"I haven't a doubt of it. It's all true," replied Herbert. "I once saw the same thing myself when I was helpless to prevent it, as I was in hiding at the time and dared not expose myself. Yet I recognized even then that the savage was only following out the traditions of centuries, with no one to teach him any better. We ourselves have savage tastes that are never criticised; to do so would be considered mawkish and sentimental. We feel, for instance, no regret when we wring the neck of a pigeon--that is, we didn't," Herbert added with a dry smile, "until Lemois advanced his theories of 'mercy' the other night. We still feed our chickens in coops, stuff our geese to enlarge their livers, fatten our hogs until they can barely stagger, and, after parading them around the market-places, kill and eat them just as the African does his human product. Even Lemois, with equal nonchalance, hacks up his lobsters while they are alive or plunges them into boiling water--he wouldn't dare serve them to us in any other way. The only difference is that we persuade ourselves that our pigs and poultry are ignorant of what is going to happen to them, while the captured African begins to suffer the moment he is pounced upon by his captors."
"And you mean to tell me you don't blame these wretches!" burst out Le Blanc. "I'd burn 'em alive!"
"Yes, I am quite sure you would--that is the usual civilized, twentieth-century way, a continuation of the eye-for-an-eye dogma, but it isn't always efficacious, and it is seldom just. The savage has his good side; he can really teach some of us morals and manners, though you may not believe it. Please don't explode again--not now; wait until I get through. And I go even farther, for my experience teaches me that the savage never does anything which he himself thinks to be wrong. I say this because I have been among them for a good many years, speak their dialects, and have had, perhaps, a better opportunity of studying them than most travellers. And these evidences of a better nature can be found, let me tell you, not only among the tribes in what is known as 'White Man's Africa,' opened up by the explorers, but in the more distant parts--out of the beaten track--often where no white man has ever stepped--none at least before me. Even among the cannibal tribes I have often been staggered at discovering traits which were as mysterious as they were amazing--deep human notes of the heart which put the white man to shame. These traits are all the more extraordinary because they are found in a race who for centuries have been steeped in superstition with its attendant cruelty, and who are considered incapable even of love because they sell their women.