Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-10-30

Africa who has the most power and guns.
The exiled Christians in Buddu were gradu-
ally equipped with munitions bv Mr..
Stokes, former missionary, who had gone
into trading on large scale. In the fall of
1889 they were ready to take the field against
the Arabs and their heather countrymen.
Mwanga was nominally Christian. Both
factions hoped he would side with them or
at least give them fair share of offices and
power They decided to restore him to the
throne, and after hard fighting they sue
ceeded. The church militant triumphed
over the Arabs and heather, and the white
teachers. who had watched the fighting from
islands near the northern shore, returned to
Mengo and Rubaga and rebuilt their ruined
churches.
The Old Hatred Breaks Out
Even when huddled together In sore pow
erty and distress in distant Buddu, the fol-
lowers of the Englishmen and of the French
Fathers could not forget that they regarded
one another as Anti-Christians, who could
league together only when q common
enemy tried to destroy them. In Buddu,
they were on the verge of open hostilities.
when white man opportunely arrived and
persuaded them not to kill one another, for
all were needed in the struggle to regain
Uganda When they found themselves
again In power at Mengo and Rubaga all the
old hatred famed afresh. Politics were in
extricably mixed up with religion. The
missionaries were powerless to queu the
fires of intolerance they had kindled.
The Englishmen hailed with joy the day
when an armed force from the coast arrived,
early last wear under Captain Lugard, to
possess the country In the name of the
British East Africa Company. Lugard saw
the two parties rallying under different
flags. The Protestants carried the British
| flag. The Catholics sewed red crosses on
white cloth, and this emblem waved above
their assemblageA Mwanga had openly de-
clared himself Catholic Each party
clamored for the governorship of the
provinces, for seats in the cabinet,
for the thousand and one petty Offices.
Mwanda dared not wholly ignore the
claims of the Protestants, but every Office
of power and profit he could bestow upon
| the Catholics was theirs. On the one side
were %, 600 protesting Catholics who deemed
it their right, as the majority, to control af-
fairs On the other side were about f. 900
Protestants, a hopeless minority, but strong
| in the garrison of Lugard's tort at Mengo,
and his Maxim guns and mitrailleuses. The
| French Fathers, "a in number, had eight
stations along or near the shores Of the
great lake, while the five Protes ant teach
ers had only three stations
The Immediate Cause of the War.
This was the position when on January "a
last the long threatened war broke out
Each side still says that the other was to
blame 1t is believed by the most careful
and impartial observers that the RESPONSE
| bility rests, not upon the natives, but upon
the handful of whites in the country. II
was four months after long reports of the
fresh outburst had reached Europe from the
French Fathers before one word of eXplana-
tion came from Lugard and his Protestant
friends The fact is that the Catholics had
the King, the Government, the great ma
jority of the mobiles and the governing clasl
The Protestants were strong only in muni-
tions of war supplied by the British and
stored in the Mengo Fort.
To this party, overwhelmed by hostile
ma jority, the situation was becoming in
tolerable. They were ready to seize any pre-
text to overthrow the existing order of things
trusting that the Lord of battles would give
the victory to the heaviest guns A fight
between two chiefs of the rival factions re.
suited in killing the Protestant Lugard
demanded the chiefs SLAYER, but Mwanga
refused to give him up, because, he said,
the man had killed his adversary in self.
defense. Thereupon Lugard "felt it his
duty to appeal to arms for the maintenance
of Justice" In the bloody days that fol.
lowed the Catholics fought hard but, for the
most part, they had only spears to oppose
to guns. Hundreds of them were killed.
Scores of them perished in the lake when
the fortunes of war went against them.
The Tables Completely Turned.
They could not win against Lugard'l
machine guns, and thousands OF them tool
refuge with King Mwanga on the Sesse
Islands. whence they and all other Catholic.
were finally banished to Buddu where they
are living to-day. Every Catholic mission
was destroyed and the French Fathers tool
refuge with the Germans at Bukoba
1t is a remarkable spectacle. TWENTY-FIVE
thousand of the Christian converts Of
Uganda have been driven from their home,
bv the superior force of British arms Tht
King has been converted again. He hai
become 'ta good Protestant" and is once
more on the throne, upheld there BY the
same guns that banished him.
Now that the bigotry, rivalries and blum
dering of white men have laid low the mos