XXXI. THE CONGO CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA…

XXXI. THE CONGO CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA

The interest taken by Americans in the affairs of the Congo Free State has never been very keen. What little of interest, however, we do take in that distant region has been sentimental, for the greater part based upon the national respect for Stanley and his work. The campaign in England against the Congo, therefore, fails to evoke any substantial sympathy on this side of the Atlantic. Citizens of the United States are better employed than in undertaking knight-errantry at the behest of certain disappointed British merchants and fanatics.

[Sidenote: American Aid Wanted.]

But, inasmuch as it is vital to the enemies of the Congo Free State that our country should be with them in their crusade, the Rev. Mr. W. M. Morrison, of Lexington, Virginia, a gentleman whose Christianity is liberally leavened with business acumen, was brought to the front and set upon a pedestal. The light of publicity was turned upon the reverend gentleman, who then proceeded to relate stories of outrage and oppression, examples of which he had seen and heard—chiefly heard—during six years’ residence in the Congo Free State as a missionary of the American Presbyterians.

Mr. Morrison’s stories are of the stock variety, and include looted villages, wholesale deportations, mutilations, burnings, State slavery, and refusal of land concessions to missionaries—in brief, the whole catalogue of infamies without which, real or alleged, men such as Mr. Fox Bourne, the Secretary of the Aborigines’ Protection Society in England, and Mr. Morel, who built the Congo Reform Association around himself, would find their occupation gone. The italics are mine. Why I have used them will at once appear.

[Sidenote: A Morrisonian Jeremiad.]

“Concessions or grants of land, however small,” wails Mr. Morrison, “can now no longer be obtained from the State by other than favoured individuals or corporations... Not only are concessions refused to traders, they are also refused to missionaries.” Alas! yes, in the case of a missionary who demands, as Mr. Morrison did, “that no taxes shall be levied, and no soldiers drawn from certain populations around Luebo.”[46]

The refusal of Mr. Morrison’s demand for the creation of an Alsatia which should be equally attractive to the idle and the thrifty, from which the State was to receive no support, and which, in the circumstances, would certainly at once become the most populous district in all the Congo Free State, seems to have angered the reverend gentleman, for thereafter followed his discovery of atrocities committed by State officials against natives. Land was offered to Mr. Morrison upon equitable terms, identical with those agreed upon between the State and numerous other missions.

[Sidenote: A Belated Discovery.]

When Mr. Morrison was in Brussels in the spring of 1903, negotiating with the Congo Government concerning the concession of land, and in constant touch with officials of that Government, he said not one word about any atrocities which he had seen or heard of in Congoland; but a few weeks later, he was in London, associating with the English Congophobes, and calling upon the Government of the United States to combine with that of Great Britain to coerce the Congo Government, though in what manner and to what effect is not quite clear. What, however, is perfectly clear, is the bad faith of the men who make it their business to vilify and misrepresent the Congo Administration. For example, here is Mr. Morrison’s statement about the almost impossibility of obtaining concessions of land for missions, when up to May, 1903, there had been fifteen grants of land conceded in the Congo State to the American Baptist Missionary Union; two to the American Congo Mission; fifteen to the British Baptist Society Corporation; seven to the Bishop Taylor’s Self-Supporting Mission; seven to the Congo Balolo Mission; eleven to the International Missionary Alliance; nine to the Swedish Missionary Society, and forty-four to the Roman Catholic Mission.

[Sidenote: Few Facts in Many Words.]

The campaign against the Congo in this country was opened on the 19th of April, 1904, by the presentation to Congress of a huge inflated memorial, accompanied by numerous substantiating documents of great length. It was gotten up by the Rev. Thomas S. Barbour, Chairman of the Conference of Missionary Societies and Secretary of the American Baptist Missionary Union, Boston, with the assistance of the Rev. W. M. Morrison and six other gentlemen interested in missionary work. Senator Morgan, of Alabama, undertook the work of presentation, and performed his task with as much moderation and grace as its nature permitted. The memorial was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed.

[Sidenote: Not Uncle Sam’s Affair.]

On the whole, the reception of this strange literary budget—a rechauffé of oft-refuted fables and adroit distortions of events that occurred long ago—was decidedly passive. The prevailing impression among Senators seemed to be that even if all that is asserted in the memorial be true (a monstrous supposition which surely its promoters never seriously entertained), to play into the hands of John Bull’s merchants at the bidding of John Bull’s missionaries is hardly a suitable rôle for Uncle Sam.

[Sidenote: A Mischievous Busybody.]

The next move in the campaign against the Congo Free State in this country took place at Washington on the 30th of September, 1904, when the Secretary of the Congo Reform Association (an English organisation of which Mr. John Holt, the merchant-philanthropist, of Liverpool, is one of the pillars) presented a memorial to President Roosevelt concerning affairs in the Congo Free State, and asking for his intervention therein. The memorial was politely received, acknowledged with graceful platitudes, and laid aside. During the few weeks that the Congo Reform Association’s agitator was in this country, he talked freely to every newspaper reporter he met, and disseminated broadcast the old libels which had grown stale with use in England.

[Sidenote: The Belgian People Speak.]

When the Belgian people learned of the presentation to President Roosevelt of the second anti-Congo memorial, wherein the agents of the British merchants strove to make it appear that the United States ought to do what all the continental powers had, by their silence, refused to do when the British Foreign Secretary appealed to them in August, 1903, their leading citizens took a hand in the literary carnival and sent President Roosevelt their reply to the series of slanders which were being so widely disseminated in America by the Liverpool organisation. Although the anti-Congolese resolutions of the Boston Peace Conference were published in extenso in the secular and religious press throughout the United States, for some inscrutable reason the Belgian reply to the second Liverpool memorial sent to President Roosevelt on October 3, 1904, has so far never had the advantage of similar publicity. This fact alone would indicate that his Excellency, Baron Moncheur, Belgian Minister to the United States, and his talented coadjutor, Professor A. Nerincx, an eminent Belgian advocate, author, and instructor in the University of Louvain, were quite indifferent to that campaign of publicity which the enemies of the Congo Free State began in England and now continue in America. In justice, however, to the Federation for the Defence of Belgian Interests Abroad, a Belgian society numbering over fifty thousand adherents, it is deemed desirable to quote in full the only communication bearing upon the anti-Congolese campaign which the official of the Free State or the Belgian people have ever addressed to the people of the United States:

FÉDÉRATION POUR LE DEFENSE DES INTERETS BELGES A L’ÉTRANGER.

BRUSSELS, October 3, 1904.

_To His Excellency, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States._

MR. PRESIDENT:

The Federation for the Defence of Belgian Interests Abroad presents its compliments to the President of the United States and begs leave to state:

That we are loth to impose upon the President of the United States considerations which are foreign to the interests of his Government. But inasmuch as certain persons are conducting within the United States a movement to involve the Government of the United States in the consideration of their unfounded charges and interested misrepresentations against the Government of the Congo Free State, we feel it our duty to present a brief statement of the objects of the Congo Government to the President of a friendly Power in order that the unjust methods being employed by the enemies of the Congo Free State may not mislead the President to encourage Congressional action prejudicial to our interests before we shall have been fully heard.

Our Association has been formed for the defence of Belgian interests and possessions abroad. Our people esteem and admire the people of the United States and we have great respect for their President. The Belgians desire that they shall not be slandered and vilified in the midst of the American people. They feel it their duty to assist the American people to a proper understanding of the lofty purposes which actuate the Government of the Congo Free State. In this connection the Belgians recall with pleasure and with pride the fact that the Government of the United States was the first great nation to recognise the flag of the International Association of the Congo as that of an independent State. By its treaties and by its adherence to the Berlin and Brussels Acts it promised liberty of trade in its part of the Congo Basin, and it respectfully asserts that it has fulfilled that promise in spirit and to the letter in so far as the short term of its existence in a savage country has enabled it to establish an organisation which, by its prosperity and progress, now excites the envy of those who seek to disrupt it.

The principles which actuate the Congo Government are tersely set out in an essay written by a highly qualified American citizen, which is herewith enclosed. We humbly beg the President of the United States to honour us by perusing this concise exposition of the fundamental principles which underlie, and which have given such progressive momentum to, the Government of the Congo Free State.

The principles of the Congo Government are devoted to progress and civilisation. The State’s motto is “Work and Progress.” We have always felt that to intelligently follow that motto was to firmly establish in the midst of conditions of savagery the habit of industry and a respect for property as well as for life, according to the universal law of nations.

Concerning the term “Freedom of Commerce,” which Congo enemies are interpreting to mean ungoverned license, we beg to refer the President to the laws of the United States and penalties concerning trespass upon and pillage of public lands and their product. Perhaps no nation in the world has so precisely developed the law of private and public property, nor administered it with finer understanding of the principles of equity and justice, than the United States. The Congo law relating to property is in consonance with the law of the world’s greatest nations. The great success which has been attained by the Congo Government for the betterment of its native inhabitants by the operation of this law, and the order which exists thereunder, has excited the envy and the avarice of those whose ulterior motive is being cloaked in the garb of humanitarianism and questionable philanthropy. On the one hand it is charged that the Congo Government by its method seeks to enslave the native in order that he may serve it with his hands for the benefit of interests whose welfare he does not share. On the other hand, the libellers of the Congo wilfully utter not only the unfounded accusation but the inconsistent charge, that the Government cuts off the hand whose work it seeks to enslave. Concerning the untruthful character of the testimony in this respect which has been published against the Congo by the promoters of the so-called “Congo Reform Association” of Liverpool, we beg to refer your Excellency to the great mass of genuine and reliable evidence by Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, Italians, and Belgians in direct contradiction of the falsehoods which form the traffic of the Association, whose leading spirit has never been near the Congo nor the natives who form the pretext of his search for personal notoriety and aggrandisement.

We also call your Excellency’s attention to the fact that the Congo Government, when assailed by missionaries at all, is assailed by a few individual missionaries operating in conjunction with the Liverpool Association, whose object we shall in due course expose. The Congo Government has not been assailed by other missionaries at all. The Catholic missionaries are in reality all seeking the moral, spiritual, and intellectual betterment of the native races, while those of a material faith, who have sought from the Congo Government and been denied personal concessions of material value solely, are secretly working in directions entirely unconnected with the spiritual and moral welfare of the Congo population. In due time and in the proper place the Government of the Congo Free State will produce its testimony bearing upon this phase of the campaign begun in England, and now carried to the United States, against an undertaking which within twenty years has done more to promote civilisation than was ever before attempted in all the great continent of Africa.

We beg your Excellency to receive from the hands of our representative an abundance of carefully prepared matter upon this subject, and to command him in any further desires which you may wish to express. A cursory outline, limited to only a few phases of the questions which the enemies of the Congo so confusedly mince in their wild condemnation of a State justly founded and intelligently and humanely governed, is not of course intended as a sufficient statement of our case. It is merely intended to introduce your Excellency to the subject on which our representative, and the evidence and literature he will offer to you, may lead you to those wise and equitable conclusions which have always characterised the highest tribunals of the American people.

Your Excellency is too well versed in the science of government to be influenced by the statement that where individual acts are committed in violation of enacted penal law the Government should be primarily charged therewith. If such were the case, penal institutions for the incarceration of violators of police law would be no part of a nation’s structure.

It is not infrequent that the cable conveys to us intimation that in some sections of your own free and glorious country an inflamed mob seizes upon a black inhabitant and burns him at the stake. Our governmental experience has taught us that such acts would have been impossible if your Government had been advised in time to prevent them. And yet we know that your Government is the subject of harsh criticism by self-constituted associations formed in the same country whence come those who accuse the sincere governmental effort of the Congo Free State. The law of the Congo Free State is based upon the loftiest ideals of humane control of a vast territory and undeveloped interests, and every part of the State’s machinery is employed to ensure equal justice to all.

The “method of the State,” at which Congo accusers hurl their shafts, cannot be charged with responsibility for lawless acts in a vast territory of a million square miles where the Government of that State is vigilantly and earnestly seeking, by the extension of its organisation and police powers, to suppress and punish crime and redress wrong. If the subjects of one nation were compelled to submit to the opinion of its unfriendly neighbours as to the correctness of their habits and conduct, and obliged to submit themselves to the penalties that their neighbours would attach to the alleged misconduct, the subjects of one nation would inhabit the prisons of another.

We need hardly call the attention of your Government to the great and humane work which your Government is now so earnestly, and with so much sacrifice, furthering in the Philippine Islands, to meet with that broad and sympathetic view of the situation in all savage countries; which, if fairly and justly applied to the Congo Free State, would place us upon that plane where co-operation, not criticism, were the reward of our sacrificial work in the darkest part of Africa.

It has been the pleasure of our beloved King, Leopold II., Sovereign of the Congo Free State, to appoint a Commission, composed of eminent men, to undertake with the utmost freedom a judicial investigation upon all and singular the vague charges from time to time used by the promoters of the Congo Reform Association in prostituting certain public journals in England. Your Excellency may be assured of the utmost integrity of the gentlemen who compose this Commission, and that the Congo Government will afford them all the help in its power to place the truth before the eyes of the world.

In this connection Congo reformers pretend that the decisions of the Congo Courts indicate that the government is bad, when in fact these very decisions are, in our opinion, proof of unimpeachable good faith and judicial independence.

Concerning the Congo standing army of 14,000 natives, as to which some criticism is uttered by the same persons, we need only indicate that the State Government is so well respected in the Congo Basin that it is able to control its vast territory with only seven soldiers to every 625 square miles. We have no doubt that if the Congo governmental system had not included this meagre police force for the repression of tribal strife and the maintenance of order, its critics would have represented the Congo Government as unprepared to guarantee protection to persons and property, and as unable to maintain the integrity of its frontiers. The Congo army is recruited in conformity with the Belgian law of conscription, which is a restriction of the universal service in Continental Europe. When the Government enlisted a part of its army in a neighbouring colony it was requested to desist, the promises of England to permit such recruiting notwithstanding. Now the Congo army is characterised as barbarian! Doubtless the Congo Government would have no objection to recruit its army in China, as miners are recruited for the Transvaal. But would it thereby escape censure? We think not. Some things which are right and proper in a British colony become crimes when done in the Congo Free State.

It is the earnest desire of the Belgian people, and those who are interested in the welfare and progress of the native population of Mid-Africa, that the good-will and respect of the people of the United States and their President may continue, by their sympathy, to enliven the devotion, energy, and sacrifice which the builders of the Congo Free State are expending upon races which but a few years ago were in a state of the wildest savagery.

We are, Mr. President, with great respect,

Your obedient servants,

(Signed) A. DUFOURNY,

_President of the Federation for the Defence of Belgian Interests Abroad_.

[Sidenote: King Leopold Attacked.]

At the Peace Congress held at Boston in October, 1904, to attend which was as much the reason of the visit to these shores of the Secretary of the Congo Reform Association as the presentation of a memorial to President Roosevelt, he recited his usual tirade against the Congo Government and the person of King Leopold with somewhat more than his customary unction; but his contentions were utterly demolished by the superior information and saner reasoning of his fellow-countryman, Mr. George Head, and by a letter which was read from Cardinal Gibbons (vide Chap. xxxiv), warmly defending the aims and achievements of the Belgians in Central Africa.

The net result of the Peace Conference to the Congophobes is to expose and appreciably weaken their conspiracy.

[Sidenote: Conspiracy Fails.]

There remains in our country a small section of the press obedient to the will of anti-Congolese campaigners and their merchant support, and the eloquent sophistries of Messrs. Morrison and Barbour. But these forces are surely inadequate to cause the Government of the United States to forget all of our political traditions, and to so abate our natural shrewdness, as to become a catspaw for an avaricious foreign commercial clique.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] The scene of the Rev. Mr. W. M. Morrison’s mission.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXII. TESTIMONY OF TRAVELLERS AND THINKERS

SIR HENRY M. STANLEY

[Sidenote: Knowledge and Truth.]

It will ever be esteemed a fortunate circumstance by all who have regard for historical accuracy, that the late Sir Henry M. Stanley, discoverer of the course of the Congo, who assisted so materially in the creation of the Congo Free State, did not pass away without recording his opinion of the campaign of calumny against the Congo Administration. Incomparably the greatest authority of his time upon this subject, what Stanley had to say about it must be given here in full. It took the form of an interview with a representative of the press, and was first published in the Petit Bleu (Brussels), 13th November, 1903:

I do not believe [said Sir Henry Stanley] in the charges brought against the Congo, and I do not share the opinions that inspire them. I do not think that any State will be inclined to step in, and to spend the money that Belgium and the King of the Belgians spend to adapt the darkest part of Darkest Africa to the interests of commerce. King Leopold lately assigned £120,000 a year to the Congo administration. He thereafter gave £40,000 and Belgium £80,000. Tell me, what other country would be ready to do as much?

