The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

For my part, I shall hesitate to praise or blame the Congo State by this report alone. I have little doubt that some of the facts Mr. Casement will bring forward will be extremely shocking (while in the Congo I was several times shocked myself), but these reports of excesses will not prejudice me for or against the State. If Mr. Casement will furnish us with reports which will show us the exact conditions prevailing among the other West African districts—the French Congo, the Portuguese Congo, German West Africa, Nigeria, and the Gold Coast—then I shall hope to arrive at a more or less correct understanding of the matter. Cruelty and excess undoubtedly exist in the Congo Free State, but my experience in Congoland taught me that those guilty of any crime who come before the notice of State agents were severely punished.

To carry on the anti-Congo campaign in the United States, the Congo Reform Association of Liverpool has established headquarters at Boston. Its organisation includes a secretary, pamphleteers, press writers, and Protestant missionaries. It prints and sends broadcast to the press of America a weekly “News Letter,” composed of articles designed to intensify agitation against the Belgians in the Congo. It is sagaciously understood by its supporters that one missionary with imagination and glib speech, turned loose on society in America or Europe, can make more noise, effect more mischief, do more to prostitute Christian work in foreign lands, than twenty earnest, patient, toiling, praying missionaries can accomplish for humanity by minding God’s work in the dark heart of Africa. That concession-seeking, commercially-inclined Congo missionaries should be enabled to gratify their desire for notoriety after the fashion of the Congo coroner, Mr. Morel, and gain the slightest connection with American Missionary Societies, is only to be accounted for by the large financial support which, having prevailed in England, may be presumed to lie back of the campaign in America. There are certain phases of the Congolese question since 1897 by which even a disinterested observer is deeply impressed. The large financial support and the numerous agencies it employs is one of them.

So far the attitude of the American press has been eminently disinterested. Its leading journals have shown a keen insight into the motives which underlie a campaign that has been overdone to the disgust of all fair-minded observers. There is, in all colonies, whether under British, German, American, French, or Belgian rule, ample opportunity for criticism. There is, on the other hand, even greater opportunity for help and co-operation. The demoralising story of British Lagos is alone sufficient to make British criticism of every other nation’s colonies pusillanimous. Acts of cruelty by natives, foreigners, or by State servants are in violation, not in consequence, of the Congo State’s system of government. For such infractions of the law the individual, not the State, is responsible. But when the support of a British colony is derived from a debasing traffic in alcohol for whose existence the home Government is directly responsible, that Government should not assume the grotesque position of custos morum of Africa.

The Lagos Standard, reputed to be favourable to the British Government, referring to the Colony’s revenue for 1901-1902, says:

It would appear that the chief and ruling tendency of the successive administrations has been to draw from the Colony the fullest possible revenue, the greater part of which is spent in salaries of the officials. Every effort has been made in that direction, and no resource that ingenuity can appeal to was spared in order to reach that purpose....

The revenue derived from import duties on spirits, gin, rum, alcohol, whisky, reached 65.53% of the total revenue of the Colony.[53] To this add the licences for the sale of spirits,[54] which brings up the contributive share of spirits in the budget’s receipts to 67.53%....

Alcohol is the great staple of trade. By visiting Lagos, one would be inclined to believe that it is practically the only commodity. Everywhere on the huge quay, extending several miles, where large business houses are established, on their wharfs, in their warehouses, are accumulated heaps of green cases and pyramids of demijohns of gin and rum. All the important stores have the same signboard, bearing in large letters the words, Wholesale Spirit Merchants, and from morning to night, every day of the week, there is on the lagoon a continual traffic of large steamers coming in to discharge their cargo and leaving empty. On the quay there is a continual movement of black porters carrying cases of spirits on their heads, which they either pile up by thousands in the warehouses, or remove them therefrom in order to load the boats, which are powerful launches of the native traders who spread the poison all over the markets of the villages alongside the lagoon and its affluents.

The quality of these horrible goods has been too often described to render it necessary to revert to the subject. Their price says sufficient: 4½d. per litre, bottle and packing included! The Government analyst found them to contain extremely strong poisons known under the name of fusel oils, in the enormous proportion of from 1.46 to 4.31% of the weight.[55] Is it to be wondered at that after absorbing several bottles of this poisonous liquor, the drinker should be overcome by a sort of madness? Is it to be wondered at that criminality is on the increase, that the birth rate is on the decrease, that this magnificent race of Yoruba agriculturists is speedily degenerating?

Where Europe, whose interests in Africa are material as well as moral, has not seen fit to join a British traders’ campaign against a small neutralised State, it would seem that the United States Government could not be led into action on the pretext that its recognition of a friendly Government invested it with police powers over the internal affairs of the State so recognised. “Territory” and “commerce” are the tightly furled, secretly carried banners of the raid upon the Congo State. This exaggerated humanitarian solicitude for the African black is purely pretence. By its hypocrisy, falsehood, and disputative vulgarisation, the movement, instead of remedying what evils exist in all African colonies, is made utterly puerile. By such vituperative fanfaronade as the following, rational minds are made to turn from the subject in disgust:[56]

Of such is the kingdom of Congo.