"Our greater power allowed Us in particular to intensify Our fight against slavery, an institution which has often been reproached against Us and which is still reproached against Us, as if the Ethiopians had invented it, as if they were the only ones in the world to have it practiced, as if we were the only ones in the contemporary world to suffer the effects of a prodigiously tenacious institution.This is not the place to make excuses for not having been able to reduce in ten years what has existed for more than a thousand years; this is not the place to apologize by showing that modern nations that are much more numerous, much better equipped, much more advanced than ours, are still partly powerless in the face of this human problem.We only want to state that personally for more than ten years We have committed Ourselves with all Our heart and all Our physical strength to the improvement of these customs within our borders.One cannot, without flagrant injustice, fail to acknowledge the substantial results that have been obtained."