When I consider the limited number of years which have elapsed since the Congo became a State, I hold that the work which has been accomplished there does great honour to Belgium, and I am certain that not one of the countries who are invited by the newspapers to put itself in its place would have been able to do better.

You can feel certain that the King of the Belgians interests himself personally in the smallest detail of the administration. I do not pretend that he can superintend the acts of each individual, but what Government, what State could do that? But the recitals of atrocities, and of bad administration which have of late been spread about are almost all, if not all, pure reports. Naturally, if it is question of seeking cause for a quarrel there is no difficulty in finding it; but if the Congo of 1885 is compared with the Congo of to-day, it must be allowed that its progress has been remarkable.

The English Note of the month of August is founded, I am convinced, on reports stamped with partiality. The assertions of a missionary have been reproduced, according to whom the natives flee at the approach of the Congo State officials. They fled before me also when I was there. The mere apparition of a white man, the simple sight of an unusual being or object, puts them to flight. That is part of the animal instinct of self-preservation. Whites and blacks always approach one another for the first time with a general sentiment of distrust. Little by little they learn to know one another, and this sentiment disappears.

The Congo was in truth the darkest part of Africa. To-day with its forests pierced and open, its routes, its stations, it is in advance of all other African States. Take the French Congo, German East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, and compare them! The Congo State prospers in a greater degree than any other part of the black continent.

The Congo State is accused of employing as soldiers cannibal Negroes. When I was on the Congo, and I accused a tribe of cannibalism it replied: “We are not cannibals, but our neighbours are.” The neighbouring tribe said: “It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet”; and that tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt as to the existence of this practice. I frequently met with trenches freshly disturbed, from which corpses had been taken to be eaten. It was very seldom that I could discover the guilty. How then in recruiting its troops was the Congo State to distinguish the black cannibals from those who are not cannibals?

I am convinced that since I left Africa King Leopold has done his best to prevent all crime on the Congo. But he is no more responsible for the crimes which may be committed there than for those occasionally committed on the soil of Belgium itself. There are on the Congo 300 officials who report to the Governor-General, who in his turn addresses a summary of these reports to the King. They discharge their mission under the most difficult conditions, and I believe that I may assert that from the Governor-General down to the humblest official there is not one of them guilty of cruelty. Moreover, it is for those who speak of atrocities to furnish proof of them.

I know by experience what a large number of stories are put forward, then refuted, and afterwards resuscitated year after year. These are legends for travellers. Use is made of them with every change of the wind in Africa. Those who relate them are often the prey of climatic maladies.

The Congo has not the most enviable climate in the world. The maladies contracted there are often debilitating, and things are seen and things are described through the malady, which distorts the morale and changes the optic.

I had on the Congo under my orders 300 men—English, Germans, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians. There were 80 English, but the majority were Belgians. I found no difference between them. All did their best, according to their means. All were, in the course of duty, the object of some charge. I examined the charges minutely, and always found them to be without foundation. That did not prevent these stories reaching Banana, and from there Europe. Well, that is what happened on the Congo in my time; that is what is happening there to-day.

The sentiment that inspires the charges against the Congo is jealousy. The Congo is succeeding better than any other State of Africa.

I do not think that the Congo State would be administered better by France, the United States, or Germany. Under French administration the Congo would retrogress. Germany would content itself with fortifying it in a military sense. And commerce does not develop when it is covered with a coat of mail. Germany does not permit and will not permit the English to penetrate into its territory, except under certain restrictions. England would not have managed the Congo better than King Leopold has done if she had been mistress of it, as she might have become in 1877.

The white man must remain master of the Congo. Drive him out of it, and you will see war arise anew between one native village and another, a return to barbarism. It is difficult to govern so vast a country; yet, in a limited number of years, the King of the Belgians has put an end to the horrible Arab slave trade. I do not think there is another sovereign living who has done so much for humanity as Leopold II.

SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.

About a year previous to the publication of Stanley’s vindication of the Congo Administration, appeared a remarkable book, entitled The Uganda Protectorate, written by the distinguished English traveller, Sir Harry Johnston, from which the following passage is taken:

In spite of an element of Arab civilisation which the slave-trader had certainly implanted in the Congo Forest, he had made himself notorious for his ravages and cruelties. Numbers of natives had been horribly mutilated, hands and feet lopped off, and women’s breasts cut away. These people explained to me that these mutilations—which, as only a Negro could, they had survived—had been the work of the Manyema slave-trader and his gang, done sometimes out of wanton cruelty, sometimes as a punishment for thieving or absconding. May it not be that many of the mutilated people of whom we hear so much in the northern and eastern part of the Congo Free State are also the surviving results of Arab cruelty? I am aware that it is customary to attribute these outrages to the native soldiery and police employed by the Belgians to maintain order or to collect taxes; and though I am fully aware that these native soldiers and police under imperfect Belgian administration, as under imperfect British control, can commit all sorts of atrocities (as we know they did in Mashonaland and in Uganda), every bad deed of this description is not to be laid to their charge, for many outrages are the work of the Arab traders and raiders in these countries, and of their apt pupils the Manyemas. This much I can speak of with certainty and emphasis: that from the British frontier near Fort George to the limit of my journeys into the Mbuba country of the Congo Free State, up and down the Semliki, the natives appeared to be prosperous and happy under the excellent administration of the late Lieutenant Meura and his coadjutor, Mr. Karl Eriksson. The extent to which they were building their villages and cultivating their plantations within the precincts of Fort Mbeni showed that they had no fear of the Belgians, while the Dwarfs equally asserted the goodness of the local white men.

Great value attaches to the evidence of Sir Harry Johnston, it being impossible to impute to him any particular bias. He travelled independently, visiting the Congo on three occasions—1882-83, 1891-96, and 1900. In a letter published in the Daily Chronicle (London) of 28th September, 1903, he thus further expresses his opinion of the Congo Administration:

I was present on the Congo at the birth of the Congo Free State. In 1882-1883 I paid a prolonged visit of eight months to Stanley. During the course of this visit I travelled up the Congo nearly as far as the point where it crosses the Equator. I came into continual contact with the Belgian officers and officials who had been sent out on the part of the Comité d’Études du Haut-Congo to assist Stanley. I may mention that I was “nobody’s” man. I paid my own travelling expenses, and had no reason to espouse any one cause more than another. I conceived, however, the highest admiration for Sir Henry Stanley, personally, and for the work he was doing. I convinced myself over and over again by constant cross-examination of the natives of the Congo, and of Zanzibaris and Somalis, that Sir Henry was always just and never cruel, and that the first interests he had at heart were those of the natives of Africa. His memory still lingers in all the regions from the mouth of the Congo to Zanzibar, and any one who doubts the justice of my opinion has only to do as I have done through many years—question the natives as to their impressions of “Bula Matadi” (the Breaker of Stones). Nor did I at that date see anything to object to in the conduct of the Belgian officers, for many of whom I entertained feelings of warm friendship and esteem. The work of such men as Nilis, Van Gèle, Hanssens, Coquilhat, Braconnier, Janssen, and Roger, not to mention others, was such as no missionary could or did find fault with.

And again:

Subsequently when I returned to the vicinity of those regions as Commissioner for British Central Africa, I came a good deal into contact with the Belgian officers sent to control those countries. I never received any complaints from natives or Europeans at that time which tended to show that the natives were ill-treated by the Belgians.

Lastly comes this convincing pronouncement:

In 1900, whilst at work in Uganda, I had occasion to visit the adjoining regions of the Congo Free State along and across the Semliki River. In this portion of the Congo Forest (into which my expedition penetrated for about thirty miles west of the Semliki) I questioned many natives—Pigmies, Babira, Bambuba, Lendu, Bakonjo, and Basongora. From none of them did I receive the slightest complaint as regards the treatment they received from the Belgians, and indeed the sight of their villages, plantations, and settlements, the fact that they so freely came and talked to the white man, were sufficient to show that they were perfectly content with their present lot. The Belgian and Swedish officers whom I met in this portion of the territory of the Congo Free State were men of the best character. In short, this portion of Congo territory left little to be desired, and in some respects was better organised than the adjoining districts of the British Protectorate. One Musongora chief complained to me that the native soldiers in Belgian employ had taken away some of his wives. He expressed himself so dissatisfied with this treatment that he asked permission to cross over into British territory. That permission was given him; but when he found that he had to pay the hut tax on Uganda soil he returned to his old quarters. In addition to the foregoing experiences I might say that I took into my employ about this time natives of many districts along the Upper Congo, from the country of Bangala on the west to the mouth of the Aruwimi on the east. I did this with the idea of making studies of their languages, and they lived with me for about a year, accompanying me on all my journeys through the Uganda Protectorate. I did not ask the permission of the Belgians to recruit these people, for the very good reason that, having apparently complete liberty of action, they had walked through the Congo Forest to the British frontier to offer themselves for work. It cannot be said therefore that the Belgians selected people especially to fill my ears with pleasing stories as to Belgian administration. I questioned these natives of villages all along the great northern bend of the Congo. Not one of them had any complaint to make against the Belgians. When I was preparing to leave Uganda to return to England I offered these men (who were accompanied by their wives) plots of land in the Uganda Protectorate; but they were quite decided in wishing to return to their homes on the Upper Congo; and so far as I know they did so, as every facility was given them in that direction. It strikes one that if these particular people were living under a reign of terror they would hardly have been so eager to return to their homes with the wages they had earned.

The absolute impartiality of Sir Harry Johnston’s review of the Congo Administration well appears in the few following words; in which it will be noted, that while he claims no immaculate perfection on behalf of every Belgian official, he compares them as a body, and that not to their disadvantage, with his own countrymen:

There are, no doubt, bad Belgians, as there have been bad, cruel, and wicked Englishmen and Scotchmen, amongst African pioneers. In the early days of African enterprise I have seen too many misdeeds of my own countrymen in Africa to be very keen about denouncing other nations for similar faults.

MAJOR JAMES HARRISON

This eminent authority on the Congo has recorded his impressions of the social and economic conditions prevailing in that country, and of the false statements regarding them disseminated by interested parties, in the following letter, which appeared in the London Times of June 10, 1904:

To the Editor of the “Times”

SIR,—Having just returned from a shooting trip across the Congo Free State from the Nile to Boma, on the West Coast, I naturally feel much interested in the correspondence now going on with regard to that country. As I came down the Congo River a copy of Mr. Casement’s report was lent me to read, and I was more than surprised at the contents of a letter written by Lord Cromer, which was inserted as a prelude to the more serious indictment following.

Now, Sir, had this letter been published alone it might not have seemed so serious, but taken in conjunction with what followed it formed a most damaging article.

As my experience of the Government of the Lado Enclave is so entirely opposite to the view taken of it by Lord Cromer, I feel compelled, in fairness to the Belgian officials, to give my views of the country and its Government. That I am not alone in discovering so much that is good in the Belgian administration of the Lado Enclave is vouched for by other English officers who have hunted and travelled among the natives beyond the waters west of the Nile.

I assume from Lord Cromer’s report, and from what I was told at Lado, that he only landed at the Kiro and Lado stations, so that the greater part of his report must have been founded on information supplied by others, which, besides being often incorrect, might possibly have reference to times gone by, when, I believe, a certain official was promptly dismissed the service for unfair treatment of the natives.

Lord Cromer compares the deserted appearance of the west banks of the Nile with the east bank between Kiro and Lado.

My experience of this part was that you could hardly see anything of the west bank, owing to the channel lying well over to the east, and endless sudd stretching to the west. The reasons for natives not living near the bank I give later on.

Again, Lord Cromer contrasts the peaceful, settled state and the confidence of the tribes under English rule on the Nile as compared with those on Belgian territory; yet within a few months of his visit a whole British force was annihilated on the Bahr el Ghazal, while in the Game Ordinance published last year it stated: “The whole of the left bank of the Nile is at present closed to sportsmen, owing to the unsettled state of the natives.”

Since my return I see that yet another British force has been severely handled by the natives. Through the whole of my Congo trip, absolutely alone, I wandered about, visiting 50 different tribes and hundreds of villages, armed as a rule with a camera, umbrella, and, at times, a collecting gun. Yet I had no unpleasant experiences; on the contrary, I was received with kindness far different to any I ever met with when hunting among British African natives.

As I went up the Nile I heard the same stories Lord Cromer did—as to how all the natives were flying across the river from the Belgian country owing, I was told, to ill-treatment. As I spent a month hunting all the district 40 miles inland from Lado and Kiro, looked after by the two big Bari chiefs, Kenion and Fariala, I took great interest in learning all I could, and, owing to my capitow talking Arabic, the chiefs’ favourite language, I had excellent chances for finding out all I wanted.

To my question as to whether many of their tribes went over the river, and why, they replied: “A few boys ran away the other side, but mostly bad boys who won’t work.” Asked again, if a few good men went, and, if so, why, they answered: “English pay in money; some boys, if once had money, like it better than being paid in cloth or beads,” but no mention of ill-treatment.

Lord Cromer considers because the native villages happen at these particular posts to be several hours’ distant, that this is also owing to bad treatment. I wish to point out that the villages must either be right on the Nile bank, or inland where they are, for the whole country between is waterless during four months. Another reason given for not living on the Nile was that in olden days the few who did so were all killed or taken prisoners by the Dervishes; hence the survivors kept clear of waterways.

Again, there are no sites for villages near the river, as nearly all the banks, lying low, are covered with marsh and sudd, harbouring millions of mosquitoes, whereas a few miles inland there is good water, not a single mosquito, plenty of game, with good grass and tillage land.

When I visited Gondokoro every one was complaining at having the station on the Nile, instead of a few miles inland, for similar reasons.

One of the wisest rules of the Congo is not to allow native villages adjoining the posts; and I hear we are copying the same on the West Coast; it means a reduction of 75 per cent. in sickness.

That no natives live near Lado arises from purely natural causes. Lord Cromer would find plenty of posts in the interior, with thousands of natives settled as near as they are allowed to.

Another statement, that “the soldiers are allowed full liberty to plunder the natives,” is by no means correct. During my journey I saw hundreds of soldiers being sent off on different work—such as postal, Government despatches, fetching in porters, etc.; but not one ever left without having received cloth, beads, or wire sufficient to purchase all necessary food. I quite admit a few of the soldiers helped themselves now and again, and I found the worst sinners in this respect were our own Sierra Leone boys, a number of whom take service in the Congo. Should their acts be reported they are quickly dealt with.

During my trip I must have employed over 1200 porters. I can only say I never came across a more cheerful, well-disposed set of men. I never had the least trouble with them, though asking them to march 30 and 40 miles a day. How often I thought of my woes and worries in British Central Africa, never knowing how many porters would run away each night, though only marching ten miles a day! Had all the accounts of ill-treatment and non-payment been true, would men have come in so readily and worked for me as these carriers did? Many an hour at night I used to spend getting them to talk about the country, its ways, and any grievances. I found, naturally, two or three officers who were evidently disliked (no doubt I will be added to that list after our long marches); but, on the other hand, they talked of many officers as their “white fathers.” As for the way in which the Belgians have opened out the country, it is wonderful. The posts are now all well-built brick houses, and in a few months’ time most of the barracks will be similar; excellent roads connect many of the posts, while all sorts of vegetables and fruit are being grown, cattle and sheep also being introduced in many parts. Though I was told in Khartoum by several of our officers who had been stationed on the frontier how well the Lado Enclave was run, I was quite astonished at such progress. I am glad to see my views are shared by Major Gibbons and Captain Bell, both of whom have had chances of seeing life inland from the Nile.

I met during my wanderings several English and American traders having concessions both in Uganda and the Congo. These men have to visit all the villages. They all said the same thing—that there was nothing wrong with the Government of the Enclave. I also had a long and interesting talk with Father Maguire, of the Roman Catholic mission station at Amadi. He spoke most warmly in praise of the work done by the Belgians in such a few years. He said: “Think of what this country was only a few years ago, overrun with Dervishes, decimated by the slave-dealers, the natives all cannibals—and now you walk in here with only an umbrella as a protection.”

I can only add that I admire the excellent work being done by such men as Commissioner General George Witerwulge, Commandants Ravello (Lado), Menwnaer (Redjaf), Wacquez (Buta), Holmes (Dungu), Grazione (Lodka), and all the many other officers, too numerous to mention, who are quietly working hard, day after day, opening out those vast regions to civilisation; and I shall never forget the kindness met with at the hands of all, from the Nile to Boma.

