King and Journalist.
The campaign of exploration planned by King Leopold, and executed by his courageous subjects and his able ally, Stanley, was the first of those remarkable achievements of practical utility that have no parallel in the history of modern colonisation. In the Congo and its affluents these State-builders found a providential and generous auxiliary. These wide rivers, the veins of the civilisation of the Congo, are the key to a situation of which triumphant Belgian sacrifice and valour in Central Africa will yet perfect the sequel.
To the existence of these natural allies, then, is largely due the speedy extirpation of the slave trade, the suppression of cannibalism, the control of the country, the gradual conversion of its populations to the saving influences of civilisation, the effective system of communication between port and port, and the beginnings of the development of those vast resources which already excite the cupidity of nations less successful. Indeed, without such advantage it is doubtful whether the King of the Belgians would have been equal to the onerous responsibilities he so cheerfully assumed.
“Change in all Around.”
But now with more than nine thousand miles of waterways open to navigation, few sections of this immense domain are to-day inaccessible. Great areas which but a few years ago were virgin forests are now under successful cultivation. The jungle, once the lair of the cannibal, is safe and peaceful. Where the raider ravished his shrieking victims, the State and the Mission instruct in the attributes of a useful life. Chaos has at last yielded to order, and another triumph has been added to civilisation in the short term of twenty years. It is a great story, and the Prince who wrote it on the face of Africa need not deign to hear the hiss of envy straining at the gorge. Let Leopold II. find consolation in that rugged philosophy of Carlyle which mocked at the timid temper of his own time: “To subdue mutiny, discord, widespread despair by manfulness, justice, mercy and wisdom, to let light on chaos and make it instead a green flowery world, is great beyond all other greatness, work for a God.”
CHAPTER VI
THE STATE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
In view of the confused controversy that has prevailed between the friends and the enemies of the Congo Free State, concerning its legal foundation and its existence de facto before the Conference of the Powers which recognised its statehood at Berlin (November 15, 1884-February 26, 1885), it seems pertinent at this point to examine the issue at some length.
Central Africa Reviewed.
For unknown centuries Central Africa had been peopled with many millions of savage, semi-savage, and barbarian black men, hidden from all civilising influence. Their social condition varied. Many were cannibals, some were living in a rude state of primitive tribal order, others were at incessant war with hostile tribes, all were living in the gloom of an interminable night of barbaric existence. Their only touch with the human family had been through the slave trade, of which they were the object and the victims. The white man knew of their lot in this respect many years before he listened attentively to an appeal for deliverance from the Arab marauders who enslaved them. The natural law of human solidarity had not as yet inspired civilised nations with an energetic movement to ameliorate the condition of the savage black in Mid-Africa. Indeed, Stanley’s explorations had not gone to completion save for the enlightened and philanthropic moral and material support of Leopold II. When Great Britain declined to provide Stanley with the means to further his brave work, the King of the Belgians, having several years before openly associated himself with sentiments seeking the organisation of a consistent civilising movement in Central Africa, sent for this intrepid explorer and fortified his hopes and plans from his private purse. It was with the highest motives, from an elevated point of view, that his Majesty considered the situation of these cannibal tribes. His solicitude for the Belgians, their economic needs, their legitimate and necessary expansion, gave point to his consideration of a distant land, where great natural wealth lay unrevealed and unused, for the good of the native and his benefactor. A wild life abounded in those parts which by civilisation might be regenerated and brought into the sphere of human usefulness. Here opportunity seemed to throw wide her arms for the Prince with the courage to dare an undertaking which the great Powers and the small had so far deftly avoided. “I will pierce barbaric darkness; I will secure to Central Africa the blessing of civilised government. And I will, if necessary, undertake this great task alone.” So spake his Majesty, when, as Duke of Brabant, he electrified Europe with what Europe, in her narrowed conservatism, regarded as the utopian utterances of an impractical and effervescing youth. Europe smiled and shrugged her shoulders at the temerity of him who essayed to analyse the heart of Africa and prescribe its panacea.
If this great task had fallen upon a man of ordinary natural powers and acquired means, that part of Darkest Africa which now defies the organised conspiracy of the despoiler would interest nobody save the slave-trader who terrorised the land and polluted the sea with the black man’s blood. To his Majesty’s great initiative in 1876, and to his prescience of mind, his generous hand, and astonishing industry in the cause which inspired him are due those two decades of progress which some regard as a triumph of Colonial civilisation; while others, from motives which need not be examined with a lens, stigmatise it as the curse of Central Africa.