Those who do not refuse to accept patent facts will recognise that, of the reproaches levelled at the State, the most unjust is the statement “that no attempt at any administration for the natives is made, and that the officers of the Government do not apparently concern themselves with such work.”
It is astonishing to come across such an assertion in a dispatch from a government, one of whose members, Lord Cranborne, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, stated on the 20th May last:
“There was no doubt that the administration of the Congo Government had been marked by a very high degree of a certain kind of administrative development. There were railways, there were steamers upon the river, hospitals had been established, and all the machinery of elaborate judicial and police systems had been set up.”
Another member of the House of Commons acknowledged:
“That the Congo State had done good work in excluding alcoholic liquor from the greater part of their domain; that they had established a certain number of hospitals, had diminished smallpox by means of vaccination, and had suppressed the Arab Slave Trade.”
However limited these admissions, still they contradict the assertion now made that “the natives are left entirely to themselves, so far as any assistance in their government or in their affairs is concerned.”
Such does not seem to have been the conclusion at which Mr. Pickersgill, the English Consul, had arrived as long ago as 1898.
“Has the welfare of the African,” he asks, “been duly cared for in the Congo State?” He answers: “The State has restricted the liquor trade.... It is scarcely possible to overestimate the service which is being rendered by the Congo Government to its subjects in this matter.... Intertribal wars have been suppressed over a wide area, and the imposition of European authority being steadily pursued, the boundaries of peace are constantly extending.... The State must be congratulated upon the security it has created for all who live within the shelter of its flag and abide by its laws and regulations.... Credit is also due to the Congo Government in respect of the diminution of cannibalism.... The yoke of the notorious Arab slave-traders has been broken, and traffic in human beings amongst the natives themselves has been diminished to a considerable degree.”
This Report also showed that the labour of the native was remunerated, and gave due credit to the State for its efforts to instruct the young natives, and to open schools.
Since 1898 the general condition of the native has been still further improved. The system of carriers (le portage à dos d’homme), the hardships of which, so far as the native was concerned, were specially pointed out by Mr. Pickersgill, has disappeared from those parts of the country where it was most practised, in consequence of the opening of railways. Elsewhere motor cars are used as means of transport. The “sentry,” the station of Negro soldiers which the Consul criticised, not without reason, no longer exists. Cattle have been introduced into every district. Sanitary commissions have been instituted. Schools and workshops have multiplied.