The problem had to be solved without bringing into conflict certain elements which are difficult to assimilate, namely, the exigencies of commercial freedom as recognised by the conventions, the civilisation of the natives and their material and moral improvement, the exigencies of the life and progress of the State itself considered as the organic principle of the new political society, and finally the exigencies or rather conditions relating to the personal union of the Free State with Belgium.
In the accomplishment of this complex task, the State was first inspired with the principle of a scrupulous respect for international engagements. This principle was never lost sight of, even at the critical periods of its life following on the Berlin Conference, when a régime of complete exemption from import duties weighed heavily upon its economic existence.
The State was also filled with the determination to faithfully respect the declaration of permanent neutrality which it made a short time after the Berlin Conference. As we have remarked elsewhere, this was an honourable action towards the Powers who were thus reassured concerning the policy and pacific autonomy of the new State. It was also an act of prudence which protected the Congo State from the solicitations of other States interested in influencing its political life.[36]
Children of the Settlement School at Boma Praying.
The State’s Policy.
The policy of the new State was to be “fruitful activity” in peace and order as soon as the Arab wars had ceased and the slave trade had been superseded by an agricultural and industrial régime. With a neutralised State this seemed to be a permanent function commendable alike to its people, its Government, and its international associates and sponsors. Whether we regard the moral concomitant of an era of fruitful activity or only the material essentials of a community so employed, the bald reality called for men and money for its accomplishment. Of white men there were few in a region where a tropical sun, and other climatic disadvantages, counted heavily against their labour. The Negro alone appeared to thrive in conditions more suited to his physical characteristics. The problem of creating a State of the Negro population involved social and material questions of vast import to those who had undertaken to develop and govern this unknown and savage land. Should the Negro be taught the nobility of labour—informed of the glorious edifices to civilisation it had reared and what benefits its pursuit would shower upon him if he would but follow the white man’s precept and example in the sphere of honest toil?
The trade in black men had been suppressed by the courageous white men of Belgium. Trade in the material resources of the country was now but a phenomenon of the law of self-preservation and the principle of self-support. It is in the adoption of practical measures to develop that trade for the greatest good of the greatest number that the Belgians have shown an executive skill which gives the character of indolent farce to the droning administration of certain other African colonies, particularly British Lagos, which derives sixty-five per cent. of its supporting revenue from traffic in alcoholic liquor,[37] as compared with five per cent. derived from the same source by the Congo Free State.
If the Government of the Congo Free State had to deal with a white population capable of co-operation as independent political units in the State’s development, it may easily be conceived that measures perhaps more in consonance with certain European theories might have been devised. The candour of this suggestion in no wise detracts from the fitness and happy efficacy of the measures by which the Government of the Congo State has achieved one of the greatest colonising successes of modern times.
It is the co-operative principle—so utterly lacking in the uncivilised native Congolese—which often inspires those governmental speculations in new countries whereby it is sought to solve the problem of sustaining the State upon its own undeveloped resources. There can be little doubt that this principle, now well recognised in the industrial world and constantly adopted and expanded in the United States and Great Britain by enlightened labour leaders and great corporations, unconsciously influenced the Belgian statesmen who framed the land and taxation laws of the Congo Free State. The civilisation of Central Africa was, and forsooth, still is, an immense task, and the State’s early attitude of welcoming quasi private enterprise to co-operate with it in the development of lands which indolent native races had ravaged—first for their own immediate wants, later at the behest of adventurers and despoiling traders, whose coin was alcohol and shoddy tinsel—was not only justified in a Government seeking rational progress, but it followed the soundest principles of what the higher socialism terms community of interest. If more modern in theory, the Congo State has in practice often followed the most experienced of old-world colonisers—the Dutch and the British. Where practicable under like conditions “it imitates these experienced colonisers, without, however, following them blindly” or attaining at once what it has taken them several generations to accomplish. “Neither does it persist in methods which have been recognised as erroneous, but it alters and corrects them where possible.” Being like all governments, old or new, in savage lands or civilised, unable to reform its domestic policies at command, it seeks the betterment of its system with that gradation of movement which shall not disorganise and disrupt the structure of its statehood. Those who avowedly speak for the Congo Free State say that “its policy is essentially a work of methodical experiment and practical adaptation. Even when colonial science is more advanced than it is to-day, that policy will retain its raison d’être and its merits.”