I must apologise for trespassing on your valuable space, but if I were to try and refute many of the statements I have seen in print I should have to trespass considerably more.

Yours truly, JAMES J. HARRISON.

Bachelors’ Club, London, June 6th.

P. S.—Since writing the above I see in to-day’s Morning Post quotations from some English trader in Matadi. He says: “From all I hear, things up country are worse than ever. In the Mayumbe country, behind Boma even, the State has begun collecting rubber by force from the natives.”

As I happened to travel home on the same boat as Mr. Ave, an American missionary, who has for some years been in charge of this Mayumbe district, his statements to me may be of interest. Mr. Ave said all these reports were untrue; that the district was governed by an officer who was most kind and considerate in all his dealings with the natives; that he had carefully readjusted the taxation so as to fall as fairly as possible with regard to villages and population of same; and that the officer was universally respected by all the natives as a kind and just man. The same Morning Post article seems to be slightly inconsistent. It quotes one Equatorial missionary as saying that “the white man will be swept out of the Congo and a revolution will take place within two years,” while farther on it quotes the Matadi trader “as deprecating the founding of a new post for 1,000 soldiers at Bomasundi.”

Surely, if the first assumption is correct, the wisdom of the second is sound. I am glad to find since my return that few people take notice of or believe those wonderful statements, copied from a more wonderful paper—the West African Mail.

This is the way Major James Harrison a few days later demolishes a side issue raised by Mr. Morel. The letter is addressed to the Editor of the Morning Post (London), and appeared in that journal of June 25, 1904:

Mr. Morel in your paper to-day himself answers the question asked him by others, viz., Why has the Congo Reform Association noticed my statements? If they were incorrect surely his letter would have dealt with them, instead of which all he can say is that I am attacking a man of Mr. Casement’s standing.

While quite ready to take full responsibility for any letter or interview alluded to by Mr. Morel, I absolutely deny having attacked the character of our Consul in any way, nor did I find in Boma Belgian officers “showering abuse” on him. Like myself they (and most people over here with whom I have discussed it) did not think it a wise appointment, and certainly it placed Mr. Casement in an awkward and unenviable position; but after all he would only carry out his orders. But as to the travelling about on a mission steamer I most strongly assert it was a most unfortunate error. It is well known to all natives on which side most of the Protestant and Baptist missionaries are, and to expect them to give contradictory evidence in such circumstances was attributing to them virtues unpossessed. I have noted Mr. Morel places much of the Belgian evidence (say, the Epondo case) out of court for the selfsame reasons. After the using of a mission steamer I hardly see that any work Mr. Casement might have been interested in originally could make any difference. Still, for his own sake it might be wise if Mr. Morel stated exactly what occupations or duties he was interested in, say, between 1885 and 1900. I trust Mr. Morel in his next letter will deal more fully with my “absurdities” put forward in my letter, and not have to simply try and find an imaginary attack on a gentleman for whom, through mutual friends, I have every respect.

My object in entering this Congo controversy is to try and place before the English public a more broad-minded view of the question, and while making allowances for the well-nigh insuperable difficulties the Congo Government have had to contend with, at the same time try to help on improvements for the future, rather than dwell entirely on the past. I can assure Mr. Morel that I am by no means alone in my “absurd views,” but will be supported by others who have lately crossed the whole Congo State, blessed with an open mind.

Yours, &c., JAMES J. HARRISON.

Bachelors’ Club, London, June 24th.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXIII. TESTIMONY OF TRAVELLERS AND THINKERS

(Continued)

[Sidenote: American Opinion.]

The three authorities whose testimony was given in the preceding chapter are all distinguished travellers of British nationality. It is now proposed to lay before the reader the opinions held upon Belgian Administration in the Congo by three well-known Americans—Mr. James Gustavus Whiteley of Baltimore, member of the Institute of International Law, who has represented the United States Government at several international congresses; the Rev. W. H. Leslie, a missionary of the American Baptist Missionary Union; and Mr. Mohun, a former United States Consul at Boma.

MR. JAMES G. WHITELEY

It is unfortunate that so many false impressions about the Congo have been accepted without examination. For example, there is a popular belief that the King runs the Congo “for revenue only,” and that he oppresses the natives in order to extort money from them. The exact opposite is the truth. The King receives no revenue from the Congo Government; on the contrary the State owes its very existence to the generosity of the King, who advanced several million dollars to keep the Government going in its early struggle for existence. It is true that there are in the Congo extensive Crown lands, the revenue from which belongs to the King, but His Majesty refuses to take the receipts from this land and has turned the money into a fund for the erection of schools, the encouragement of science, and similar purposes. He does not even manage the fund himself, but has placed it in the hands of three trustees.

I have seen the statement in several newspapers that the Congo State was created by the Berlin Conference in 1885 and placed in the hands of King Leopold for administration, the Powers reserving a sort of right of guardianship over it. This is entirely erroneous. The Congo was a sovereign State before the Berlin Conference was thought of. The first official acknowledgment of the new State came from the United States in the spring of 1884. It was afterwards formally recognised by the other nations, and it entered the Berlin Conference on an equality with the other Powers. It has never placed itself under the guardianship of any Power or collection of Powers. It has no connection with Belgium except the fact that King Leopold happens to be king of each of them. The two Governments are entirely independent.

One of the great achievements of the Congo State has been the suppression of the Arab slave-traders, who were in the habit of invading Central Africa, carrying off slaves to the eastern markets, and laying waste the country through which they passed. It is estimated that 100,000 natives were killed each year in these slave raids. I recently saw an erroneous statement to the effect that the slave raids are still carried on, and that they are encouraged by King Leopold and his agents as a means of revenue. It is difficult to see how the King or his Government could reap any profit by encouraging the slave-raiders to destroy the villages, and kill off a hundred thousand or so of the inhabitants. Such lack of logic is damaging to the case of the gentlemen who put it forward as a serious argument. As Lord Westbury once said to a young English barrister: “Never make a mistake in your logic; the facts are always at your disposal.”

In this case, however, the anti-Congo critics have availed themselves of both false logic and false “facts.” The facts are that the slave-raiders were finally vanquished and driven out by the Congo forces in the early nineties, after a severe struggle and at the cost of much Belgian blood. As the present Viceroy of India said some years ago: “The Congo Free State has done a great work and by its administration the cruel raids of the Arab slave-dealers have ceased to exist over many thousand square miles.”

Another prevalent error about the Congo Government is in regard to the treatment of the natives by the officials. An impression has got abroad that there are many atrocities committed.

There have been cases in which the natives have been maltreated by minor officials, but these are isolated cases, and are severely punished by the authorities. Such cases have occurred in all public services where an attempt has been made to govern inferior races. Such things have happened in the Philippines, in British Africa, and in India. No colonising nation can cast a stone at King Leopold on that score. Among a large number of officials scattered over a vast territory there will often be one or two wicked stewards who despitefully use the natives. All that any State can do is to keep vigilant watch and to punish the wrongdoers, and this the Congo State has done. It has even established a Commission for the protection of the natives. By the decree of 1896, this Commission consisted of seven members, three being Catholic priests and four Protestant missionaries.

It has been said, among other things, that the State practically enslaves the natives by forcing them to pay a tax in labour. The tax is light. According to a statement made the other day by Baron de Favereau, it consists of 40 hours’ work per month, and for this work they are paid at the regular rate of wages obtained in the district. It is a tax which helps the State and also helps the native, for it teaches him to work. It is one of the most civilising influences in African colonisation, for it is only by teaching habits of industry to the natives that civilisation can make any progress in the Dark Continent.

The detractors of the Congo administration make a great outcry, but as Burke said in one of his celebrated speeches: “You must not think because the crickets make a great noise that they are the only inhabitants of the field. The cattle browsing in the shade make less stir, but they are infinitely more important.” Those who cry out against the Congo are a small band, and generally of small importance. Their evidence is light in comparison with the testimony of such men as the Count de Smet de Naeyer, the Baron van Eetvelde, Baron Wahis, the Chevalier Descamps, and Mr. Nys, but if these witnesses be considered as in any way prejudiced on account of their official positions, you have only to look at the evidence of Sir Harry Johnston, late British Commissioner to Uganda, as well as the evidence of such men as Cardinal Lavigerie, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the great authority on political economy, Mr. Pickersgill, the British Consul, besides the missionaries, such as the Rev. G. Grenfell, of the British Baptist Missionary Society, Mgr. Augouard, Rev. Holman Bentley, Father van Hencxthoven, Rev. Herbert S. Smith, Mgr. Streicher, Rev. Lawson Forfeit, Father Gabriel, and Rev. W. Verner of the American Presbyterian Mission.

The Congo State furnishes a model for civilisation in new countries. A great work has been accomplished in Equatorial Africa, and, as a distinguished missionary said, “Posterity will place the name of Leopold at the head of human benefactors for the princely enterprise, perseverance, and sacrifices contributed by him in such a cause.”

THE REV. W. H. LESLIE

In a recent number of the Missionary Review of the World, a magazine published by Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls of New York, there appeared an article written by the Rev. W. H. Leslie, a missionary of the American Baptist Missionary Union, stationed in the Congo. In that article Mr. Leslie refers to the exceeding degradation of the Congo people twenty years ago. He states that, naturally, not a little evil remains, that immorality and various heathen practices are still prevalent. But he speaks with much enthusiasm of the social and moral uplifting and the industrial development within that twenty years. He says that the people are learning to work, are learning to read and write, are clothing themselves, and are building better houses. In other words, they are gradually adopting the manners and customs of civilisation.

MR. MOHUN

Of course you must understand that for the moment I am in the service of the Congo Free State, and a great many people might consider anything I should say in favour of the Congo as being biased; but I can assure you that, in my opinion, it would be impossible for any one to give other than a favourable report on the work of the Free State in the Eastern province. The administration is excellent. The country is quite quiet from the Falls to Tanganyika. The native tribes seem contented and happy, and are paid by the Government for every stroke of work they do. The price of rubber has increased, and every man who brings in rubber receives pay for it. Formerly robbery and murder existed to a great extent among the native tribes, but are now quite rare; and the old “Mwavi,” or ordeal by drinking poison, seems to be disappearing. Justice is administered with an impartial hand, and I firmly believe the natives are beginning to appreciate the benefits of good government.

Some months ago a woman was shot dead near my camp. I immediately sent for the chief, and told him I wanted the murderer arrested and brought in. Three hours later he returned with him and also two accessories to the crime, together with all the stuffs they had stolen from the woman. The principal actor in the crime was tried and hanged, while the others received long terms of punishment. This incident is merely cited to show that when the natives are living in a contented way, and are satisfied with their surroundings, they will assist the Europeans wherever possible. I could enumerate a dozen cases where natives have themselves arrested and brought to justice thieves, ravishers, &c., of their own accord. They never received a present for these services. In the Manyema, which is very thickly populated, a great market has been established at Vieux Kasongo, and this serves as a meeting-place for thousands twice a week. Caravans come from Ujiji nearly every month, and the natives journey there by a 15 or 20 days’ march. I never saw a disturbance at the market, either going or returning. By common consent guns, knives, spears, and knobkerries are excluded from articles of exchange, and the men only carry thin walking-sticks. There are no soldiers guarding the market, but immunity from thieves is guaranteed by some ten or twelve native policemen, who receive no pay, and are highly pleased to have an opportunity of showing their authority.

I have been astonished in coming down river from Kasongo to the coast to see what extraordinary changes have taken place. First, the administration is now established on a good, firm basis, and all the officials take an intelligent interest in their work, with the result that scandals are quite a thing of the past. The stations are all splendidly and solidly built in brick, and the grounds are laid out in a very pleasing way. The transport service by canoe between Kasongo and Stanley Falls goes without a hitch, and thousands of loads go up river every year, absolutely unguarded, and the loss by theft is almost nil. The steamer service between the Falls and Pool is good, and an enormous improvement over the old days, especially in the matter of messing. The large steamers Hainaut and Brabant are most imposing-looking craft, and comfortably fitted up. They carry 200 tons of cargo and 600 troops, in addition to 40 white passengers. The new steamer La Flandre, of 250 tons, is on the slip at Leo, and I think will make her first trip in February next year (1904). She is to be lighted by electricity. So far as I know, the whole country is tranquil, with the exception of a small portion of the Bangala district north of Bumba.

It has been the fashion during the past for travellers who have been in the Congo State to run it down in every way, but it gives me the greatest pleasure to be able to affirm that only a most captious critic would be able to find fault with its administration to-day.

With regard to specific pronouncement on the alleged murder of several hundred natives who failed to supply the required quota of rubber, I can say nothing, it having been out of my district. Personally, I do not believe it, excepting in a vastly modified degree; and I must point out that the authorities are taking such steps as must bring any offenders to summary justice. I absolutely deny the absurd attempt to fasten responsibilities upon the authorities for any acts of violence they cannot control from this side. Such acts committed while I was there would have been reported, and it is evident they are now taking steps to prevent, in so far as possible, any recurrence of them. In all human institutions there are imperfections; here and there employees prove themselves unworthy of the trust reposed in them; but these, in my opinion, are exceptions rather than the rule.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXIV. TESTIMONY OF TRAVELLERS AND THINKERS

(Continued)

ALEXANDER DAVIS

THE following valuable testimony is extracted from an interesting volume written by this gentleman, entitled The Native Problem in South Africa:

The Congo atrocities campaign is fed upon just a sufficient substratum of truth to make it plausible. But the public in their administered sentimentality travel very wide of the true case. After a full career of blood-curdling horrors unhesitatingly placed at the door of the administration in highest authority irrespective of conditions of environment or personal responsibility, a Sir Harry Johnston, accepted authority, in plenitude of personal knowledge and experience presents a rock of fact which checks the wave of misrepresentation.

In the Congo Free State in addition to the superior council to advise the King in Belgium, the Governor General has the assistance of a similar nominated body at Boma. Local conditions here do not admit at present of following the French system, but it is guided largely in its deliberations by the reports and advice of the district commissioners who with the co-operation of the local chiefs and their own officials form really limited autonomous administrations.

Turning to the Congo Free State the general division of the territory, from an administrative point of view, is based on the districts at the head of each of which is a district commissioner representing the State. The commissioner is assisted by sub-commissioners, but is alone responsible for the good order of his district. Their principal instructions, on which the State lays great stress, are to maintain friendly relations with the natives and wherever possible to prevent or patch up intertribal disputes; they are also charged with abolishing as far as possible barbarous customs and especially human sacrifices and cannibalism, still practised over a large extent of the territory.... In close co-operation with the district commissioner is the native chief or chiefs of the district. The institution and recognition of these are encouraged by the State in order to improve the relations between it and the natives, to consolidate authority over individuals, to ameliorate their condition, and to facilitate their regular contribution to the development of the country. The chiefs have, as a rule, to be first recognised as such by native custom, and are then officially recognised by the Government, and receive a certificate to that effect. They are allowed to exercise their usual authority according to native usage and custom, provided the same be not contrary to public order and is in accordance with the laws of the State. They are held personally responsible for their tribe’s supply of public labour as notified to them annually. The acknowledged native chiefs number 258.

The safeguards provided by the co-operation of the chiefs, and the supervision of the central authority are now on the Congo supplemented, as far as human action under such conditions can go, by a very thorough organisation of the judicial side of the Government. It has pleased many of the critical theorists who have attacked the Congo Free State to say that this latter has been established merely as a blind to the actions of the administration. It may be merely remarked that no infant struggling State is likely to go to the great expense of such an elaborate and widely organised system of justice as has now been called into existence on the Congo pour rire, and furthermore that jurists of the character of those now serving on the Congo are not those capable of lending themselves to such practices. A certain amount of latitude must of course be made for the different conditions in individual countries, especially when in a state of savagery, but generally speaking the Congo tribunals do their duty as well as similar ones in British colonies.

