THE BELGIAN CONGO

When, the next year, three impartial magistrates sent to the Congo by King Leopold reported that the excesses had been repressed and advised a complete reform of the administration, their testimony was disregarded. When concessions were abolished and drastic measures taken against the criminal agents, the fact remained unnoticed. Even after the Congo had become a Belgian Colony (1908), under the control of the Belgian Parliament, when every scrap of authority had been taken away from the old king with the "Domaine de la Couronne" (whose revenue was to be devoted by its founder to public works in Belgium), when the colony had been entirely reorganized, the campaign of the Congo Reform Association went on relentlessly. Far from silencing his accusers, the king's death, a year later, was made the occasion of a fresh outburst of abuse.

The good faith of the public throughout the Congo campaign is unquestionable. That of its main engineers is at least open to doubt. They organized their efforts at the time when the greatest difficulties of colonization had been overcome. They pursued them after all cause for abuse had been removed. In one of his first books, British Case in French Congo, Mr. Morel suggests the partition of the Free State between this country and Germany. In his last books, written during the war, he warmly champions the internationalization of Central Africa in order to save the German Colonies. Neither can it be urged that those two men who roused the conscience of this country against the Congo atrocities were deeply shocked by more recent and far better authenticated atrocities committed in Belgium. If they were, the only remark an impartial observer might venture to make is that their actions, during the war, scarcely reflected such righteous indignation. It may be too hasty to conclude from this, and from the close association of Erzberger, Morel and Casement in the Congo campaign, that this campaign was engineered by Germany. We do not yet possess all the documents necessary to establish this fact. We know enough, however, to deplore that a movement which might have been so beneficial to all concerned was allowed to fall into the hands of unscrupulous agitators, who succeeded in estranging for a time Belgium from Great Britain, and incidentally in marring the last years of the life of one of the greatest Belgian patriots.

CHAPTER XXVIII

INTELLECTUAL RENAISSANCE

The remarkable revival of Belgian Arts and Letters which followed shortly after the 1830 Revolution is one of the most striking examples of the influence exercised by political events on intellectual activity. For over a century the nation had been devoid of self-expression, and during the fifteen years of Union with Holland scarcely any notable works were produced. No doubt this time, being one of economic recovery, was not favourable to the efflorescence of Art and Letters, but the intense activity of the period of independence appears nevertheless as an outburst of national pride and energy. It seems as if all the strength, subdued during the periods of foreign domination, had at last found an outlet, as if the Belgians had waited all these years to assert again their intellectual power, which could not or would not flourish for the benefit of foreigners.

palace of justice, brussels.
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Ph. B.