The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

“But this is not the most serious matter. On the following point, I charge you with putting forward a statement in the Daily News, with reference to the Congo Reform Society, which you knew to be untrue, for the purpose of deceiving and misleading the public of this country. It was stated in a letter which appeared in the Daily News on November 25th, that Liverpool shippers and merchants were aiding the Congo Reform Society, and financing it. On the 29th November a letter appeared from you in the Daily News, in which you denied this, and called upon the writer to offer an apology for his statement. You proceeded to assert that you had enclosed (for the private information of the Editor of the Daily News) a list of the subscribers to the Congo Reform Society, and the editor supported your statement by the assertion that ‘the list of donors and subscribers supplied does not contain the names of any British merchants or shippers.’

“The clear purport of your letter was to make it out that there was no co-operation between the Liverpool shippers and merchants and this so-called Reform Society, which is nothing more or less than a bogus name adopted to cover the campaign of falsehood and calumny which you and your friends have entered upon.

“On November 30th the following statement was published in the Daily News in answer to your denial:—‘With reference to the Liverpool merchants I have not seen the “private list” that he (Mr. Morel) forwards to you. I cannot tell whether it contains the names of all the subscribers to the Congo Reform Society, but I cannot accept the denial of the secretary with reference to the Liverpool merchants, in view of the candid admission of Mr. Fox Bourne that some of the merchants in Liverpool are working with the Society, and his further admission that they had helped to finance it. I believe Mr. Fox Bourne’s statement, and if an apology is required for perversion of the facts, the secretary of the Congo Reform Society must make that apology.’

“To that emphatic disproval of your statement, you have up till now made no reply. In fact you cannot deny Mr. Fox Bourne’s honest admission, which has already appeared in our columns, and of which evidently you were entirely ignorant at the time you attempted to throw dust into the eyes of the readers of the Daily News by your untruthful denial.

“Now, one of two things: either you are in a position to free yourself from this charge of deception and untruthful statement put forward for the purpose of deceiving the public, or you are not. If you are in a position to do so, come forward immediately, in the interests of the Congo Reform Society, and of yourself as its secretary. If you are not in a position to disprove this statement and to substantiate your words, you stand convicted of flagrant deception and falsehood on a most important public matter, and the people of this country will know how to judge a person, or a society, which descends to such methods for the purpose of bolstering up selfish and disgraceful designs.

“At the very moment that you were writing this denial in the columns of the Daily News, you were in treaty with a former Congo official, and bribing him for the purpose of giving evidence against the Congo State, and as a witness to the document that passed between you, you called in Mr. John Holt, merchant, 81, Dale Street, Liverpool, who was associated with you in this attempt to purchase testimony, and who actually paid, at the Exchange Hotel, Liverpool, on the 21st November last, a sum of £40 to Mr. Benedetti, the Congo ex-official referred to, and yet you have the impudence and the hardihood to assert that the Liverpool shippers and Liverpool merchants are not associated with the Congo Reform Society!

“Nor are these all the inventions, perversions, and misrepresentations which can be proved against you in connection with this movement.

“The book that you have just written and published is packed with such lies and suppressions of truth. You print a travesty of the case of the man Stokes, who was executed in the Congo, and you say that the charge against him was ‘of trading with natives,’ whereas, as a matter of fact, he was proved to have supplied the cruel and barbarous Arab slave raiders of the Congo, who have been put down by the Congo Government, with guns and ammunition for the purpose of carrying on their nefarious work.

“These slave raiders evidently receive your warm sympathy, and the man Stokes, who helped them to carry on their trade, is held up by you as a martyr! Yet you dare to appear before the people of this country as a friend of the natives of the Congo, and your present campaign is ostensibly carried on for the amelioration of their condition!

“Again, you have ventured to make a most infamous charge against Catholic missionaries in the Congo. In a letter to the Times you said that ‘they dared not state in public what they have said in private.’ In other words, you accuse them of double dealing of the basest character, like Mr. Fox Bourne, who says, ‘they offer religion to the natives only as a bribe, or to terrorise them into further enslavement.’