FOOTNOTES:
[47] The Commissary-General of New Antwerp.
CHAPTER 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.
Native Planter’s House, near Stanley Falls.
Prison, with Carpenter’s Shop, at New Antwerp (Bangala).
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.
Mission of New Antwerp (Bangala).
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!