From the New York Press:
Those missionaries who are urging the United States Government to interfere in the quarrel between the British and the Congo Governments doubtless mean well, but they fail to offer any valid reason why this country should entangle itself in a matter in which it has no especial interest. The British Government has demanded, and the Belgian Government has conceded, all reasonable protection and privileges for the missionaries labouring in Congoland.
The other demands of the British with regard to the basin of the great African river are not entirely devoid of a tinge of self-interest, and it would be entirely improper for the United States to interfere at all in the matter. If an American missionary in the Congo is oppressed, or his treaty rights as an American citizen in any way violated, the State Department could and would interfere in that particular case, but further than that the missionaries ought not to expect this country to go. Missionaries, while most excellent and self-sacrificing people, are not perfect, and one of their imperfections is that in all parts of the world they are a little too anxious to bring about the interference of their home Power in the affairs of the Government in whose territory they are labouring.
The Public Ledger (Philadelphia), October 26, 1903:
The acquisition by Great Britain of the Congo State would not only join her separate dominions, but would give her an immense territory of the most wonderful wealth. Not only so, but it would open to British Central Africa and Rhodesia an outlet to the sea down the Congo, and give even the Transvaal a chance of trading with England through a port on that great river, saving 2000 miles of the sea voyage to London.
English horror at Belgian mismanagement of Congoland is easily understood in the light of these facts. Does any one imagine that the British conscience would be so sensitive about cruelties alleged to have been committed in lands not contiguous to British territory, and not extremely desirable as annexations? The crime of King Leopold is that he has developed a colony which England wants.
Sufficient has been quoted to indicate that the silence of the Powers in regard to the British dispatch of August 8, 1903, was fairly interpreted by the press of Europe. The meaning of that silence is unmistakable. British ministers having been misled to undertake a serious diplomatic act which was admittedly based on commercial grievance and unproved accusations, it now became necessary to back up the charges contained in Lord Lansdowne’s dispatch by something seemingly more tangible than the complaints of persons peculiarly interested in doing mischief to the Government of the Congo Free State. It is the British view that the official report of Mr. Roger Casement, British Consul at Boma, in the Congo Free State, dated December 11, 1903, four months after the Powers had been appealed to, supplied the necessary confirmation of all that may have been lacking to justify the precipitate diplomatic act of August 8th which had met with rebuff.
The report[52] and enclosures of Consul Casement would occupy approximately one hundred and eighty pages of this volume. It is an interesting account of a brief journey on the Upper Congo during a period of two and a half months, most of which was spent in the Equatorial district. The report contains many paragraphs in praise of the wonderful changes wrought by the Belgians in the Congo during the last twenty years. There are other passages in the report which condemn the land and concessionaire system of the State. Enclosed in the voluminous document are statements from Protestant missionaries and certain natives concerning alleged atrocities. As the official reply of the Government of the Congo Free State, brief as it is, deals fairly and fully with the essential allegations in Mr. Casement’s report, it has been set out in full in the Appendix.
In To-Day (London), December 16, 1903, Mr. John Henderson, an experienced traveller who had visited the Congo to ascertain for his journal the true state of affairs under Belgian rule in the Free State, wrote the following amongst other interesting comments on Consul Casement’s Report:
I suggest that we should be careful in our condemnation of the methods of the Congo Government. The agents of the State are subject to perils and dangers unheard of, undreamed of by the people in comfortable Britain—the climate, the condition of living, and the natives combine to make life always uncertain, and at times absolutely terrible. In Europe, or the West Indies, or Australia, or in any fairly salubrious country, the methods of Free State agents as pursued in Congoland might be judged barbarous, but it is impossible to judge the methods of the peoples of all countries and climates by one standard of ethics.