionate to the original offence." "There is nothing in the information now before his Lordship," wrote Lord Knutsford, "which affords any justification of Captain Lendy's proceedings… The full report by Captain Lendy subsequently received and forwarded, would, in Lord Knutsford's opinion, have justified much stronger terms of remonstrance than were used by the High Commissioner." But neither the High Commissioner nor the Secretary of State demanded this officer's retirement, and his services were retained by the Company.

Events were rapidly maturing for that direct collision with Lobengula which was obviously desired in certain quarters. Complaints of cattle stealing by the natives were rife. What justification there may have been for them we are never likely to know. But cattle lifting was apparently not wholly on one side. Early in 1893 the Company seized cattle from a petty Mashona chief,