 Stanley was accused of indiscriminate cruelty against Africans by contemporaries, which included men who served under him or otherwise had first-hand information.Stanley himself acknowledged, "Many people have called me hard, but they are always those whose presence a field of work could best dispense with, and whose nobility is too nice to be stained with toil".About society women, Stanley wrote that they were "toys to while slow time" and "trifling human beings".