[52] Africa, No. 1, 1904.
[53] Message of the Governor to the Legislative Council, February 26, 1903, p. 9.
[54] Blue Book, 1902, p. 21.
[55] Message of the Governor, p. 8.
[56] E. D. Morel.
CHAPTER XXXVII
SUMMARY, RETROSPECT, AND PROPHECY
The rise and progress of the Congo Free State marks a unique page in modern history. The boldness of the State’s conception, the apparent hopelessness of its early conditions in a region unspeakably savage and barbarous, its gradual evolution under the magic touch of a master hand; the horrifying vicissitudes of its bloody redemption from the accursed slave-raider, and finally its admission into the society of independent nations, constitute a set of circumstances unparelleled in the history of the world. The span of its life from a wilderness to a self-supporting and prosperous State is about twenty-five years. Its rapid evolution was at first watched with sneers and derision. During the last ten years it has been the object of the hostile vigilance of those whose early regard had been scorn. Young as it is, a considerable literature already exists descriptive of the infant State. This literature, however, is very unsatisfactory, being for the most part bitterly partisan, either perceiving no good point at all in King Leopold’s rule, or regarding that rule as a perfect thing in which no improvement is possible. Neither attitude is just. And this may be said not only of the Congo Free State and its irresolute and disappointing African neighbours, but of States whose civilisation is the pride of our own times.
There have been error and crime on the Congo as there have been error and crime on the Thames and the Hudson. Savages left the banks of the Thames nearly eighteen hundred years ago. The white man came and refined their cruelties in a thousand ways now practised by civilisation behind the curtain and the padded door.
The aboriginal black cannibal still occupies the banks of the Congo. But his nature, so recently in its savage state, is manifesting great change. He is on his knees in the mission chapel; the song of the White Fathers and the Sisters of Mercy inspires in him the rude awakening of new emotions. His own voice abandons the war-cry and makes its fervid, untaught plea to the white man’s God.
On the Congo, religion is perforce a plain, sincere, and a comforting thing. It is taught by a small, earnest band of men and women whom the epithets of the flaccid, arm-chair colonising hero will not disturb. These rugged Christian teachers pursue their lowly, patient work to please God—not Liverpool. On the Congo, the gospel knows nothing of the elaborations of insincerity, sophistry, and cant. It finds the soul of the black man in a patient and a practical way by instructing his body in the habits of honest toil, of cleanliness and decency, and by developing an intelligence to supersede his savage instinct.