ONE WHO WAS GENTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 October 1943, Page 6

ONE WHO WAS GENTLE

DR LIVINGSTONE’S “CONQUEST” OF AFRICA ‘‘Livingstone believed in courtesy and gentleness even with savages. It worked. For about thirty years he travelled, generally alone, mostly illequipped, usually the first white man these primitive tribes had seen —and yet, when he died, it was not from an arrow or a spear but from dysentery, far away from any white man. And his African servants embalmed his body and carried it—their own brave decision—for nine months through 1,500 miles of savage bush and tribes to the coast. And three of them- saw it brought home to Westminster Abbey and buried there. Livingstone was a great man. He was great in what he did—in the lonely courage with which he struggled on, sick and footsore through unhealthy Central Africa, right through what is now Rhodesia, and Nyasaland, the Belgian Congo and Tanganyika. But he was great too in his words and writings, and in the great call his life made to the British people, not to stop at the coast, but to go right on into Africa and put down the slave trade there and bring in Christianity and civilisation. There were explorers before him. But Livingstone called not only to men’s sense of adventure or desire for commerce, but to their compassion and their Christianity.” —Margery Perham, in a 8.8. C. broadcast.