The insatiable English greed claims a new prey. The two Republics have been happily swallowed and digested. What is to be served up now? That fine phrase, “British Africa from the Cape to Cairo,” has been recalled at the right moment, and it is remarked that the Congo State is still one of the obstacles to the realisation of that phrase freely quoted by our cousins. And hardly were the two Boer Republics given up to British domination than commenced, at first a little timidly, then with more effrontery and brutality, the chase of the Congo State. A mass of trifles were then put forward with incredible exaggeration; the pretext for the agitation against the Congo State was given: “British Africa from the Cape to Cairo,” that is the objective of the anti-Congolese. No one is deceived about it.
The Kleine Journal (Berlin), October 21, 1903, contains the following admonition from the well-known explorer, Eugène Wolf:
“The Germans to the front!” such has always been the cry of the English when they have need of some one to take the chestnuts out of the fire for them.
“The Germans to the front!” has also been the cry of the English in the question of the Independent State of the Congo. And in this matter also the English have found among us a fool; for the aid which England has found in this Congolese question quite needlessly exaggerated cannot come from the heart of the German nation, but from the mouth of a member of the German Colonial Society, inhabiting Berlin, making himself of importance, and who, turning to account a residence many years ago on the east and west coasts of Africa, invoking his title as retired Consul, and his possession of a colonial library, gives himself out as the spokesman authorised by the nation in order to pass himself off on his own authority as infallible in colonial matters. With the war cry: “The trade of Germany is intercepted by the agents of the Independent State of the Congo, and we must settle it!” this gentleman, whose name is known to everybody, has made an attempt which has evidently remained unfruitful of stirring up Germany against Belgium and of disturbing the feelings of good neighbourship and the commercial relations existing between the two countries. The persons who have seriously at heart the interests of the German colonies do not allow themselves to be taken in by this trick. And if the Congo State is governed in a more profitable fashion than our own colonies, we must heed their example and imitate it. After all, it is not only with the object of realising permanent deficits that we have acquired our colonies.
The Corriere Toscano (Italy), October 31, 1903:
There is on the Congo as in every civilised country only one justice; blacks and whites are subject to the same laws, and the State’s motto, Work and Progress, is adopted and followed by all with the greatest ardour.
Finally the views of some of the leading journals of the United States, manifestly free from bias, founded on self-interest, may be interesting.
The Evening Transcript (Boston).
The Congo Administration has not waited for any commission of inquiry to sit. It has already replied fully to the charges brought against it, but no reply will silence its accusers. They want the Congo’s riches, not its King’s defence, and will continue clamouring until the utter futility of their shouting threats at Leopold is brought home to them. Already they have prepared a map, a copy of which is before me as I write, of the Free State of the Congo partitioned out as they wish. The districts to be offered as bribes to France and Germany are duly marked on it, but they are small. The plotters do not hide their hands, they show clearly that England, and England’s puppet Egypt, is to take the lion’s share.
This, which I have related, accounts for the tumult of popular opinion in England, always easily stirred up by such tales. Multitudes, misled by the cheap, if genuine, sympathy felt with the oppressed, join unthinkingly in the cries against the Congo.