We beg your Excellency to receive from the hands of our representative an abundance of carefully prepared matter upon this subject, and to command him in any further desires which you may wish to express. A cursory outline, limited to only a few phases of the questions which the enemies of the Congo so confusedly mince in their wild condemnation of a State justly founded and intelligently and humanely governed, is not of course intended as a sufficient statement of our case. It is merely intended to introduce your Excellency to the subject on which our representative, and the evidence and literature he will offer to you, may lead you to those wise and equitable conclusions which have always characterised the highest tribunals of the American people.

Your Excellency is too well versed in the science of government to be influenced by the statement that where individual acts are committed in violation of enacted penal law the Government should be primarily charged therewith. If such were the case, penal institutions for the incarceration of violators of police law would be no part of a nation’s structure.

It is not infrequent that the cable conveys to us intimation that in some sections of your own free and glorious country an inflamed mob seizes upon a black inhabitant and burns him at the stake. Our governmental experience has taught us that such acts would have been impossible if your Government had been advised in time to prevent them. And yet we know that your Government is the subject of harsh criticism by self-constituted associations formed in the same country whence come those who accuse the sincere governmental effort of the Congo Free State. The law of the Congo Free State is based upon the loftiest ideals of humane control of a vast territory and undeveloped interests, and every part of the State’s machinery is employed to ensure equal justice to all.

The “method of the State,” at which Congo accusers hurl their shafts, cannot be charged with responsibility for lawless acts in a vast territory of a million square miles where the Government of that State is vigilantly and earnestly seeking, by the extension of its organisation and police powers, to suppress and punish crime and redress wrong. If the subjects of one nation were compelled to submit to the opinion of its unfriendly neighbours as to the correctness of their habits and conduct, and obliged to submit themselves to the penalties that their neighbours would attach to the alleged misconduct, the subjects of one nation would inhabit the prisons of another.

We need hardly call the attention of your Government to the great and humane work which your Government is now so earnestly, and with so much sacrifice, furthering in the Philippine Islands, to meet with that broad and sympathetic view of the situation in all savage countries; which, if fairly and justly applied to the Congo Free State, would place us upon that plane where co-operation, not criticism, were the reward of our sacrificial work in the darkest part of Africa.

It has been the pleasure of our beloved King, Leopold II., Sovereign of the Congo Free State, to appoint a Commission, composed of eminent men, to undertake with the utmost freedom a judicial investigation upon all and singular the vague charges from time to time used by the promoters of the Congo Reform Association in prostituting certain public journals in England. Your Excellency may be assured of the utmost integrity of the gentlemen who compose this Commission, and that the Congo Government will afford them all the help in its power to place the truth before the eyes of the world.

In this connection Congo reformers pretend that the decisions of the Congo Courts indicate that the government is bad, when in fact these very decisions are, in our opinion, proof of unimpeachable good faith and judicial independence.

Concerning the Congo standing army of 14,000 natives, as to which some criticism is uttered by the same persons, we need only indicate that the State Government is so well respected in the Congo Basin that it is able to control its vast territory with only seven soldiers to every 625 square miles. We have no doubt that if the Congo governmental system had not included this meagre police force for the repression of tribal strife and the maintenance of order, its critics would have represented the Congo Government as unprepared to guarantee protection to persons and property, and as unable to maintain the integrity of its frontiers. The Congo army is recruited in conformity with the Belgian law of conscription, which is a restriction of the universal service in Continental Europe. When the Government enlisted a part of its army in a neighbouring colony it was requested to desist, the promises of England to permit such recruiting notwithstanding. Now the Congo army is characterised as barbarian! Doubtless the Congo Government would have no objection to recruit its army in China, as miners are recruited for the Transvaal. But would it thereby escape censure? We think not. Some things which are right and proper in a British colony become crimes when done in the Congo Free State.

It is the earnest desire of the Belgian people, and those who are interested in the welfare and progress of the native population of Mid-Africa, that the good-will and respect of the people of the United States and their President may continue, by their sympathy, to enliven the devotion, energy, and sacrifice which the builders of the Congo Free State are expending upon races which but a few years ago were in a state of the wildest savagery.

We are, Mr. President, with great respect,
Your obedient servants,
(Signed) A. Dufourny,
President of the Federation for the
Defence of Belgian Interests Abroad.