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" You see, if I simply told them that they're disgusting, that it's time to change, to respect nature at long last, to leave a margin of humanity in which there would be room even for all elephants in Africa, that wouldn't worry them much. They’d shrug their shoulders and say that I’m a visionary, a fanatic, just about fit to be locked up. So one’s got to outwit them. That’s why I’m quite willing to let them think that the elephants are only a pretext, a symbol, and that what’s underneath it is a terroristic movement for African independence, and that the defense of the elephants is merely a method of protest against the exploitation of Africa’s natural wealth by white men. That — there’s no doubt about it — has a good chance of waking them up, alarming them, making them do something, making them take me seriously; and the cleverest, most astute thing to do is obviously to deprive us of the pretext — that is to say, to ban elephant hunting completely. "
― Romain Gary , The Roots of Heaven
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" Behind him stood Wa’itari, who believed that a new world war was imminent and who expected to appear after the fall of Europe, as the first hero of Pan-African nationalism. Behind them stood, as in the shadow of all great causes, mere
bandits and murderers, as a pledge of earthly triumph. Behind them again, the silent awakening mass of the black peoples whose hour was striking, whatever happened. Behind them again, very far behind, and perhaps only in Morel’s heart, came the elephants.
'It was in fact a great cause, with the company a great cause always keeps: men of good will and those who exploit them, generous endeavor and sordid calculations, an ideal over the horizon, but also the treachery of ends justifying means. Man’s oldest company, I tell you, a noble cause and a pack of scoundrels behind it, a generous dream and all the purity that’s needed to cause great massacres ... "
― Romain Gary , The Roots of Heaven