The Sovereign and Government of the Congo Free State have stated over and over again that they desire justice to be rendered impartially, and that as it is necessary that offences committed by natives should not remain unpunished, so penal laws must also be applied to the whites who are guilty of illegal doings. The mere fact of having constituted a superior court of appeal with judges of different nationalities and of appointing foreign lawyers and magistrates as judges and officials of the lower courts in the interior of the country is a proof, and a more than evident guarantee, of the impartiality and seriousness of the judicial administration aimed at. The writer holds no brief for the Congo Free State; rather the contrary in fact, but in common fairness after a very lengthy study of its judicial machinery, laws, and decrees, and the instructions given to its officials, he finds it difficult to conceive what more King Leopold could have done to safeguard its internal affairs than has now been done—given the peculiar conditions of the country. The abuses which have from time to time arisen in the past have been due, as far as one acquainted with similar conditions in West Africa can see, to three things, viz.: (1) to the abuse of power by agents of the concessionaire companies before the State had fully realised the necessity of keeping a sharp control over these semi-independent individuals; (2) to the want of experience of early officials; and (3) to the lack of trained colonial servants whose known antecedents and constitutions fitted them for isolated and arduous responsibility in an unhealthy, tropical, and savage country. It is only right to add, however, that though isolated misdeeds may still continue to occur here as everywhere else, the measures now in force guard as far as possible against a repetition of the former regrettable occurrences, and where these occur the offenders are brought to trial without delay.

The native idea represents that of primitive society everywhere in the world, the European that of latter-day civilisation; and if this were always borne in mind, less nonsense would be written by those ill-informed sentimentalists who insist on treating the former on the lines of the latter.

Nothing is more astounding in regard to the Congo campaign—to take a very flagrant case in point—than the utter ignorance displayed by those who, while violently denouncing every detail of Congo administration, appear to be totally unaware either of the past history of social evolution, of modern civilisation in Europe, or of the conditions existing in other African countries at the present day.

We have here (British Central Africa) admitted, as in Uganda where we have shown that it has been actually carried out, the right of the British Crown to assume ownership of “vacant lands,” and the principle enunciated that the reserves allotted must be sufficient to allow of the lying fallow of the ground for a period of three years in addition to allowing a proportion for the natural increase of the family. Had the same principles set forth above been applied to the early days to British West Africa that country would be far more prosperous and advanced than is the case to-day.

Bearing these facts in mind it is possible to understand more fully the situation on the Congo where the general system has been pursued of assuming possession of the vacant lands and allotting to natives reserves throughout the country, though it may be remarked that on the plea of conquest alone the State has a valid title to a large part of the country apart from that set forth.

In the case of the Congo Free State, however, the opposite course has been taken, i. e., the State has undertaken the direct exploitation of its private domains, the profits realised being allotted to public works and the expenses of administration; and without stopping to examine the necessities of the case its critics have eagerly seized on this as a point of attack.

When criticisms, however, are raised against the very complete system of land tenure now in existence on the Congo as regards the State, non-natives and natives, it is as well to remember that the exploitation of the land by the State is an after and separate act quite unconnected with the assumption of sovereign powers over the land in the State, which latter is in accord with general European and universal American custom, though after all whether a State raises money for public revenues by selling, leasing, or by personally exploiting the State lands seems to be a mere matter of detail in which the principle of the action is exactly the same. En passant it may be remarked that the Royal Niger Company, though an administration, raised its principal revenue and paid its dividends by its trade—not by duties or taxes.

Further south, getting down to the Congo again, we find a State which, sharing these views, has the courage of its convictions and acts upon them to the great scandal of our own Exeter Hall set, no doubt, but to the very marked improvement of the native races affected as well as to the development and opening up of the State.

It will have been observed in what special terms Mr. Davis repudiates personal interest in championing the Congo Administration against its detractors. Should any reader be so sceptical as to question the accuracy of that repudiation, attention is invited to the following declarations by three English statesmen, two of them of high political attainment, and all three by social position and actual record of approved bona-fides.

VISCOUNT CURZON, VICEROY AND GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF INDIA

It is only fair to remember that the Congo State has done a great work, and by its administration the cruel raids of Arab slave-dealers have ceased to exist over many thousands of square miles.

THE LATE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, K.G., PREMIER OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT

Look at the Congo State. Everything has not gone there as well as could be wished, but still a great domination is maintained. There are two sets of opinions; but what is undoubtedly true is that Belgium—a very much less powerful country than Great Britain—has been able to maintain the dominion of her King over a territory larger than the Sudan.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

Lord Cranborne, now Marquess of Salisbury, declared, during the debate of 20th May, 1903, in the House of Commons, that “There was no doubt that the administration of the Congo Government had been marked by a very high degree of a certain kind of administrative development. There were steamers upon the river, hospitals had been established, and all the machinery of elaborate judicial and police systems had been set up.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXV. TESTIMONY OF TRAVELLERS AND THINKERS

(Concluded)

Among the denunciators of the Congo Administration a prominent place must be assigned to

DR. H. GRATTAN GUINNESS

(English)

a part medical, part missionary, wholly illogical perverter of facts. The plunges made by this eccentric individual into the depths of human credulity would certainly receive no attention in this place but for the strange circumstance that some people have actually so far belied their intelligence as to accept them without investigation. Strange to relate, Mr. Booker Washington (a singular lapse of sagacity in a man so generally intelligent) is among those whose credulity has been abused by stories of strings of Negroes’ hands being set to dry in the sun, the said hands having been cut off from natives by wicked European officials of the Congo Administration as a punishment for failure to collect a sufficiency of rubber, etc.

In the course of a recent lecture in Scotland, Dr. Guinness said: “To our knowledge the natives never mutilated their victims by cutting off their hands. The wild Ngombe never practised the mutilation referred to. It was reserved for civilisation to introduce this certificate of death.”

Now it is a matter of history, quite outside the realms of argument, that punishment by bodily mutilation has been practised by natives of Central Africa from the earliest times of which we have any record. Here is a sentence taken from a book entitled The First Christian Mission on the Congo, published before the Congo State came into existence, written by Mrs. H. Grattan Guinness:

From half a million to a million of lives are annually sacrificed in the slave trade, and as many more in all probability in intertribal wars and contests. Physically a land of sunshine and beauty and redundant life, it is spiritually a land of darkness, deformity, and death.

This evidence, given by the wife of Dr. Grattan Guinness in 1882, is a strange foundation for Dr. Guinness to erect his 1904 statement upon. Let us hear what other people have to say upon this subject.

COMMANDER LOVETT CAMERON

(English)

In Ouroua only two punishments are known, mutilation and the penalty of death. Both are much in use, but especially the former. For the least offence the chief and his lieutenants cut off a finger, a lip, a portion of the ear or of the nose. For more serious offences, they cut off the hands, etc.

DR. WILLIAM JUNKER

(German)

Mazindeh wished to punish the man according to A-Zandeh law by cutting off a finger.... I saw a man who had been punished by the loss of his finger and of another important member. A Malingdeh told me he knew about twenty men who had been similarly punished.

SIR JOHN KIRK

(English)

If slavery were abolished, all criminals would probably be put to death or mutilated.

CARDINAL LAVIGERIE

(Belgian)

King Wemba, near Tanganyika, finding the wooden drumsticks too harsh for his ears, cut off the hands of his slaves so that they might beat the drums with their stumps.

MR. J. A. MALONEY

(English)

The offender was lucky if he escaped with instant death, for Msiri delighted in diabolical refinements of cruelty. Quite minor crimes were punished by the lopping off of a hand or the docking of an ear. In fact Msiri practised mutilation almost as extensively as Kasongo.

MR. FREDERICK STANLEY ARNOT

(English)

Mr. Giraud noticed some men whose noses or ears had been cut off. Mkewe’s six drummers had a thumb on each hand but no fingers.... Mr. Giraud says that everywhere the Bemba people practise these barbarous customs. First the fingers and toes are cut off.

These quotations will surely prove that bodily mutilation is essentially an African barbarity that prevailed more or less among all the tribes of the Congo region, but is now almost entirely suppressed, thanks to Belgian civilisation. The charge brought by Dr. Grattan Guinness against that civilisation, that it introduced and practises this certificate of death, is a libel so monstrous that it carries with it its own refutation.

MR. GRENFELL

(English Missionary)

The welcome that I have received and the facilities accorded me everywhere in the course of my journey through the Eastern Province have made this journey very agreeable. This is now the third day that I have received the hospitality of this post, and before leaving it, which I expect to do to-morrow morning, I consider that I must write and tell you how happy I have been to have had the opportunity of making this most interesting journey. In the course of my tour I have been much struck by the order which has been established, and by the real progress accomplished. When the position of the country under the Arab domination is recalled, and when the relatively brief number of years since the termination of the military operations rendered necessary by the revolts is taken into account, the progress that has been made is nothing less than marvellous. If in spite of such numerous difficulties so much has been done, I am sure that when the railway towards Ponthierville has been completed the progress will prove more rapid still.—May 31, 1903.

MR. WILLIAM FORFEIT

(English Baptist Missionary)

We arrived to-day at New Antwerp in order to take our farewell before leaving for England. I much regret that we are not able to see you. I desire to thank you for the kind interest and consideration for the mission at Upoto which you[47] have always displayed.

The condition of the natives is much improved, all the villages of the district can be visited in absolute safety, and I beg to congratulate you on the tranquillity of the district of which you are the Commissary-General.—March 14, 1903.

MESSRS. ASCENSO AND POLIDORI

(Italian Physicians)

The dwellings for soldiers and labourers are numerous in Kabinda. They are symmetrically arranged and separated from one another by wide alleys from 10 to 15 metres across. Each black family has a separate house sufficiently large, divided into two rooms. Each dwelling is raised half a metre (nearly 20 inches) above the ground, and surrounded by a verandah one metre broad. The soil has been well beaten down, and the walls are whitened with lime. The roofing is without a ceiling, with a large opening admitting ventilation; each man sleeps on a bed raised one metre. The ground surrounding the post is formed into separate small gardens in which each soldier cultivates maize, manioc, etc.

All the villages around Kabinda are united to the post by wide and long avenues, well kept up and bordered by trees and pineapples. The natives greatly feel the effects of the neighbourhood of the white man, and make every effort to rival him in the maintenance, cleanliness, and prettiness of their villages. The houses are placed on an elevation, and are built in the same way as those of the soldiers with truly remarkable care and propriety. Each house has two or three rooms containing from 12 to 15 cubic metres, with good verandahs, and meets the prescribed hygienic conditions.

Large free intervals separate the dwellings from one another, and in them are the vegetable plantations.

A detail worthy of being pointed out is the great cleanliness of the natives of this region. During the course of my journey from the West Coast of Africa to Kabinda I remarked many things, and I ascertained that at Kabinda all the natives, in place of sleeping on the ground, have a raised bed, formed by means of flexible canes with coverlets, stuffs, and mosquito nets. There are houses that contain magnificent sarcophagi of truly artistic work.

Everywhere there are small pieces of furniture coarsely sculptured, but which reveal the artistic taste of this people and their progressive march towards civilisation. It must also be said that they have a marked desire to dress decently. In conclusion, they are, in my opinion, the first people I met in Africa who, without being spoilt by money, possess a relatively advanced degree of civilisation, and an hygienic system beyond dispute.

The fertility of the soil and the abundance of provisions of all kinds allow of changing the food of the soldier and the native. Their food generally consists of chickens, goats, wild animals, manioc, maize, vegetables, and various fruits. They feel the effects of this good nourishment. They are strong, robust, support fatigue well, and consequently give little hold to sickness.

On a hill close to the post a hospital has been constructed by the natives. It contains three large rooms separated from each other and containing 100 cubic metres.—February 21, 1904.

MR. MAGUIRE

(English Missionary)

Though I have travelled by boat and on foot from Boma to Amadi and higher up to Surunga, calling at all the State stations; though I have visited many establishments, both Catholic and non-Catholic, as well as some stations of independent companies; though I have passed nights and days in my tent in the forest and in villages of the natives; though I have had ample opportunities of seeing much in my journeys as to how the natives are treated, I have never seen or heard of any of the atrocities with which the agents of the Free State are charged. On the contrary, one cannot but admire the wonderful progress that has been made in so short a time, the commendable way in which the natives are treated, the little work that is exacted of them, and the manner in which they are punctually paid for every service rendered or work done. The little work which is occasionally exacted of them by way of tax in porterage or otherwise is as nothing when compared with the immense benefits conferred upon them by the State. In fact the methods of the Belgian officers drew a highly complimentary eulogium from the Sirdar during his recent visit to the Enclave of Lado—methods which, he stated, might be followed with advantage by our English officers: “Messieurs,” said the Sirdar, “nous avons d’excellentes leçons devant nos yeux.”—March 31, 1904.

DR. CHRISTY

(English Physician)

I went to the Congo last September as a member of an expedition of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which was despatched especially to investigate sleeping sickness in the Congo, the same disease which so recently, as the public know, broke out in such virulent epidemic form in Uganda. For a considerable time I was in Leopoldville, which is the Bombay of the Congo—that is, everybody throughout the whole of the Congo goes through Leopoldville in order to reach Europe and the outer world. Hence you can quite understand that any one, like myself, for instance, stationed for a time in Leopoldville, must, if he take any trouble at all, come across all the officials from the whole of the Congo, who, from various causes, are bound at intervals to be in or passing through Leopoldville. Thus, whilst there I had excellent opportunities of finding out exactly what happens in that country, particularly as these men—that is, the officials of the Congo—are extremely ready to talk. Besides opportunities of acquiring information in that way, I have travelled on foot in the Belgian Congo State, and personally observed the condition of things which prevails there. I assure you that if I were to tell you all I know against the Congo Administration it would amount to a very little indeed compared with what I know in its favour. The credulousness of the British Government in respect of the Casement report is something marvellous. Casement travelled up the river in a missionary steamer, arm in arm with missionaries practically all the time, and obtained all his information from the river bank instead of personally investigating the various stories of outrage and mutilation which he received. It is the most astonishing thing that the British Government have given the Casement report so much credence.

The agitation now going on with respect to atrocities in the Congo is based on things that happened a long time ago. There is no doubt that in times gone by atrocities have occurred; but, thanks to the altered methods and conditions of administration, such things are not likely to recur. The basin of the Congo, mainly the Belgian Congo, is practically the sole rubber-producing area of the world. This territory also contains the lowest class of natives in the whole of Africa. The natives all over the East Coast—the Masai, the Nandi, the Kaverondo, the Bukedi, the Baris, the Madis, the Dinkas, the Shiluks, and others—stretching right away up to the Soudan, are all a magnificent class of Negro, a fighting people, a manly, upstanding people, who impressed me immensely. I have been through parts of all their territories, and they are indeed a magnificent set of people. Then you get towards the West Coast—the basin of the Niger, where I was for nearly two years, and you see a lower class of natives. On the Benue, where the present punitive expedition is operating in Niaiger, you have again a distinctly lower class of natives. Then, as you go farther South, and get into the Congo watershed, you come upon a still lower class of natives. The natives over large areas in the Congo are cannibals to the present day. They are a very low class of native indeed. That is the territory which the Belgians have so successfully opened up for the rubber trade. In that opening-up process they have had, as I say, to contend with absolutely the lowest class of natives in Africa at the present day. As you travel through the Congo you cannot help feeling—at all events any one like myself, who has been through the British tropical colonies—that the amount of general advancement and civilisation in the Congo Free State is far ahead as compared with our own. This is doubtless owing to the fact that the Belgians have made the natives work. The Belgians have gone on the principle, to begin with, that the native must be a participating element in the development and civilisation of the country—that is, that he must work with and for the white man, and thereby benefit not only the white man but himself. I was immensely impressed with the state of government and the advancement and general opening-up of the Congo, the more so as I can compare it with other districts under British control in which I have been. We do not attempt to make the native work, with the result that we do not get the benefit we should from our Protectorates. Uganda and British East Africa are far behind the Congo Free State. Not more than a third of Uganda is opened up to administrative control. I once spent ten months in Uganda, and visited every station in it, walking 2300 miles and returning down the Nile. The Belgians have got stations everywhere in the Congo practically, and most of the natives, except in one or two areas, are entirely under control. The Uganda native is a fat, lazy chap, who will do no work. There is no industry in Uganda. The Belgians pay the Congo natives for their labour. They realise that the native is a valuable asset in the country, and treat him accordingly. It is surely obvious that it is not to the interest of the Congo administrators to maim the native.

