He answered quite naturally: “It tastes like boiled rice.”
It is out of material such as Kalonda that Christian missionaries and just laws carefully administered are evolving a peaceful, pastoral people. That so large a part of this prodigious task should have been achieved during the brief period that the Congo State has existed places its triumphant completion in the near future beyond all doubt. The patience, skill, and energy of the men who in circumstances so difficult have achieved so much, if not appreciated at their true worth now, will assuredly be regarded by posterity as one of the brightest pages in the history of our time.
There are no harder workers in the world than the Catholic missionaries of the Congo. The following passage from the diary kept by the Rev. Father Grison, missionary in charge of St. Gabriel’s, Stanley Falls, by no means depicts an exceptional experience:
Oct. 19, 1902.—It is Sunday, 9.30 P.M. I have been busy in the church since 6 A.M. Said Mass at 7, and preached. Had a little coffee and wanted to retire to my room for a brief rest, when from 60 to 80 people called. They had come from Vincent yesterday in order to hear Mass to-day. They complained that they had not brought enough supplies and they wanted me to give them some rice; which, of course, I did. Then an important palaver turned up at Adela, and I was called upon to act as interpreter between the natives and the State. Then I had to patch up the quarrels of three or four married couples who had fallen out. Next, I had to grant about sixty permits to work on account of its being Sunday; and, finally, I found a little time to do my Breviary. My brother missionaries are in the same fix. The Rev. Father Kohl, who has charge of the Sisters’ Convent, gave them a lecture, and then had to busy himself with the choir boys to whom he teaches the ceremonies. About noon I received a visit from two gentlemen from Stanley Falls, who are on their way towards the Great Lakes surveying for the railroad. Towards one o’clock the blacks warned us that the boat was coming on, and we knew that in about an hour we should have news from home. The steamer arrived, bringing some stores, which we hurriedly landed, deferring until to-morrow to put them in their proper places in the storerooms. After that we said the Rosary and gave Benediction. Then came the Catechism lesson and a Marriage; then a sick call, Breviary again, and then supper. Such is our Sunday, supposed to be a day of rest!
The Rev. Father Grison is typical of Catholic missionaries in Congoland. Other missionaries there are, of the Protestant faith, equally sincere and ardent; but it is an unfortunate fact that among the latter have been included certain quasi-political agents who believe that they find advantage in depreciating the Government under which they voluntarily elect to live. Others, again, for the purpose of increasing the zeal of the congregations of the churches in their fatherland to provide for them sufficient support, have permitted themselves to excite the sympathies of the home associations by exaggerated tales of oppression and cruelty. Acquisitiveness is not an unknown quality among missionaries. Mr. Stokes, the so-called martyr, who suffered for supplying arms in time of war to the enemies of the Congo Free State, was originally a Protestant missionary, but he abandoned that vocation to become a trader.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] In the French Congo there is only one small launch devoted to missionary work.
CHAPTER XXVIII
STATE LANDS AND CONCESSIONS
The State’s Heavy Task.
It would seem reasonable that practical colonial government should begin the pursuit of its objects by a policy so flexible that it might readily conform to the altering conditions upon which it operates. The exceptional nature of the task imposed upon the Government of the Congo Free State, its varied and numerous difficulties, and the uncertainty of the radical principles imposed upon it, left its administrators no choice of colonial precedent to follow, no governmental model to adopt. It stood alone, in a unique enterprise not devoid of new hazards, pitfalls, and strange terrors. It had been regarded at first as an adventure, then as a serious experiment. A civil community was to be created of savage hordes; to maintain itself by its own people led on to civilisation by a few Europeans with a courage and zeal the equatorial sun should not subdue. The vast field it occupied and the untamed characteristics of its large population, the early philanthropic aims of its royal patron, and a general desire to carry out the principles enunciated at the Berlin Conference, all contributed to invest the Congo State Government with a special character, and to saddle it with original duties supposedly beyond its powers to perform. Thus, in the midst of an unexplored and barbarous land, with everything before it unknown, with all behind it seemingly unsuited for employment here, ways and means and a state system of government had to be adopted not only for internal regulation and development, but also to maintain the integrity of its relations with the rival Powers which surrounded it. The natural problems of the sovereignty of an unknown land and savage people were difficult enough; but when these had been intensified and their practical solution hindered by the fine theories and high ideals of the Berlin Conference, there appeared reason for the belief that a West African Don Quixote had been charged to assault a windmill. Colonial traditions appeared to the men on the spot to be inapplicable to the Congo. There was no tax-burdened home government to rely upon for support. Nor were the African forests or the palaces and mansions of Europe crowded with philanthropists desirous of dedicating their fortunes to the welfare of the Bantu race in the distant Congo. In popular parlance, the King and his Congo were left to subsist on fine sentiments and a jug of water. If in these circumstances a colonial policy of self-support was adopted and carried out with an economic skill which in its results excites foreign envy and covetousness to-day, it should not be attributed to wrong motive, but to that of stern necessity. Concerning this formative period of early Congolese policy the recent exposition of Baron Descamps may be aptly quoted: