The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of railways and the exportation of great quantities of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting of Central Africa. The General Act of the Berlin Conference begins with an invocation to Almighty God; and the Brussels Conference imitated its predecessor in this particular. It is, therefore, as a civilising and moralising agency that the Congo Government will always be judged at the bar of posterity.
The first essential of success in dealing with backward races is sympathy with their most cherished notions. Yet from the very outset one of these was violated. On July 1, 1885, a decree of the Congo Free State asserted that all vacant lands were the property of the Government, that is, virtually of the King himself. Further, on June 30, 1887, an ordinance was decreed, claiming the right to let or sell domains, and to grant mining or wood-cutting rights on any land, "the ownership of which is not recognised as appertaining to any one." These decrees, we may remark, were for some time kept secret, until their effects became obvious.
All who know anything of the land systems of primitive peoples will see that they contravened the customs which the savage holds dear. The plots actually held and tilled by the natives are infinitesimally small when compared with the vast tracts over which their tribes claim hunting, pasturage, and other rights. The land system of the savage is everywhere communal. Individual ownership in the European sense is a comparatively late development. The Congolese authorities must have known this; for nearly all troubles with native races have arisen from the profound differences in the ideas of the European and the savage on the subject of land-holding.
Yet, in face of the experience of former times, the Congo State put forward a claim which has led, or will lead, to the confiscation of all tribal or communal land-rights in that huge area. Such confiscation may, perhaps, be defended in the case of the United States, where the new-comers enormously outnumbered the Red Indians, and tilled land that previously lay waste. It is indefensible in the tropics, where the white settlers will always remain the units as compared with the millions whom they elevate or exploit[472]. The savage holds strongly to certain rudimentary ideas of justice, especially to the right, which he and his tribe have always claimed and exercised, of using the tribal land for the primary needs of life. When he is denied the right of hunting, cutting timber, or pasturage, he feels "cribbed, cabined, and confined." This, doubtless, is the chief source of the quarrels between the new State and its protégés, also of the depression of spirits which Mr. Casement found so prevalent. The best French authorities on colonial development now admit that it is madness to interfere with the native land tenures in tropical Africa.
The method used in the enlisting of men for public works and for the army has also caused many troubles. This question is admittedly one of great difficulty. Hard work must be done, and, in the tropics, the white man can only direct it. Besides, where life is fairly easy, men will not readily come forward to labour. Either the inducement offered must be adequate, or some form of compulsory enlistment must be adopted. The Belgian officials, in the plentiful lack of funds that has always clogged their State, have tried compulsion, generally through the native chiefs. These are induced, by the offer of cotton cloth or bright-coloured handkerchiefs, to supply men from the tribe. If the labourers are not forthcoming, the chief is punished, his village being sometimes burned. By means, then, of gaudy handkerchiefs, or firebrands, the labourers are obtained. They figure as "apprentices," under the law of November 8, 1888, which accorded "special protection to the blacks."
The British Consul, Mr. Casement, in his report on the administration of the Congo, stated that the majority of the government workmen at Léopoldville were under some form of compulsion, but were, on the whole, well cared for[473].
According to a German resident in Congoland, the lot of the apprentices differs little from that of slaves. Their position, as contrasted with that of their former relation to the chief, is humorously defined by the term libérés[474] The hardships of the labourers on the State railways were such that the British Government refused to allow them to be recruited from Sierra Leone or other British possessions.
However, now that a British Cabinet has allowed a great colony to make use of indentured yellow labour in its mines, Great Britain cannot, without glaring inconsistency, lodge any protest against the infringement, in Congoland, of the Act of the Berlin Conference in the matter of the treatment of hired labourers. If the lot of the Congolese apprentices is to be bettered, the initiative must be taken at some capital other than London.
Another subject which nearly concerns the welfare of the Congo State is the recruiting and use of native troops. These are often raised from the most barbarous tribes of the far interior; their pay is very small; and too often the main inducement to serve under the blue banner with the golden star, is the facility for feasting and plunder at the expense of other natives who have not satisfied the authorities. As one of them naïvely said to Mr. Casement, he preferred to be with the hunters rather than with the hunted.