All the mutilations and cruelties which have been spoken of took place in the early days of the opening-up process to which the country has been subjected and before the railway was constructed. The men who have been guilty of the atrocities have not been Belgians in all cases. In many instances they have been Italians who have been appointed to the smaller outlying posts, the better and higher positions being kept for Belgians. These Italians and other foreigners who have been given the charge of outlying stations have in some cases perpetrated cruelties in times gone by. These men were not accustomed to exercise power, and this led them to ill-use the natives. That is how the atrocities such as these were originated. But that has all gone now; they are all cleared out. I have seen nineteen such men, chiefly Italians, in prison at Boma on charges of cruelty, which proves that the Belgians are doing their best to put a stop to the kind of thing complained of. The agitation that is now going on about atrocities is exaggerated out of all proportion to the amount of the atrocities that happened at any time. The Belgians are doing everything they can to supersede the men who have acted improperly in the past; they have appointed inspectors for different districts, and they have allowed inspectors appointed by the Italian Government and the Scandinavian Government to go out into the Congo for the purpose of keeping an eye on those of their own nationality in positions of responsibility and control in the Congo Free State. Things in the Congo now are very different to what they were even two or three years ago. The King of the Belgians has sent out Baron Dhanis—who had more to do with opening up the Congo in the early days than anybody else—to reorganise the whole military system of the Congo Free State. There are to be two or three large military centres in the Congo, and the soldiers will be much more highly trained and be more under control. Hitherto the small posts have recruited men from the surrounding villages, and given them a bit of uniform and a rifle, and they have gone about, supposed to be doing their duty, instead of which they have probably been ill-treating the natives. The whole thing will be changed now, however, for they will have a much more highly organised army and a much higher class of officer. It has been these unscrupulous foreigners—Italians, etc.—who have been guilty of the cruelties reported. Another proof of the endeavours to stop any existing abuses of administration is the fact that a Belgian officer who for many years held a high post in the Congo has recently been sent out by the King as Royal High Commissioner, to investigate all questions of maladministration and, particularly, payment of State employees and the natives for labour, with power there and then to rectify or alter any existing rules which he thinks might be amended in any part of the Congo, the territories of concessionary companies included. With regard to the mutilations in the Congo, described by Mr. Casement, I may tell you that only last year in Uganda I saw similar mutilations, which, it is well known, were done by the natives in Uganda, notably in King Mtesa’s day. In walking through Toro and Unyoro, I have seen men without noses, ears, and, frequently, without hands.

With regard to Lord Cromer’s assertion that in the Lado Enclave the natives have left the banks of the river and the immediate regions of the Belgian posts,—well, I have walked along the Nile from the Albert Nyanza into the Soudan, and visited the Belgian stations on the river, besides having seen a good deal of the natives on both banks. I feel sure that Lord Cromer is wrong when he states that the natives are leaving the Belgian side and going over to the Uganda side. The natives certainly had nothing to complain of, and certainly are not migrating across the river. As for there being no villages round Lado Enclave, the explanation is that there is for several months of the year absolutely no water and, therefore, necessarily no villages. But at many other places along the banks in the Lado Enclave there are large villages. I saw several thousand natives at Wadelai, employed by the Belgians in rebuilding the old fort of Emin Pasha, preparatory to making a large station there, and they seemed quite contented and happy, and worked like a hive of bees. The conclusion to which I am irresistibly driven as a disinterested observer is that the present administration of the Congo is not only free from cruelties, but is of the most complete and efficient description, and counts for the fullest commercial and industrial development of the Free State. I am sure that that administration is doing its level best in every way, from the highest to the lowest officer, to make the country prosperous, and the native happy and useful.—June 23, 1904.

MR. GREY

(English Civil Engineer)

From the “Morning Post” (London), January 20, 1903.

Since I returned to England a few weeks ago I have read some correspondence in the Morning Post on the subject of the administration in the Congo State. I am an Englishman, and have during the last two years led an expedition of the Tanganyika Concessions (Limited), organised in Rhodesia to explore and search for minerals in the Katanga district of the Congo State. During the latter part of 1901 and the whole of 1902 sections of this expedition have explored and settled in the district of Katanga, and at the same time the representatives of the Special Katanga Committee have occupied and governed the country. It is almost impossible for one man to have intimate knowledge of more than a portion of the territory of the Congo Free State, and I can only claim to know a small and remote section. Still, seeing that so much attention has been directed of late to Belgian administration in the Congo, my experiences in that country may be of interest. It is, perhaps, necessary to explain that the Special Katanga Committee, the governing body in Brussels of the territories of Katanga, is composed of the representatives of an amalgamation between the separate interests of the Congo Free State Government and the Katanga Company. The former originally owned two-thirds, the latter one-third, of that portion of the Congo State. This administration is entirely Belgian, and the African staff is composed of a representative of the committee, whose headquarters are at Lukonzolwa, on Lake Mweru, and who occupies the position of administrator, and of numerous officials, civil and military, in charge of the various sections of the district and departments of the administration. The country is garrisoned by a large force of native troops, with European officers. My duties have confined me to the section of the district called the Upper Luapula Section, which borders on the south and east with Northern Rhodesia. I have visited the chief of that section, Mr. Vervloet, at his headquarters at Lukafu, and an officer of the Katanga force with a few soldiers has been attached to my expedition.

I have, therefore, had considerable opportunity on the spot of learning the instructions which the Special Committee give their officials, and how those instructions are carried out. I myself and many members of my expedition have become fairly intimate with the native inhabitants of large portions of this district, and have from time to time employed as carriers and miners several hundred labourers. That the natives of this country had never suffered ill-treatment from white men was evident to me from the time I entered the country. They showed no hesitation in working for my expedition and in bringing quantities of food to sell, and always seemed quite confident that fair payment would be given, both for labour and food. I have lived for many years in parts of Africa in which the native inhabitants were for the first time coming under the influence of European government, and where conditions rendered the aid of such government by native troops necessary. It is almost impossible constantly to restrain the tendency to oppress and ill-treat his less powerful countrymen which is inherent in the native soldier, and I do not believe that it ever happens that the advent of that form of government is unaccompanied by acts of injustice and oppression. Generally there is a constant effort on the part of the European officer to prevent such acts and punish offenders. My experience is that this is especially the case in the district of Katanga. The regulations of the Special Committee provide that no armed parties of soldiers should travel or patrol without a European officer. Native soldiers are not allowed to enter villages alone, and weekly markets are held at which a European official buys food for his soldiers from the neighbouring villages, so endeavouring to do away as far as possible with direct dealing between the soldier and the people. My experience of the last two years has convinced me that in the district of Katanga at any rate the Belgian officials endeavour to treat the Central African native with justice and leniency, and in as great a degree as officials of any other nation look on him as a human being, with a perfect right to sell his labour and his food on terms satisfactory to himself. When I first entered the Congo, at the time that the officials of the Special Committee were establishing their government, and before I had come into personal contact with them, I found some armed natives who posed as soldiers of the Belgian Government, and who lived more or less the life of robbers, raiding and stealing wherever they went. The natives believed that these men were the authorised police of the European Administration, whose white officials they had not yet seen, and members of my expedition reported to me on the shocking behaviour of the Belgian Askari. I later learnt the complete mistake we had made in believing these men to be Government employees. In a short time they completely disappeared, caught or driven out by the agents of the committee. The Ba-Luba and Wasanga, the tribes we have been working among, are, we find, a peaceable, industrious race, with practically no warlike propensity, an easy prey to any organised hostile force. I am led to believe that their numbers have decreased during the last fifty years owing to a continuous traffic in slaves with the Arabs of the East and Mambunda of the West. To-day the slave trade has ceased in this particular district, the traders being afraid to come anywhere near the Belgian posts. To such an extent have conditions changed with the advent of Belgian administration that many small chiefs are now recovering individuals raided from them by their stronger neighbours and not already sold to the traders when European control reached the country.

In all discussions and criticism of the mistakes made by European administration in Central Africa there is one condition which seems to me to be never taken into account. That is the necessity of employing officials who have to spend a long time learning how to do efficiently the work that they have to carry on from the day they arrive at their posts. There is no school in which to learn Central African Civil Service except Central Africa, and it is impossible in Africa to obtain a sufficient number of qualified officials. Not many go to Central Africa with the idea of making their permanent homes there. It has been my own good fortune to settle in a healthy part of Central Africa, but from my knowledge of the Continent as a whole, I think it is not an exaggeration to state that two-thirds of the officials who leave Europe are, within five years of their arrival, either killed by the climate, invalided home, or have left the country at the termination of an agreement. All these have to be constantly replaced by inexperienced men, with their job to learn. What wonder then that grievous mistakes are sometimes made by some of these untried men, necessarily placed in responsible positions? In writing this letter to you, I state only my own experience and opinion of the spirit and effect of Belgian administration in the district of Katanga; but it seems natural to me to suppose that the same spirit extends throughout the whole of the Congo territory; and it seems almost the duty, at the present time, of any Englishman who has had opportunity to judge of the general methods of Belgian administration to give publicity to his knowledge.—Yours, etc.,

G. GREY.

[Sidenote: Cardinal Gibbons Speaks out.]

In presence of testimony such as this, it is not matter for surprise that His Eminence, Cardinal Gibbons, should have characterised as inopportune the consideration by the recent Peace Congress at Boston of the oft-refuted accusations brought against the Congo Free State. Where not absolutely false in every particular (as the majority of these slanderous stories most certainly are), they are grossly exaggerated, distorted out of all resemblance to the events they are based upon, and mendaciously attributed to a Government that has consistently and unswervingly repressed wrongdoing, of whatever kind, or by whomsoever done, and brought the light of civilisation to a vast barbarian population more thoroughly and in less time than was ever done before.

The opinion of Cardinal Gibbons upon this point well appears in a letter addressed by His Eminence to the Honorary Secretary of the Congo Reform Association, of which the following is the full text.

HIS EMINENCE, CARDINAL GIBBONS

(American)

BALTIMORE, Oct. 21, 1904.

_The Honorary Secretary, Congo Reform Association._

SIR,—I avail myself of the first opportunity which has presented itself to acknowledge your letter of the 18th instant. In that letter you call my attention to certain resolutions adopted by the Peace Congress at Boston. I fail to see in these resolutions any vote of censure upon the Congo Free State. They express rather a desire for information in regard to the international status of that State.

It appears that those who voted for the resolutions were in need of enlightenment on the subject, but this information lies near at hand. There is no need to appeal to any tribunal. Diplomatic history, diplomatic correspondence concerning the Independent State of the Congo, and the acts and the protocols of the Conference of Berlin, as well as of the Conference of Brussels, all prove conclusively that the Congo Free State is an independent sovereign State, and that the powers have no right of guardianship or intervention.

Your letter also refers to certain documents, such as the British Parliamentary White Book, Africa, No. 7 (1904), which, however, has not escaped my attention. Permit me to say that this book, instead of proving your contention, proves the exact contrary, and shows that both the administration and the courts of the Congo are using their endeavours to correct such evils as may exist—for no human government is perfect.

The interpellation in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, to which you refer, seems to have been simply a fruitless attempt on the part of the Socialist leader to annoy the Government. The very fact that the Chamber considered Mr. Vandervelde’s charges against the Congo, and refused to sympathise with him in his views, is in itself a significant indication of the baselessness of his accusations.

In your letter you are also pleased to say that in speaking in defence of the Congo Government I have spoken “unwittingly,” and to imply that I have not considered the facts nor weighed the evidence. I can assure you that I have not spoken without due consideration. As to the evidence, it is overwhelmingly against your contention.

It is only some score of discontented men, depending largely on the untrustworthy hearsay evidence of natives, who have raised an outcry against the Congo Administration, out of a great band of 500 or 600 missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, who are working on the Congo, and who give thanks to the Congo Administration for its support to the missions, and for its successful efforts to introduce Christianity and civilisation into Central Africa.

Overwhelming evidence in favour of the Congo Government has been given recently by missionaries and by travellers, and it is not only Catholic missionaries, like Monsignor Van Ronslé and Father Van Hencxthoven, who have spoken in praise of the State, but also the most distinguished Protestant missionaries, such as the Rev. Mr. Bentley and Dr. Grenfell.

As it is not likely that you will convert me, and as I see no probability of convincing you, I, for my part, think it best to consider the correspondence closed.

Very sincerely yours, (Signed) JAMES, CARDINAL GIBBONS.

Viscount Mountmorres

In the summer of 1904, an Irish peer, Lord Mountmorres, began a journey through the Congo Free State, whence his lordship is sending an admirable series of letters, descriptive of his experiences and impressions, to the London Globe. The dismal scenes of torture, desolation, and death, in which the missionary-agents of the Liverpool merchants assure us that unhappy country abounds, appear in some way to have escaped the observation of this traveller. “The further one goes into the interior the more civilised one finds it, the better organised, and the more developed,” says Lord Mountmorres at the opening of his second letter:

I was utterly unprepared [he continues] for what I found at Irebu and at Coquilhatville, buried away there on the equator in the very heart of the great forest. For what are these stations? Large haphazard jumbles of native dwellings and white men’s bungalows in an arid clearing, with ill-kempt roadways, such as one would find in the Western States? No; here we have great open towns of really artistic brick houses, with palm-thatched roofs and wide verandahs, each standing in its own little garden, bright with roses and hibiscus, Spanish iris and flamboyants, and set well back along straight, wide avenues shaded by bamboos, mangoes, papayes, acacias, bread-fruit trees, or one of a dozen other leafy and ornamental equatorial trees. In spacious grounds will be found the residence of the local governor, chef-de-poste, or commandant, as the case may be, with its twenty to thirty-foot verandah and its flagstaff in front, placed usually so as to command the full view of the river front. Round one or more spacious squares at the intersections of the principal avenues will be the various public offices—the Directorate of Transports, the Post Office, the Magasins de l’État, the headquarters of the Force Publique, the Office of Agriculture, and the rest. At Bikoro there are 2200 acres overlooking the lovely Lac Tumba, sometimes miscalled Man Tumba or M’Tumba, a corruption of Mai Na Tumba, water (or lake) of war. Round Coquilhatville there are little short of 4500 acres of these plantations, and round Irebu and Imesse something like 1200 acres in each case. Then near to each station will be the extensive market gardens, where every manner of vegetable, both European and tropical, is raised in profusion, and also the large, well-kept farm or farms, which supply the principal officials with beef and mutton, goat and pork, poultry and ducks, and in which a ceaseless series of experiments in breeding and raising stock adapted to the climate is carried on.

And this has been achieved not in one isolated spot near the coast, where material and transport were ready to hand, but at every “white post” up here in the very heart of the black continent, cut off until a few years ago from the capital and the seaboard by that deadly, costly barrier—the white man’s cemetery of the Cataract caravan road. How has it been done? Let us take Irebu as a typical case. Seven years ago a young Belgian lieutenant, Jeuniaux by name, was sent out to take charge of the military training camp at the junction of the Ubanghi, the Congo, and the Tumba Canal, on the site of a former larger and flourishing native village. He came, and he found an unhealthy and pestilential swamp covered with the ruins and the filth of the then almost deserted village of Irebu. Among these unpleasant surroundings was a large group of ill-kempt and badly constructed mud and thatch huts—the training camp; and here he was doomed to pass at least three years. But he was young and energetic, and had passed unscathed along the latter half of the caravan road in the cataract district, for the railway was then but half completed. He had seen brick houses in other stations, and clean, well-kept, well-arranged little townships. He would have the same. But his first difficulty was that this was a training camp, whither the raw, untutored savage was drafted in his naked ignorance to undergo six months’ tuition only; and, so soon as he had acquired a sufficient training to make him of use to the white man, he was hurried on elsewhere and a new batch of raw material took his place. Jeuniaux had but a hazy notion of architecture, but, unaided, he planned and designed his barracks, and acted as his own foreman, devising quaint methods to construct weather-proof walls and roofs from the materials at hand, and instructing his workers, man by man, in these methods, and that without even the medium of a common language.

At last his barracks were built, and the old huts destroyed; coffee, cocoa, maize, sweet potatoes, and bananas grew in well-ordered plantations, between parallel, palm-lined avenues, where formerly had been a wilderness of insanitary ruins. Then came the great feat of all—brick houses for the whites and for the Departmental offices. Bricks, bricks. He knew that bricks were made somehow from some sort of clay, and he had a hazy notion that straw was essential to their composition. So he started on a series of experiments. In the intervals of his work—with two sub-lieutenants to help him, he was responsible for training, feeding, and controlling from 1000 to 1500 soldiers, with their wives and families, for maintaining order in his district, and developing its commercial resources, and for ruling the natives in it; how well he had done this work I will show in a moment—but, in the intervals, he went on clay-hunting expeditions, and then sat up at night experimenting on what he had found, and at last he produced what he recognised as the real red brick—the philosopher’s stone of his research. And so the first brick house in Irebu was built in one year from when Jeuniaux first came. And he built other houses for his lieutenants and white non-coms., and a residency for himself, and a guest house large and comfortable, and post-office, state stores, guard-house, pharmacy, armoury, and houses for all the other whites. One by one they were built, and Jeuniaux, now Commandant Jeuniaux, and his ever-changing pupils built them all, until he had realised his ambition, and had constructed a model station, with its lovely avenues, its riverside promenade, its fine landing-stage, its parade ground, where 1200 men may, without crowding, manœuvre in companies at once, and its pretty public gardens. And when his first term of three years was over he left, with the sense of work accomplished, for his six months’ holiday. All the time in Europe he pictured the growth of his plantations and his palms, and told his friends he should be glad to get back “home” to Irebu, the town he built with his own hands. And the night before he reached it he could not sleep for excitement; and all day he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of it, and at last it came in sight. But not the Irebu he knew. The plantations had reverted into jungle, the avenues had disappeared, lost in the quick, rank growth; the pleasure gardens were a wilderness; the finest of the palms had been cut down; and he went through the coarse, wild vegetation that clogged the entrance to his house, and into the damp hall-way that was become the home of bats, and of rats, and of lizards, and he sat down there, and he wept. For so, in six short months, had an idle officer left in charge during his absence undone the labour of three years.

But he is not a man to be easily daunted. To-day Irebu is as spick and span and as beautiful as he first conceived it. The benefit that accrues to the natives as well as to the whites from so well-built and arranged a station is shown by the change that has occurred in the health of Irebu. One of Jeuniaux’s first cares was to make the place sanitary. Now, since he built the station, i. e., in the five years since summer, 1899, there have been only two deaths among the whites,—although their number has been increased,—and of these one was a case of sunstroke, the other one probably of deliberate intent to die by disobeying orders during an illness on receipt of bad news. Since 1901 there has not been one death among Europeans. The mortality rate among the soldiers has decreased to 14 per 1000 average, and for the current year to 12 per 1000, or a fraction under. And this despite the fact that the sudden change in their mode of life when they enter military service must be a severe strain on the recruits, and also that Irebu, lying at the junction of waterways, is constantly having dumped down in it cases of infectious diseases, which are discovered on the river steamers, and which are put ashore at the nearest station.

Now, I mention all this about the building of Irebu, not simply to glorify Commandant Jeuniaux, but because the work that has been done there, the difficulties he has had to contend with and has overcome, the result that has been achieved, are identical with what every commandant has met with in each of the beautiful stations that you will find in the Middle Congo. Each of these represents the personal exertion of one individual, and their existence is eloquent testimony to the ability and devotion with which the State is served by its servants.

Mrs. M. French Sheldon

Mrs. French Sheldon, the traveller and author, returned to Europe in December, 1904, after a tour through the Congo Free State.

I have witnessed [she says] more atrocities in London streets than I have seen in the Congo, which remark applies to the rubber country as well as the rest of the State. I travelled through every part of the country, and am convinced that the allegations of maladministration are groundless. Wherever I went I found the natives treated with kindness and consideration, while the improvements in the condition of the land and its inhabitants are almost incredible.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] The Commissary-General of New Antwerp.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXVI. THE ATTITUDE OF EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

The Congolese kaleidoscope has revolved so swiftly since 1896, that it is with difficulty the European attitude towards the Congo Free State notoriety can be completely indicated. It would be unfair to the English people—that great, sane mass of them which sits imperturbably serene and looks on—to say that the British attitude towards the Congo is of that bitter hostility which a few hysterical Liverpool merchants and writers wish the outside world to believe. Indeed, it would appear to be part of their plan to make sufficient noise to induce the Germans, French, and Americans to attribute the agitation to the entire British public. The fact is that the severest condemnation of the anti-Congo campaign is being uttered by Britons against the clique which is striving to entangle British ministers in an affair that may some day redound to England’s humiliation. The shifts have been many to which certain Liverpool merchants and their chief crier have been put to maintain a hubbub which they hope will, by accident or the logic of events, create an opening for their ulterior commercial plans.

In 1897, the services of Sir Charles Dilke were first enlisted against the Congo State. In that year it was evident to those who had previously erred in their estimate of the value of the Congo as a commercial and political asset, that the Free State would more than fulfil the early expectations of Leopold II. and Henry M. Stanley. The awakening to this fact is the genesis of the envy which enlivens Congolese history to-day. So long as Stanley sat in Parliament and avowed his confidence in the Belgians who are erecting a State upon the ruins of the slave trade, and so long as he reiterated to his colleagues on the benches there the truth of the practical difficulties in Central Africa, the campaign against the Congo State in England made little serious progress. When Stanley died, when his voice in defence of the great work which he had shared with the King of the Belgians could no longer expose the fallacies and the true motive of the despoiler, the Congophobe epidemic spread to America and became more virulent than ever.

Early in 1903, a number of British merchants expressed their grievance against the French Congo in a volume by the author[48] whose active hostility against the Belgian Congo has given currency to many false statements and unjust beliefs. In the preface to the story of the British Case in the French Congo, this writer states that:

The British merchants in the French Congo have been sacrificed to save the face of certain French politicians—to stave off for a while the inevitable exposure of a deplorable error of colonial policy. In the French Congo, rather than admit the overwhelming body of proof pointing to the Concessions Decree of 1899 being framed in ignorance, unworkable in practice, monstrously unjust in its effects upon the merchant and native alike, successive Colonial Ministers have endeavoured to square the circle, and, of course, they have lamentably failed. An existing trade has been destroyed, the colony is practically bankrupt, the revenue is steadily falling, the natives are either in open rebellion or thoroughly disaffected, the military expenditure has largely increased, and the Concessionaires will only last as long as they are allowed to maintain themselves by the ingenious system of fining the British firms—that is to say, until a way is graciously found for the latter to sell their factory depots and their merchandise (which, of course, is deteriorating steadily); or until, despairing finally of effectual home support, our merchants themselves destroy or embark all that remains of their actual possessions, and leave the country in a body.

The purely commercial considerations upon which this complaint against the French Congo is founded are quite apparent and need not form the subject of argument. It may be enlightening, however, to note the fact that since this impassioned book was hurled at the heads of Frenchmen across the English Channel, the Anglo-French rapprochement has been effected, and the entente cordiale of King Edward’s visit to Paris has likewise intervened to divert the merchant wrath from the French Congo to the Congo Free State. French Deputies have visited London and enjoyed that bounteous hospitality which none can gainsay of a British household; members of Parliament have gone to Paris and dignified the gaiety of the quai d’Orsai. Not a vestige of the British complaint against the French Congo now freights the air. Instead, there prevails a friendly persiflage between those two great powers.

Inasmuch as the concessionaire system adopted in the French Congo gave new impetus to the British campaign against the Belgian Congo, it may be profitable to examine what precipitated matters.

The occasion was the organisation in the French Congo of the system known as the régime des concessions. A decree of the President of the French Republic, dated March 28, 1899, divided the whole territory of the French Congo Colony between about forty concessionaire companies, which were to develop it under various conditions imposed upon them. The companies were granted all the rights of ownership over the ceded areas.

In 1901, several of these companies prohibited certain English merchants, who had been established in the country upwards of twenty-five years, from buying rubber direct from the natives, alleging that all natural produce belonged to the owner of the soil. Goods were even seized on their way to the English factories.

The injured traders complained that such action was not in accordance with the General Act of Berlin, the terms of which insure freedom of trade in the Congo Basin. They appealed to the French Congo courts, whose decision was in favour of the companies. Many judgments were pronounced, all of which held that the agricultural exploitation of the forests was an exclusive right of the concessionaire companies, and did not run counter to the provisions of the Berlin Act.

These judgments were rendered by the Council of Appeal at Libreville, on November 27, 1901, the petitioners being John Holt & Company (Liverpool) and the defendants the Compagnie Française du Congo Occidental.

In spite of these judgments, British commercial circles persisted in the view that the concessions system was a violation of the free-trade clause of the Berlin Act. The Chamber of Commerce of Liverpool took the lead in a movement based upon this view. On September 30, 1901, a memorial was presented to the British Foreign Office protesting against the concessionaire régime in the French Congo, petitioning for an inquiry into its legality under the Berlin and Brussels Acts, and urging the British Government to insist on these Acts being respected by the French.

A similar memorial was presented on October 22, 1901, by the Manchester and Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, and in December of the same year delegates from ten British Chambers of Commerce were received in audience by Lord Lansdowne, who, according to the Paris Temps, acknowledged that their grievances were well founded and promised to do all in his power for those interested in the question.

At that time West Africa, the journal of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, renewed its campaign against the Congo Free State, accusing its administrators of being the principal sinners, inasmuch as the Free State’s land system had been copied in the French Congo and German East Africa. In its issue of October 26, 1901, West Africa called the Congo State fons et origo mali, and declared that it was the Belgian clique which had drawn France into the economic errors of its present system.

This campaign quickly assumed large proportions. West Africa continued to wage war against the French system of concessions and against the Congo Free State, the latter being bitterly denounced as the evil genius who conceived a land system which supported the State without the assistance of large revenue from the liquor trade or the presence of intriguing foreign merchants.

In the hope of putting an end to the Anglo-French difficulties in the Congo without raising questions of principle, the Temps of December 29, 1901, suggested that an amicable settlement be arranged between the French Government and the British traders affected by the concessionaire system in its West African Colony. By such arrangement, these traders would have received compensation for their loss. But, in a letter dated January 7, 1902, the Temps’ special correspondent in Liverpool warned the French that such an expedient would not put a stop to the agitation, and endeavoured to show in its true light the campaign which was going on in England.

Meantime the Aborigines’ Protection Society pursued its old course of agitating something, anything, so long as its secretary, freedom of speech, and the attention of a Foreign Office combined to afford opportunity. The purely commercial grievances of British traders who had been made to conform to Congolese law required new elements of support. What could be of greater assistance to their commercial schemes than the tearful work of the Aborigines’ Protection Society of England, the new Congo Reform Association of Liverpool, and their peculiar methods of playing upon the credulity, sentimentality, and the sympathies of susceptible and deluded persons whose leisure sought occupation and new interests? While the business brigade of the anti-Congo campaign sought to enlist the aid of the German Chambers of Commerce, the humanitarian scouts developed the atrocity theme—not so much against the French Power as against the Belgian pigmy. Belgium and the Congo Free State cannot resort to the arbitrament of that force which as a last resort decides the contests of all nations.

The opportunity for attracting the co-operation of commercial factions in Germany was greatly propitiated by the unfortunate Stokes incident. Stokes, a British subject, once a missionary, had become an itinerant trader, and came into the Congo State from German East Africa, where he had established headquarters. His caravan was largely composed of natives from German territory, and the goods they carried for the purpose of barter were to a large extent of German manufacture. When Stokes was caught, red-handed, bartering guns and ammunition with the native enemies of the Free State for ivory which they had unlawfully acquired, he was tried and executed. This summary disposal of a trader who had been undermining Belgian and native security in the Congo met with vehement protests in Germany as well as in England. Other factors began to operate in favour of an Anglo-German alliance against the Free State, not the least of which was the apprehension felt in Hamburg, Bremen, and Berlin over the remarkable progress the Belgians were making with their transport facilities, whereby the trade of German East Africa was being diverted to the Free State. For a time, therefore, the German press joined the British in decrying the Belgian Government in Central Africa. German attacks upon the Congo State economic policy have, however, been largely confined to interested merchants or enlisted politicians. Herr von Bornhaupt, Prince F. d’Arenberg, and Consul Vohsen have been actively identified with German criticism of the Congo State’s policy, notwithstanding that Germany, as shown in a previous chapter, has inaugurated a land policy founded upon precisely the same principles as those which prevail in the Belgian Congo. The statement of Consul Vohsen that “the Congo State’s methods were diverting trade from the German East African colonies,” betrays, perhaps, the only pretext upon which the criticism of German merchants may rest.

Until recently the political attitude of certain German statesmen toward the Belgian Congo has been to bring about a revision of the Berlin Act of 1885. In announcing a desire to form an international league, Consul Vohsen said that its object should be to induce the Powers party “to revise the Berlin Act and to force the Congo State to respect its provisions.” Europeans suggest that the gentleman probably means, by this contradiction in terms, that the real aim of England, Germany, and France, working in secret combination against the energetic little fellow with the biggest part of Central Africa, is to come to an understanding which will on the part of England realise the prophetic utterance of Mr. Cecil Rhodes[49] and the ambitions of Lord Cromer and Sir Reginald Wingate in the Cape to Cairo schemes; on the part of Germany, establish a new western frontier for German East Africa; and on the part of France, the final adoption of definite settlements in the Soudan and on the east and south banks of the Congo River. In short, the million square miles of immensely rich territory lying within the borders of the Congo Free State can, when rudely wrested from the heroic pioneers of little Belgium, be used by the three European Powers dominant in Africa to enlarge the gouty, the bilious, and the apoplectic tints of the African continent. That such views are abundant throughout Europe, and that the humanitarian pretext on the part of Congo enemies is regarded with derision, is all too evident from the columns of the leading continental journals. European editors have referred to the Congo debate in the British Parliament on May 20, 1903, as a “Parliamentary raid,” and likened it to the Jameson Raid in the Transvaal, which acted on the principle of violating first, negotiating afterwards, but in the end bringing the whole subject within the pale of dispute, speculation, and bargain.

As long ago as 1897, Belgian statesmen were convinced that certain English statesmen, of whom Sir Charles Dilke was foremost, had espoused the cause of the commercial men of Liverpool and Manchester with intent to settle upon a purpose of hostility towards the Congo State. Whatever there may have been lacking to justify the Belgians in harbouring this belief at that time, intervening events have unfortunately confirmed them in their impression. Belgians connected with the Congo administration in Brussels still maintain what they said in 1897, that “there was a set purpose to create for the Congo State difficulties both in Africa and in Europe, to discredit it by magnifying isolated facts, and by preparing, under the colour of philanthropy, the moment when there could be produced the territorial and financial designs concealed behind that campaign. The plan is clearly traced. At the commencement a feint is made that the sacrificed interests of the native populations of the whole of Africa is the cause they have at heart, and the idea of a new conference is put forward. As soon as this idea has appeared to germinate and public opinion has been baited, it becomes a question of the Congo State alone, and the division of its territories is boldly spoken of.”

On March 2, 1903, Sir Charles Dilke asked the British Government in the House of Commons whether it intended taking steps to procure the co-operation of the principal signatories to the Berlin Act with a view to suppressing abuses in the Congo Free State. In reply the British Government stated that it did not then contemplate taking steps in that direction. On March 3rd, the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Great Britain met and resolved to press their grievances against the Congo State upon the British Government. On the 11th of the same month Viscount Cranbourne declared that no action would be taken to interfere with the Congo State, as the British Government had no reason to believe that slavery was tolerated by that State. Then the Baptist Union threw in its weight on April 30th, and at a meeting held in London, denounced the concessionaire system of the Free State and attributed to that system all the cruelties alleged against the State. Meantime the British press, which reeked with stories of atrocities in the Belgian Congo, had not a word to say against the French Congo and that concessionaire system therein which was the Belgian system carried to extreme. At a meeting held in London on May 6, 1903, by the Aborigines’ Protection Society, W. H. Morrison, an American Congo missionary, from Lexington, Virginia, having returned from a visit to Brussels, where he had asked for and been refused land concessions to which special advantages should attach, delivered a series of complaints against the administration of the Congo Free State, and caused his charges to be telegraphed to the press of Europe and America. While in Brussels seeking extraordinary land concessions, Mr. Morrison did not utter one word of complaint against the local administration of the Congo. On May 7th, a member of the House of Commons again inquired whether a petition had been presented from British Chambers of Commerce or traders complaining that trading rights on the Congo under the Berlin Act were not respected, and what, if anything, the British Government intended doing in regard to the matter. Finally on May 20, 1903, the House of Commons, pressed by organised British commercial interests, passed the following resolution:

RESOLVED, That the Government of the Congo Free State having, at its inception, guaranteed to the Powers that its Native subjects should be governed with humanity, and that no trading monopoly or privilege should be permitted within its dominions, this House requests His Majesty’s Government to confer with the other Powers, signatories of the Berlin General Act by virtue of which the Congo Free State exists, in order that measures may be adopted to abate the evils prevalent in that State.

