Note 18 — Chapter I

The great Las Casas, who made seven voyages from America to Spain—the last at the age of seventy-two—to protect the Indians, had a strong opinion about ‘conquerors’ and ‘conquests’. In the dedication of his great treatise on the wrongs of the Indians, he says: ‘Que no permita (Felipe II.) las atrocidades que los tiranos inventaron, y que prosiguen haciendo con titulo de “conquistas”. Los que se jactan de ser “conquistadores” a que descienden de ellos son muchomas orgullosos arrogantes y vanos que los otros Españoles.’ Strange that even to-day the same atrocidades of tiranos are going on in Africa. No doubt the descendants of these ‘conquerors’ will be as arrogant, proud, and vain as the descendants of the conquistadores of whom Las Casas writes.