Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

240 THINKING BLACK
but will only find it after you have settled that other
poser of why he can eat both human beef and bone.
The selling is surely minor in comparison.
{10th August.)
But what about preaching all this time ? Day by day,
at his lordly banquet of local politics one is itching to get
in a word of wisdom edgeways. True, our evangel is the
very last thing Eex wants, but as even roast beef however
well cooked makes bad dessert, I proposed that he should
give me an opening for my creature-humbling, Christ-
exalting Gospel. To delay to do right is to decide to do
wrong—then why delay ? Told him that even a pagan
like Aristotle rounded off his great book De Mundo by
saying that it would be impious not to mention the
Creator thereof. This sharp shunting on to another line
he thought a bit too intrusive, and was annoyed that I did
not take his petty polemics much more seriously. Why
not keep to the easy-souled paths of diplomatic agreement ?
What mad moonshine was this our persistently pointing
up to God's sky and calling Him true King of Katanga ?
Was not he, the black one, Lord of the land, and when
every cock in the land crowed did it not crow *' Mushidi " ?
Every man in the country, too, did he not make the pre-
scribed prostrations and call him *' Lord God " ? He
thinks we are fools for disdaining his negro politics, pretty
much, I suppose, as in Paul's day the Greek's meaning for
the word " idiot " was " a person who refused to meddle
in politics." Little he knows that to the very en4 of t\\^