This phrase, he “acted under superior authority,” is constantly harped upon by Morel and others of the Congo agitators. Much is made of it, and we are constantly asked to trace home the order which issued from superior authority From whom came Major Waller’s orders? In his trial, February 8th, 1902, he disclosed the startling nature of General Smith’s orders, as he had understood them. He swore that General Smith had said: “I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill, the more you will please me. The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness. Kill every native over ten years old.”
When serious complaints of maladministration are brought before the Belgian authorities of the Congo, investigation and trial are usually ordered. The Congo agitators lay great stress upon the fact that in the Congo these trials are farces; that the accused is rarely sentenced to punishment; that sometimes after his acquittal he is lionized, made a hero of, advanced in office. This is an unpardonable crime when committed by the Belgians. Lothaire—and really Lothaire was as bad as any—was thus treated. One would imagine from the chorus of complaint along this line that every English or American officer accused of cruelty, misgovernment or maladministration was promptly and severely punished.
Major Waller received the verdict that he had acted “in accordance with the rules of war, the orders of his superior, and the military exigencies of the situation.” This, again, can hardly be improved upon in all the cases put forward joyously by the reformers. When complaint is made it is never treated honestly. There is always whitewashing. Why howl over Belgian failure to punish? Waller’s verdict shows that we do precisely the same thing in the same circumstances. But look at what was done with General Smith, the man who ordered that down to ten years of age the natives should be killed. He, too, was ordered to undergo court-martial. From a newspaper of May 3d, 1902, we quote: “At the opening, Colonel Woodruff announced his willingness to simplify the proceedings by admitting that most of the accusations were true. He said he was willing, in behalf of General Smith, to admit that inasmuch as the country was hostile, General Smith did not want any prisoners, and that he had issued orders to Major Waller to kill all persons capable of bearing arms, fixing the age limit at ten years, because many boys of that age had borne arms against the American troops, and that he had ordered Major Waller also to burn the homes of the people and to make Samar a howling wilderness.”
What was done with General Smith? His court-martial began on April 25. Its result was, of course, a whitewash; it always is, whether the person tried is American, French, German, or Belgian. It is curious, however, to observe how others were affected by this case. There was one man who knew better than any other all the facts relating to the Philippines. His utterance, which we shall quote, was expressed, indeed, before this trial, but it was expressed with full knowledge of similar facts. That man, on March 5th, made the assertion: “It is not the fact that the warfare in the Philippines has been conducted with marked severity; on the contrary, the warfare has been conducted with marked humanity and magnanimity on the part of the United States army.” What a pity that we are less ready to talk of marked humanity and magnanimity of others! Can Waller’s crime be surpassed by anything from Congo; can any order be more cruel than General Smith’s?
I have said that this would be called ancient history. At Leopoldville I asked about atrocities; the response was that at present there was nothing serious to complain of in that region beyond the kwanga tax; when I reached Ikoko, where undoubtedly many cruel things have taken place, they told me that at present such things did not occur there, that to find them I must go to the A. B. I. R.; that the fish tax was too heavy, but that of cruelties, atrocities and mutilations there had been none for years. At Bolobo I heard precisely the same story—the most frightful things had taken place at Lake Leopold II.—that recently nothing serious had happened at Bolobo itself. I presume that there are outrages and cruelties of recent date in the A. B. I. R. and the Antwerp Concession. But here, again, the parallel between the Congo and the Philippines is close. While the Waller and Smith incident is ancient, there is plenty doing at the present time. We quote a paper August 18, 1906: “The Pulajanes—wild tribesmen of the Philippine island of Leyte—continue their fighting. Five Americans, including a lieutenant and a surgeon, were killed in a hand-to-hand encounter in the town of Burauen on the 9th. It was reported on the 14th that Governor-General Ide has determined to exterminate the Pulajanes, even if it should take every American soldier on the islands to do it.”
This sounds like depopulation. And why is depopulation worse in Africa than in the Philippines? Why should a President who views the latter with complacency—and I may say with commendation—feel so keenly with reference to the former? A special message of commendation was promptly sent to an American leader for his killing of hundreds of men, women, and children; depopulation on a large scale and of the same kind as he reprobates when done by Leopold’s soldiers. Our friends of the Congo Reform Association are strangely silent in regard to such letters of commendation; they are much grieved because Lothaire was lionized, but they hurrah over the accumulating honors of a Funston.
When our hands are clean and when we have given the Filipinos their well-deserved independence and free government, and left them to work out their own salvation, then and not till then, should we intervene in the Congo Free State for reasons of humanity. I say when we have left the Filipinos to work out their own salvation; we have strange ideas regarding the kindnesses we do to other peoples. Thus Cuba is supposed to be under an eternal debt of obligation to us for the government which we set up in that unhappy land. We devised a model government, according to our own ideas; to be sure, it is a government so expensive to keep up that few, if any, portions of the United States with the population of Cuba could possibly support it. We put in sanitary improvements, nominally for the benefit of Cubans, but actually with a shrewd afterthought for ourselves, which we demanded should be maintained at any price. Of course, it is impossible for a country with the population and resources of Cuba to maintain them. This will give us repeated opportunities for interference in the affairs of the island, interference which ultimately may weary the people into assent to uniting with us. They will lose both independence and happiness, and we will gain an added problem; and the only persons profited will be those who are, and will be, exploiting the island for their selfish ends.
So, in the Philippines, we will develop a government which, theoretically, may seem perfect. The difficulty is that it must be much less suitable for Filipinos than a less perfect government, planned and carried out along lines of their own ideas. Lately a Filipino in this country has said something which has the ring of truth. “We have money enough to maintain a better and less expensive government than that costly one which is trying to make the people what the government wants them to be, and not to make itself what the people want and expect, dictating laws one day which next day are canceled and changed in a thousand places and in a thousand ways, so that justice is converted into a mere babel. Believe me, dear sir, that even our ephemeral government at Malolos showed no such incapacity. This is due to the fact that he who governs the house does not belong to the house, and everybody knows the old Spanish proverb, ‘The fool is wiser in his own house than the wise man in his neighbor’s.’ ”
If it is necessary for us as a nation to look for African adventure; if to give a strenuous President the feeling that he is “doing something” we must meddle in the affairs of the Dark Continent, there is a district where we might intervene with more of reason, and consistency, and grace than we are doing by going to the Congo. We once established on African soil, whether wisely or not I do not intend to discuss, a free republic for the blacks. In Liberia we have an American enterprise, pure and simple. It has not been a great success. It is just possible—though I doubt it—that Liberia would at several times have profited and been advantaged by our instruction and interest. But it seems to possess little interest for us. Just now, like the Congo, it is attracting British attention. Whether it has large or little value, whether it possesses great opportunities or not, it is now a center of interest to Great Britain. She does not need our help in pulling chestnuts from the fire there, and there has been strange silence and ignorance in this country regarding it as a new sphere for English influence. If we assist England in expanding her African possessions at the expense of the Congo Free State, Liberia will be the next fraction of Africa to succumb to English rule. England’s methods of procedure are various. It might be a useful lesson for our statesmen and politicians to study Liberia’s prospects with care. We are still young in the business of grabbing other people’s lands. England could teach us many lessons. The latest one may well be worthy our attention, since, in a certain sense, it deals with a district where we naturally possess an interest.