On August 8, 1903, Lord Lansdowne addressed a dispatch[50] to the Powers signatory to the Berlin Act, setting forth the grievances which had been brought to the attention of his Government, and suggesting that:

In these circumstances, His Majesty’s Government consider that the time has come when the Powers parties to the Berlin Act should consider whether the system of trade now prevailing in the Independent State is in harmony with the provisions of the Act; and, in particular, whether the system of making grants of vast areas of territory is permissible under the Act if the effect of such grants is in practice to create a monopoly of trade by excluding all persons other than the concession-holder from trading with the natives in that area. Such a result is inevitable if the grants are made in favour of persons or Companies who cannot themselves use the land or collect its produce, but must depend for obtaining it upon the natives, who are allowed to deal only with the grantees.

His Majesty’s Government will be glad to receive any suggestions which the Governments of the Signatory Powers may be disposed to make in reference to this important question, which might perhaps constitute, wholly or in part, the subject of a reference to the Tribunal at The Hague.

Three of the Powers, the United States, Italy, and Turkey, formally acknowledged receipt of the British dispatch; all maintained silence in respect of it.

On September 17, 1903, the Government of the Congo Free State delivered its reply[51] and, pursuing the same course as the British Government had followed, sent it to all the interested Powers. The attitude of Europe concerning the issue thus joined may be gathered from the silence of the Powers signatory to the Berlin Act, and the press comment which the two dispatches evoked. The Morning Advertiser, London, a conservative organ, referring to the British dispatch, said:

A weaker official document we do not ever remember to have read.... The use of the word “alleged” in the title of the document gives the key to its whole tone. The note sets forth various “alleged” shortcomings of the Congo Government, and then says, lamely:

“His Majesty’s Government do not know precisely to what extent these accusations may be true.”

Surely this is a very serious matter—to accuse the Administration of a friendly State of inhumanity and “systematic oppression,” and then to admit that we do not know whether the accusations are true.

The leading article in the Times (London) of the same day described the Congo State’s reply as “weak, inconclusive, and confused.” While Lord Lansdowne’s note had been published in its entirety, the longer reply on behalf of the Congo Free State was accorded scant space in the British press.

From Black and White (London), November 21, 1903:

To pile Pelion on Ossa in the way of accusation only to encounter a rebuff by being non-suited, scarcely recommends itself to the judgment as a course either dignified or statesmanlike. Yet in the present instance the fact that the English Note remains without a single answer from the twelve States to whom it was addressed three months after it was despatched, shows beyond question the trend of Continental opinion.

In the Standard (London) of October 24, 1903, the following utterance would imply a threat:

The Belgian Administration objects to submitting questions of internal government to arbitration, but it would do well to remember that there is an alternative of a still more unpleasant character.

On September 19th the Morning Advertiser (London) has the following to say by way of insight into British desires in Congoland:

Nearly twenty years have passed since a great Englishman came through the Dark Continent and down the Congo, and it has always seemed a strange thing to other Englishmen that the great river of Central Africa should have remained ever since under the domination of the smallest country in Europe.

The general tone of the British press was in support of Lord Lansdowne’s Note, and intolerant of the Congo State’s reply. On the Continent, the weight of opinion favourably acknowledged the force of the Congo State’s reply. In France, Germany, Austria, and Italy certain British journals were severely criticised for suppressing the publication of all evidence favourable to Belgian rule in Congoland, for dignifying the fulminations of E. D. Morel, the penman of the merchants and shippers of Liverpool, the self-appointed coroner of the Congo, sitting in judgment upon the disjecta membra which he so luridly and so falsely portrays in the books which the anti-Congo campaign incidentally serves to advertise. Brief quotations from the arguments of M. Étienne, the French Deputy, have been set forth in a previous chapter. Criticising the London Times for its partisanship, the Dépêche Coloniale of October 16, 1903 stated editorially:

... We invite the great journal [London Times] of the city to cease this chicanery which might discourage men whose task in Africa demands the co-operation of every one. In this task, in its success, we are all interested, and the fact of having opened to commerce the immense territory of the Congo should of itself spare Belgium the bitterness of misdirected criticism.

In La Liberté (Paris) the editor, referring to the Congo State’s reply, says:

Now that we have before us the reply of the King of the Belgians, we may say that we have reason from every point of view to defend the Congo Free State against accusations as stupid as they are prejudiced. England may definitely renounce the hope that she had entertained of increasing her colonial empire by means of puerile calumnies.

The Phare de la Loire:

We should not forget that a similar quarrel has been sought for with us [the French]. French concessionaires have had much trouble with two English houses—Holt & Company and Hatton & Cookson [Liverpool]—whose agents had turned the natives away from French factories by offering them exorbitant wages.

The General Anzeiger, October 30, 1903, is merely quoted to indicate the violence to which criticism of the British dispatch attained, not as a specimen of sound Teutonic reasoning nor of temperate commentary:

Truly, when reading this one hardly credits one’s eyes. Here is what the English Government, whose officials are almost without exception discredited by reason of their rude, brutal, and often inhuman attitude towards natives; here is what is written [sic] on the faith of pure colonial gossip, of unauthenticated rumour. It is not ashamed to act thus—this very Government whose cruelties in the last African war are still too fresh in the memory.... It is impossible to say whether this cynical fashion of acting is more striking than the hypocrisy which makes us indignant....

The Chronique (Belgium) of November 4, 1903, contains an interview with M. Edmond Picard, advocate of the Belgian Court of Cassation, from which the following is quoted:

The reply to the English Note drafted by the Independent State of the Congo appears to me as nobly simple, and as proud in form as peremptory in substance. As for convincing the English ogre desirous of swallowing up the Belgian Congo as it swallowed up the Transvaal and Orange State—it would be ridiculous to hope for this. This people is as enthusiastic a brigand as a nation as it is honest and loyal in the individual.

The Münster Westphal, November 3, 1903:

The insatiable English greed claims a new prey. The two Republics have been happily swallowed and digested. What is to be served up now? That fine phrase, “British Africa from the Cape to Cairo,” has been recalled at the right moment, and it is remarked that the Congo State is still one of the obstacles to the realisation of that phrase freely quoted by our cousins. And hardly were the two Boer Republics given up to British domination than commenced, at first a little timidly, then with more effrontery and brutality, the chase of the Congo State. A mass of trifles were then put forward with incredible exaggeration; the pretext for the agitation against the Congo State was given: “British Africa from the Cape to Cairo,” that is the objective of the anti-Congolese. No one is deceived about it.

The Kleine Journal (Berlin), October 21, 1903, contains the following admonition from the well-known explorer, Eugène Wolf:

“The Germans to the front!” such has always been the cry of the English when they have need of some one to take the chestnuts out of the fire for them.

“The Germans to the front!” has also been the cry of the English in the question of the Independent State of the Congo. And in this matter also the English have found among us a fool; for the aid which England has found in this Congolese question quite needlessly exaggerated cannot come from the heart of the German nation, but from the mouth of a member of the German Colonial Society, inhabiting Berlin, making himself of importance, and who, turning to account a residence many years ago on the east and west coasts of Africa, invoking his title as retired Consul, and his possession of a colonial library, gives himself out as the spokesman authorised by the nation in order to pass himself off on his own authority as infallible in colonial matters. With the war cry: “The trade of Germany is intercepted by the agents of the Independent State of the Congo, and we must settle it!” this gentleman, whose name is known to everybody, has made an attempt which has evidently remained unfruitful of stirring up Germany against Belgium and of disturbing the feelings of good neighbourship and the commercial relations existing between the two countries. The persons who have seriously at heart the interests of the German colonies do not allow themselves to be taken in by this trick. And if the Congo State is governed in a more profitable fashion than our own colonies, we must heed their example and imitate it. After all, it is not only with the object of realising permanent deficits that we have acquired our colonies.

The Corriere Toscano (Italy), October 31, 1903:

There is on the Congo as in every civilised country only one justice; blacks and whites are subject to the same laws, and the State’s motto, Work and Progress, is adopted and followed by all with the greatest ardour.

Finally the views of some of the leading journals of the United States, manifestly free from bias, founded on self-interest, may be interesting.

The Evening Transcript (Boston).

The Congo Administration has not waited for any commission of inquiry to sit. It has already replied fully to the charges brought against it, but no reply will silence its accusers. They want the Congo’s riches, not its King’s defence, and will continue clamouring until the utter futility of their shouting threats at Leopold is brought home to them. Already they have prepared a map, a copy of which is before me as I write, of the Free State of the Congo partitioned out as they wish. The districts to be offered as bribes to France and Germany are duly marked on it, but they are small. The plotters do not hide their hands, they show clearly that England, and England’s puppet Egypt, is to take the lion’s share.

This, which I have related, accounts for the tumult of popular opinion in England, always easily stirred up by such tales. Multitudes, misled by the cheap, if genuine, sympathy felt with the oppressed, join unthinkingly in the cries against the Congo.

From the New York Press:

Those missionaries who are urging the United States Government to interfere in the quarrel between the British and the Congo Governments doubtless mean well, but they fail to offer any valid reason why this country should entangle itself in a matter in which it has no especial interest. The British Government has demanded, and the Belgian Government has conceded, all reasonable protection and privileges for the missionaries labouring in Congoland.

The other demands of the British with regard to the basin of the great African river are not entirely devoid of a tinge of self-interest, and it would be entirely improper for the United States to interfere at all in the matter. If an American missionary in the Congo is oppressed, or his treaty rights as an American citizen in any way violated, the State Department could and would interfere in that particular case, but further than that the missionaries ought not to expect this country to go. Missionaries, while most excellent and self-sacrificing people, are not perfect, and one of their imperfections is that in all parts of the world they are a little too anxious to bring about the interference of their home Power in the affairs of the Government in whose territory they are labouring.

The Public Ledger (Philadelphia), October 26, 1903:

The acquisition by Great Britain of the Congo State would not only join her separate dominions, but would give her an immense territory of the most wonderful wealth. Not only so, but it would open to British Central Africa and Rhodesia an outlet to the sea down the Congo, and give even the Transvaal a chance of trading with England through a port on that great river, saving 2000 miles of the sea voyage to London.

English horror at Belgian mismanagement of Congoland is easily understood in the light of these facts. Does any one imagine that the British conscience would be so sensitive about cruelties alleged to have been committed in lands not contiguous to British territory, and not extremely desirable as annexations? The crime of King Leopold is that he has developed a colony which England wants.

Sufficient has been quoted to indicate that the silence of the Powers in regard to the British dispatch of August 8, 1903, was fairly interpreted by the press of Europe. The meaning of that silence is unmistakable. British ministers having been misled to undertake a serious diplomatic act which was admittedly based on commercial grievance and unproved accusations, it now became necessary to back up the charges contained in Lord Lansdowne’s dispatch by something seemingly more tangible than the complaints of persons peculiarly interested in doing mischief to the Government of the Congo Free State. It is the British view that the official report of Mr. Roger Casement, British Consul at Boma, in the Congo Free State, dated December 11, 1903, four months after the Powers had been appealed to, supplied the necessary confirmation of all that may have been lacking to justify the precipitate diplomatic act of August 8th which had met with rebuff.

The report[52] and enclosures of Consul Casement would occupy approximately one hundred and eighty pages of this volume. It is an interesting account of a brief journey on the Upper Congo during a period of two and a half months, most of which was spent in the Equatorial district. The report contains many paragraphs in praise of the wonderful changes wrought by the Belgians in the Congo during the last twenty years. There are other passages in the report which condemn the land and concessionaire system of the State. Enclosed in the voluminous document are statements from Protestant missionaries and certain natives concerning alleged atrocities. As the official reply of the Government of the Congo Free State, brief as it is, deals fairly and fully with the essential allegations in Mr. Casement’s report, it has been set out in full in the Appendix.

In To-Day (London), December 16, 1903, Mr. John Henderson, an experienced traveller who had visited the Congo to ascertain for his journal the true state of affairs under Belgian rule in the Free State, wrote the following amongst other interesting comments on Consul Casement’s Report:

I suggest that we should be careful in our condemnation of the methods of the Congo Government. The agents of the State are subject to perils and dangers unheard of, undreamed of by the people in comfortable Britain—the climate, the condition of living, and the natives combine to make life always uncertain, and at times absolutely terrible. In Europe, or the West Indies, or Australia, or in any fairly salubrious country, the methods of Free State agents as pursued in Congoland might be judged barbarous, but it is impossible to judge the methods of the peoples of all countries and climates by one standard of ethics.

For my part, I shall hesitate to praise or blame the Congo State by this report alone. I have little doubt that some of the facts Mr. Casement will bring forward will be extremely shocking (while in the Congo I was several times shocked myself), but these reports of excesses will not prejudice me for or against the State. If Mr. Casement will furnish us with reports which will show us the exact conditions prevailing among the other West African districts—the French Congo, the Portuguese Congo, German West Africa, Nigeria, and the Gold Coast—then I shall hope to arrive at a more or less correct understanding of the matter. Cruelty and excess undoubtedly exist in the Congo Free State, but my experience in Congoland taught me that those guilty of any crime who come before the notice of State agents were severely punished.

To carry on the anti-Congo campaign in the United States, the Congo Reform Association of Liverpool has established headquarters at Boston. Its organisation includes a secretary, pamphleteers, press writers, and Protestant missionaries. It prints and sends broadcast to the press of America a weekly “News Letter,” composed of articles designed to intensify agitation against the Belgians in the Congo. It is sagaciously understood by its supporters that one missionary with imagination and glib speech, turned loose on society in America or Europe, can make more noise, effect more mischief, do more to prostitute Christian work in foreign lands, than twenty earnest, patient, toiling, praying missionaries can accomplish for humanity by minding God’s work in the dark heart of Africa. That concession-seeking, commercially-inclined Congo missionaries should be enabled to gratify their desire for notoriety after the fashion of the Congo coroner, Mr. Morel, and gain the slightest connection with American Missionary Societies, is only to be accounted for by the large financial support which, having prevailed in England, may be presumed to lie back of the campaign in America. There are certain phases of the Congolese question since 1897 by which even a disinterested observer is deeply impressed. The large financial support and the numerous agencies it employs is one of them.

So far the attitude of the American press has been eminently disinterested. Its leading journals have shown a keen insight into the motives which underlie a campaign that has been overdone to the disgust of all fair-minded observers. There is, in all colonies, whether under British, German, American, French, or Belgian rule, ample opportunity for criticism. There is, on the other hand, even greater opportunity for help and co-operation. The demoralising story of British Lagos is alone sufficient to make British criticism of every other nation’s colonies pusillanimous. Acts of cruelty by natives, foreigners, or by State servants are in violation, not in consequence, of the Congo State’s system of government. For such infractions of the law the individual, not the State, is responsible. But when the support of a British colony is derived from a debasing traffic in alcohol for whose existence the home Government is directly responsible, that Government should not assume the grotesque position of custos morum of Africa.

The Lagos Standard, reputed to be favourable to the British Government, referring to the Colony’s revenue for 1901-1902, says:

It would appear that the chief and ruling tendency of the successive administrations has been to draw from the Colony the fullest possible revenue, the greater part of which is spent in salaries of the officials. Every effort has been made in that direction, and no resource that ingenuity can appeal to was spared in order to reach that purpose....

The revenue derived from import duties on spirits, gin, rum, alcohol, whisky, reached 65.53% of the total revenue of the Colony.[53] To this add the licences for the sale of spirits,[54] which brings up the contributive share of spirits in the budget’s receipts to 67.53%....

Alcohol is the great staple of trade. By visiting Lagos, one would be inclined to believe that it is practically the only commodity. Everywhere on the huge quay, extending several miles, where large business houses are established, on their wharfs, in their warehouses, are accumulated heaps of green cases and pyramids of demijohns of gin and rum. All the important stores have the same signboard, bearing in large letters the words, Wholesale Spirit Merchants, and from morning to night, every day of the week, there is on the lagoon a continual traffic of large steamers coming in to discharge their cargo and leaving empty. On the quay there is a continual movement of black porters carrying cases of spirits on their heads, which they either pile up by thousands in the warehouses, or remove them therefrom in order to load the boats, which are powerful launches of the native traders who spread the poison all over the markets of the villages alongside the lagoon and its affluents.

The quality of these horrible goods has been too often described to render it necessary to revert to the subject. Their price says sufficient: 4½d. per litre, bottle and packing included! The Government analyst found them to contain extremely strong poisons known under the name of fusel oils, in the enormous proportion of from 1.46 to 4.31% of the weight.[55] Is it to be wondered at that after absorbing several bottles of this poisonous liquor, the drinker should be overcome by a sort of madness? Is it to be wondered at that criminality is on the increase, that the birth rate is on the decrease, that this magnificent race of Yoruba agriculturists is speedily degenerating?

