The telegrams sent last week to Lord Lugard by the
Governor and the Kabaka (the native ruler, who has recently attained the mature age of six) of Uganda, on the fiftieth anni- versary of the signature of the treaty he negotiated between the semi-savage king of the territory and the British East Africa Company—on December 26th, I890—recall a notable piece of Empire-making by a remarkable Englishman. Lord Lugard to-day, declining with resolute courtesy to tell any story that savours of self-advertisement, refers back to the detailed narra- tive which, as Capt. F. D. Lugard, D.S.O., he embodied in two large volumes entitled The Rise of Our East African Empire, when he got back from Uganda in 1892. It is a book with a purpose. Captain Lugard was convinced that Uganda, where Christian natives converted by French Roman Catholics were busy fighting Christian natives converted by English Protestants (Mohammedans were fighting both) with the help of arms supplied by an Englishman called Stokes, who was murdered a little later for adequate reasons in the Belgian Congo, should be declared a British Protectorate, and he tackled every member of the Liberal Cabinet of the day on the subject. They were all opposed to it except Rosebery, who was Foreign Minister. Rosebery said, " Write a book," so Captain Lugard wrote a book. There the whole absorbing story is told in detail. Time and space seem strangely spanned as one sits discussing the Uganda of 1890 In a Surrey village with the most self-effacing Empire-builder who ever lived, while the Nazi planes zoom overhead.
Previous page
