Now that we have before us the reply of the King of the Belgians, we may say that we have reason from every point of view to defend the Congo Free State against accusations as stupid as they are prejudiced. England may definitely renounce the hope that she had entertained of increasing her colonial empire by means of puerile calumnies.
Mission of New Antwerp (Bangala).
The Phare de la Loire:
We should not forget that a similar quarrel has been sought for with us [the French]. French concessionaires have had much trouble with two English houses—Holt & Company and Hatton & Cookson [Liverpool]—whose agents had turned the natives away from French factories by offering them exorbitant wages.
The General Anzeiger, October 30, 1903, is merely quoted to indicate the violence to which criticism of the British dispatch attained, not as a specimen of sound Teutonic reasoning nor of temperate commentary:
Truly, when reading this one hardly credits one’s eyes. Here is what the English Government, whose officials are almost without exception discredited by reason of their rude, brutal, and often inhuman attitude towards natives; here is what is written [sic] on the faith of pure colonial gossip, of unauthenticated rumour. It is not ashamed to act thus—this very Government whose cruelties in the last African war are still too fresh in the memory.... It is impossible to say whether this cynical fashion of acting is more striking than the hypocrisy which makes us indignant....
The Chronique (Belgium) of November 4, 1903, contains an interview with M. Edmond Picard, advocate of the Belgian Court of Cassation, from which the following is quoted:
The reply to the English Note drafted by the Independent State of the Congo appears to me as nobly simple, and as proud in form as peremptory in substance. As for convincing the English ogre desirous of swallowing up the Belgian Congo as it swallowed up the Transvaal and Orange State—it would be ridiculous to hope for this. This people is as enthusiastic a brigand as a nation as it is honest and loyal in the individual.
The Münster Westphal, November 3, 1903: