But the Englishman speaks not so. When he desires an adjoining Native territory, he sighs, and folds his hands; he says: "It's a very sad thing the way these Natives go on! They believe in witches and kill them. I really can't let this go on! It's my duty to interfere. I can't let these poor benighted people go on so!" He says nothing about the coal mines he wants to work in their country or the rich nature of their lands of which he has already got vast grants; so he turns on the Maxim guns, and he kills a few thousands to save the ten witches; and witchcraft is put an end to--but he has the lands and mines, and dishomed and beaten Natives work them for him. How much nobler is the Boer's attitude is obvious. When we want a territory on a larger scale we do not say we are stronger than those people, let us go and kill them and take command of the land for the glory of the Englishman and the benefit of his trade.[79] We first send some Englishmen there till the people, knowing our character and that where one locust comes there come others, grow a little restive and show some displeasure at our fore-runners; then we draw ourselves together and say: "It is our duty to defend innocent men and women trusting to us who have ventured into a strange land" (how and why they came there we don't inquire), and so we draw out our guns in the name of a wronged humanity--and so conquer a new land; or we encourage our citizens to buy shares in a commercial enterprise, lend money may be, and then say: "It is our duty to take the management of its finance, and eventually of its government, because it is our duty not to allow innocent speculators to suffer." Whether the folk in the land will suffer we leave out of view for the moment, but we dwell on that great duty--till the land is ours. In the history of the world there was never a people whose record of relations with other peoples showed so hideous a record of falsehood and self-deception; other peoples have lied to each other; but that immeasurably more hideous lie, the lie told to oneself, has not been common. And we carry this hideous attitude into the relations of private life; it is the distinctive mark of the lower type of Englishwoman (often one of culture and philanthropic and religious inclinations) that she cannot speak the truth to herself, much less to others, with regard to her motives and actions. When she envies another and seeks to win her friend or lover from her, she does not, with the frank wild truth of the Italian or French woman, say: "I will undermine their friendship. I hate her. She has done me no harm but I will triumph over her." She says to herself: "It is my _duty_ to show that man what that woman is," and so, in the performance of her duty, she saves her conscience and attains her end. We cannot look fairly or frankly at our people in their private or public capacity without allowing that that is our deformed feature, our hideous and unique characteristic.