Where Europe, whose interests in Africa are material as well as moral, has not seen fit to join a British traders’ campaign against a small neutralised State, it would seem that the United States Government could not be led into action on the pretext that its recognition of a friendly Government invested it with police powers over the internal affairs of the State so recognised. “Territory” and “commerce” are the tightly furled, secretly carried banners of the raid upon the Congo State. This exaggerated humanitarian solicitude for the African black is purely pretence. By its hypocrisy, falsehood, and disputative vulgarisation, the movement, instead of remedying what evils exist in all African colonies, is made utterly puerile. By such vituperative fanfaronade as the following, rational minds are made to turn from the subject in disgust:[56]

Of such is the kingdom of Congo.

* * * * *

The tale is told—the tale of “King Leopold’s rule in Africa.” A piratical expedition on a scale incredibly colossal. The perfection of its hypocrisy; the depth of its low cunning; its pitiable intrigues; the illimitableness of its egotism; its moral hideousness; the vastness and madness of its crimes—the heart sickens and the mind rebels at the thought of them. A perpetual nightmare reeking with vapours of vile ambitions—cynical, fantastic, appalling. A tragedy which appears unreal, so unutterably ghastly its concomitants, but the grimness of whose reality is incapable of superlative treatment. Destroying, decimating, degrading, its poisonous breath sweeps through the forests of the Congo. Men fall beneath it as grass beneath the scythe, by slaughter, famine, torture, sickness, and misery. Women and children flee from it, but not fast enough, though the mother destroy the unborn life within her that her feet may drag less heavily through the bush.

There has been nothing quite comparable with it since the world was made. The world can never see its like again.

Sufficient that it exists, that each month, each year, the terror of this Oppression grows, immolating fresh victims, demanding new offerings to minister to its lusts, spreading in ever wider circles the area of its abominations.

After that, what can one say or do except to appreciate one’s sense of humour, and the lack of it in a zealot? A tower of babel on a pile of words!

FOOTNOTES:

[48] E. D. Morel.

[49] In a speech delivered by Mr. Rhodes, in which he outlined his scheme for linking Egypt with the Cape, he said that his measures, if adopted, “will give to England Africa, the whole of it.” (Boulger, p. 373.)

[50] See Appendix.

[51] See Appendix.

[52] Africa, No. 1, 1904.

[53] Message of the Governor to the Legislative Council, February 26, 1903, p. 9.

[54] Blue Book, 1902, p. 21.

[55] Message of the Governor, p. 8.

[56] E. D. Morel.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XXXVII. SUMMARY, RETROSPECT, AND PROPHECY

The rise and progress of the Congo Free State marks a unique page in modern history. The boldness of the State’s conception, the apparent hopelessness of its early conditions in a region unspeakably savage and barbarous, its gradual evolution under the magic touch of a master hand; the horrifying vicissitudes of its bloody redemption from the accursed slave-raider, and finally its admission into the society of independent nations, constitute a set of circumstances unparelleled in the history of the world. The span of its life from a wilderness to a self-supporting and prosperous State is about twenty-five years. Its rapid evolution was at first watched with sneers and derision. During the last ten years it has been the object of the hostile vigilance of those whose early regard had been scorn. Young as it is, a considerable literature already exists descriptive of the infant State. This literature, however, is very unsatisfactory, being for the most part bitterly partisan, either perceiving no good point at all in King Leopold’s rule, or regarding that rule as a perfect thing in which no improvement is possible. Neither attitude is just. And this may be said not only of the Congo Free State and its irresolute and disappointing African neighbours, but of States whose civilisation is the pride of our own times.

There have been error and crime on the Congo as there have been error and crime on the Thames and the Hudson. Savages left the banks of the Thames nearly eighteen hundred years ago. The white man came and refined their cruelties in a thousand ways now practised by civilisation behind the curtain and the padded door.

The aboriginal black cannibal still occupies the banks of the Congo. But his nature, so recently in its savage state, is manifesting great change. He is on his knees in the mission chapel; the song of the White Fathers and the Sisters of Mercy inspires in him the rude awakening of new emotions. His own voice abandons the war-cry and makes its fervid, untaught plea to the white man’s God.

On the Congo, religion is perforce a plain, sincere, and a comforting thing. It is taught by a small, earnest band of men and women whom the epithets of the flaccid, arm-chair colonising hero will not disturb. These rugged Christian teachers pursue their lowly, patient work to please God—not Liverpool. On the Congo, the gospel knows nothing of the elaborations of insincerity, sophistry, and cant. It finds the soul of the black man in a patient and a practical way by instructing his body in the habits of honest toil, of cleanliness and decency, and by developing an intelligence to supersede his savage instinct.

The results of only twenty years’ guidance in this direction are manifest to-day. They have placed the Negro in the midst of the uncovered wealth of a vast and fertile country; of waterways teeming with traffic; of a magnificent forest stored with rubber; timber of great variety, ivory, oil, and fruit; of promising fields of coffee, cotton, cocoa, tea, and sugar; deposits of gold, copper, coal, and iron. This short era of civilisation has created in the Congo over four hundred commercial houses doing a thriving business with Europe; built railways over mountain routes where only Belgian engineers and Belgian capital had the courage and the skill to venture. In the midst of it all the black man’s hands and acquired energy have provided him with new value to himself and to the State. He is at the plough, on the cart and the railway, on the wharf and upon the road and the farm, in the shop and factory, learning the uses of the white man’s implements of labour, and imitating his enlightened ways. Industry and order, Christianity, civilisation, and material progress have succeeded tribal wars, cannibalism, and the horrible atrocities of the slave chase. This has been achieved by the brawny men of Belgium in less than twenty years.

The smug men of the study, untravelled in regions wilder than Westminster, St. Albans, or Liverpool, are as incompetent to judge of civilisation in Congoland as are the Manyema of the lack of it on Park Lane, in London. Their beautiful theories of civilising the African Negro with illuminated manuscripts, florid dissertations on the Berlin Act, and freedom of (alcoholic) commerce, constitute a pyramid of fustian with but a single thought starring its apex—Empire.

While the English campaign against the Congo Administration was confined to nebulous libels, proceeding for the greater part from wrangling missionaries and aggressive traders, it was the policy of that Administration, conscious of its own rectitude, to ignore the attacks made upon it. In light of subsequent events, the wisdom of that course appears open to question. Did not one of England’s poets observe that a lie seven times repeated without being challenged acquires the force of truth? Some of the fiction concocted by enemies of the Congo Free State has been so industriously reiterated by so many different agents of English traders that, collectively, the British Government could no longer refuse to give ear to their vapourings. Whether the British Government did so willingly or unwillingly is another story. What has been the outcome of that Government’s acquiescence in the demands of the slanderers of the Congo Free State the world now knows. Mr. Roger Casement was sent to the Free State, where he traversed ground carefully mapped out for him, and interviewed natives specially instructed in their parts by the persons whose agitation had occasioned his mission. The result was precisely what might have been expected, and that without impeachment of Mr. Casement’s integrity—an inaccurate and partial report. That report, magnified, distorted, garbled, has afforded material for the enemies of the Congo Free State upon which they have not yet ceased to work. The refutation of all its more important pronouncements will probably not disconcert Mr. Casement’s believers in the least, as they are immune to the logic of facts. Nevertheless, the Sovereign of the Congo Free State, in order that the world may not accept as a thing against which no defence can be made the judgment passed upon his rule by the cliques banded together to embarrass or overthrow it, in July, 1904, resolved to send a special commission to the Congo to inquire into the atrocities alleged to have been committed.

The Committee of Inquiry appointed by King Leopold consists of the following members: (1) M. Janssens, Advocate-General of the Supreme Court of Belgium, president; (2) Baron Nisco, Judge of the Court of Appeal at Boma, and (3) Dr. De Schumacher. M. Janssens, who as Advocate-General holds the second highest judicial office in Belgium, is a Belgian; Baron Nisco is an Italian, and Dr. Schumacher is a Swiss. Assisting these three heads of the mission are MM. De Neyn and Grégoire and Professor Dupont, all of whom are Belgians. These gentlemen constitute a Court of Inquiry, and their instructions are to investigate closely every detail of Congo administration, and to examine on oath every person who may be able to give evidence of a nature valuable to the commission. The testimony of missionaries and traders is now being taken, and the committee will see to it that they obtain the evidence of the heads of British and American, as well as of Belgian, French, German, and Italian missions. The investigations are being held in many parts of the State. The committee is to travel throughout the country into all the districts covered by Mr. Casement in his recent tour of inspection, besides visiting many places Mr. Casement never saw. In brief, the committee is to hold inquiry wherever evidence can be obtained. Where native witnesses give evidence of a nature prejudicial to white men, the committee will see that such witnesses are protected from the possibility of suffering at the hands of officials against whom they may bear witness. The Government of the Congo holds itself responsible for the safety and well-being of such witnesses. On this latter point King Leopold has expressed himself in the strongest possible terms. Inquiries are to be held publicly, open to all. The committee has the right to compel witnesses to appear before it. A general instruction to the committee asks for a report laying bare absolutely the condition of the rule in the Congo to-day, and enjoins it to devote all its efforts to a full and entire revelation of the truth. The duration of the stay of the Committee of Inquiry in Congoland is limited only by the exigencies of its task. The committee sailed from Southampton, in the Belgian SS. Philippeville, on September 16, 1904, and arrived at Boma early in October.

Such are the constitution, powers, and purpose of the Committee of Inquiry now at work in the Congo Free State. It is almost unnecessary to record that the committee has already been denounced by the enemies of the State on every conceivable ground. “A farcical commission” and “a bogus inquiry” are two of the descriptions which have been applied to it. That indefatigable meddler, Mr. H. R. Fox Bourne, who writes contemptuously of Stanley and his work, objected to Dr. Schumacher’s presence on the committee on the ground that he is a brother of King Leopold’s private secretary. On its being pointed out that Dr. Schumacher is nothing of the kind, Mr. Fox Bourne retracts his assertion, and substitutes another equally unfounded. Upon this second statement being questioned, Mr. Fox Bourne withdraws that also, and falls back upon his complaint that the members of the Committee of Inquiry will be paid for their labours. Such contentions are simply fatuous. Does not the Aborigines’ Protection Society pay Mr. Fox Bourne for his labours?

During the few years in which the Belgians have been criticised for their progressive rule in the Congo, the Belgian people have heartily co-operated with their King in his long and arduous work. There has been, however, a small but active section in the Belgian Chamber spasmodically opposed to the Congo, and to any other expansion of territory, influence, or market, on the part of Belgium. This set of politicians, acting in suspicious harmony with the foreign enemies of the Congo State, have been exploited by the latter as representing the attitude of the Belgian people. To carry out this deception, certain foreign papers, peculiarly interested in the affairs of Liverpool merchants with African schemes, publish the speeches of this disloyal minority, and suppress the addresses of Baron de Favereau, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count de Smet de Naeyer, Minister of Finance and Public Works, and other Belgian statesmen. In a masterly arraignment of those members of the Chamber who have been hostile to Belgium in this respect, these gentlemen, by their speeches in Parliament, inspired the organisation, in July, 1903, of a federation composed of religious, commercial, industrial, social, and scientific societies throughout Belgium. This large and representative body is known as The Federation for the Defence of Belgian Interests Abroad. Its short address, presented to President Roosevelt in October, 1904, has already been referred to. In a speech made at a meeting of the societies allied to the Federation, General Baron Wahis, President of the Brussels African Club, and Governor-General of the Congo Free State, eloquently contrasted the condition of the Central African tribes twenty years ago with their improved state to-day. Baron Wahis and Vice-Governor-General Fuchs are men on the spot. Their long experience on the Congo invests their statements with authority. In the address referred to, Baron Wahis narrated the following graphic picture of Congolese conditions two decades ago.

Let us see in what position these peoples were before the formation of the State, and what is their position now.

In the Lower Congo, close to the sea, there was one locality which already possessed some importance, viz., Boma. Before the first expedition of the State landed at Boma there were at that point some commercial houses. For a long period they derived their profits from the sale of slaves; later, they obtained their chief profits from the sale of alcohol, and, accessorily, of the products of the soil. The traders carried on a more or less prosperous business according to their strength and courage. They made expeditions into the interior, and frequently burnt native villages for not bringing in at fixed periods the expected quantities of palm nuts and other products. Their staff of labourers was composed of slaves upon whom they inflicted torments for the least infraction of their orders. These punishments had no limit. It is related, and the fact is not open to doubt, that during the time of which I am speaking there were once found in the waters of Boma the corpses of thirty blacks attached to one chain. The chain bore the name of “Olivarès,” but it was alleged, and probably with good reason, that the perpetrator was not Olivarès, that the chain had been stolen from him. The name of the person really guilty of this horrible crime was mentioned, and it was represented as the consequence of a mutiny by the staff of a factory. That was the kind of administration to which the blacks were subjected, under the eyes of Europe it may be said, seeing that ships of war had easy access to Boma.

Higher up, in the present district of the Cataracts, the population was in part subject to the Negro king of San Salvador. Read the book of Mr. Bentley, an educated English missionary, who has been in Africa thirty years, and who saw the administration under which the natives lived when he arrived there. He expresses his admiration for the enormous progress which has been made, so far as the protection of the blacks goes, since they came under the government of the Congo State. Why are not the statements of this sterling man, so eminently competent in all questions relating to the protection of the blacks, quoted?...

But whatever may be said to the contrary, the system adopted by the Government of the Independent State is more equitable than any other system whatever, and imposes upon the natives a minimum of taxes. Each man’s tribute is very small. In certain regions where the rubber is abundant, he can gather in one day the tax that is required of him for a month. Besides the work thus performed by the natives being remunerated, their households find themselves in possession of some supplementary resources. The desire to add to their well-being increases each day.

Let us hope that the policy established by the Congo State in this respect will not be changed. The strong black races which cover many parts of its territory will acquire the habit of regular work, in place of their primitive idleness. There will result from this what has resulted in countries long civilised. The countries in which people know how to work are strong, and in the van of progress. Such a future seems to me reserved for the Congo State if it perseveres in its present course.

The story of the Congo Free State offers great opportunity for speculation and for prophecy. Taking a broad view of the opinion prevalent in Europe and the United States, the conclusion that Great Britain seeks to acquire important territory in Central Africa is inevitable. This theory of the anti-Congo campaign is strenuously denied by all unofficial persons engaged in that campaign. And yet there are unmistakable signs that of the many theories so industriously exploited, British acquisition of the keystone of African territorial possession seems to be most in line with the history of British methods of expansion. The Free State is one-third the size of the United States. It lies squarely across the heart of Africa, with an outlet to the sea on the West Coast which brings it many miles and many days nearer European markets. It separates the British African Empire,—the Soudan and the Nile country adjoining the Free State on the north, from the Cape and the Boer war territorial acquisitions on the south. It is as if the Louisiana Purchase, owned by a small country, say Portugal, divided the United States. One might dwell long and interestingly upon the political possibilities of such a rich country and its great waterways separating the energies of the east and the west in our country’s social, political, and strategic solidarity. The British and the Germans appreciate the vast possibilities of the great African Continent. While the former expands its territory by costly wars, the latter, by adapting its methods to suit the native populations, encompasses the African market. While the former persists in imposing its ancient, crude, and ineffectual methods of colonial development, the latter, more modern, more direct, more flexible, is gaining trade and influence which might belong to intelligent British rule. The palsied arm and the obsolete method of regeneration, prevalent in the territories devastated by the Boer war, illustrate the incompetency of the present generation of British colonisers. Their failures are multiplying. It is the old story of worship of the Past, confusion in the Present, misconception of the Future.

The growth of the Congo Free State has from the first been skilfully directed by clever men of thought and action. Now that the transformation is complete, and what but three short decades ago was the very heart of savagery has become a valuable commercial and political asset, the forcible ejectment from the African Continent of the authors of all this good is openly discussed! Such is the reward which it is proposed should be meted out to the gallant, self-sacrificing little nation which has replaced the horrors of barbarism by the blessings of civilisation, and incidentally discovered vast material wealth. After disposing of the Belgian African possession, that international pigmy, Portugal, occupying Delagoa Bay to the obvious chagrin of Britain, will be served with the long-expected writ of ejectment. These little fellows in Africa will have but one choice of leaving—by the door or by the window. Will the world tolerate such iniquity?—an iniquity of the baser sort, veiled with specious pretence. Much depends upon the attitude of the American people—youngest of the great nations, herself too recently emerged from the trials and tribulations which beset every newly created State not to discriminate between greed and hypocritical pretence on the one hand and conscientious well-doing on the other.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us