Slavery to-day page 4

We saw approaching a procession that defies the ablest pen to portray. Were they human? One could hardly believe it.... Men and woman practically naked chained to one another, leading naked children by the hand or carrying them like bundles on their backs, dragged themselves through the filth and were driven like cattle by their heartless captors. Slaves! A slave train in the twentieth century! No figment of an overheated fancy, but human beings that had been torn from their homes, and dragged away to meet an unknown fate. Often falling by the wayside like sick animals.... If I had been able, I would have shot the slave-dealers as I would mad dogs. For hours the slave-train continued to pass us. Now, as I write these lines, our camp is surrounded by that of the robbers with hundreds of their captives. The rain is pouring down. But they have neither shelter nor fires nor food. Every now and then the clanking of chains echoes through the darkness. (Max Gruhl, The Citadel of Ethiopia, 1932.)

Will civilisation listen to the echo of those chains and send out to the sufferers in the darkness of the slave areas of the world a message of hope?

There are those who would minimise the evils of slavery, those who discount the reports of travellers, but the testimony of men like Lord Noel-Buxton, Captain Yardley, Marcel Griaule, Herr Gruhl, Sir Arnold Hodson cannot be lightly set on one side. This chapter depicting slavery as it is to-day could hardly find a more appropriate conclusion than in the following words written by Sir Arnold Hodson, the former Governor of Sierra Leone: 'These raids are even now occurring, and it will be understood how my blood boils when I read articles or letters in the Press, claiming that reports on slave-trade are grossly exaggerated.'