It shall come into force for each Power on the date of its ratification by that Power.
Meanwhile the Powers signatory to the present Act bind themselves to adopt no measure that shall be contrary to the provisions of the said Act.
Each Power shall send its ratification to the Government of the German Empire, which undertakes to ratify the same to all the signatory Powers of the present general Act.
The ratifications of all the Powers shall remain deposited in the archives of the Government of the German Empire. When all the ratifications shall have been produced, a deed of deposit shall be drawn up in a protocol, which shall be signed by the Representatives of all the Powers that have taken part in the Berlin Conference, and a certified copy of it shall be sent to each of those Powers.
In consideration of which, the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed the present general Act, and hereto affix their seals.
Done at Berlin, February 26th, 1885.
Inasmuch as the Congo Free State starts with the sanction of all the leading powers of civilization, it assumes a dignity, at its very inception, which attaches to no other African dynasty. It is, or ought to be, beyond those jealousies which have torn, and are tearing, other possessions in Africa to pieces, and retarding their colonization and development. Further, the terms of its creation ought to assure it the united sympathy and combined energy of its patrons and founders, and these ought to be invincible within its magnificent boundaries for overcoming every obstacle to permanent sovereignty and commercial, industrial and moral development.
But the spirit of comity, which has made a Congo Free State possible, might as well have rescued Equatorial Africa, from ocean to ocean, from the rapacious grasp of the jealous and contending powers of Europe. True, something like a free belt has been recognized, extending to within a few miles of the Eastern coast, and intended to secure an outlet for products which can be more advantageously marketed in that direction; yet this is of no avail against projects designed to appropriate and control, politically and commercially, the immense sweep of country between the Congo Free State and Indian Ocean; it is rather an incentive to these powers to make haste in their work of appropriation and reduction, and they are at it with an earnestness which savors of the days when two Americas furnished the flesh for picking, and the bone for angry contention. Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, are in clash about East African areas, protectorates, sovereignties, commercial interests, with the likelihood of further trouble, and such deep complications as arms only can simplify and relieve.
Looking but a little into the future, one can catch a glimpse of the fate in store for East Africa. It is to be the grand political offset to the Congo Free State. This has been resolved upon by Great Britain, and its outlines are already mapped in her foreign policy. As matters stand, there is nothing to prevent the consummation of her designs. She has virtual possession of the Eastern coast from Cape Colony to the mouth of the Zambezi. She has Egypt in her
grasp, which means the Nile valley from Alexandria to the head lakes, Victoria, Albert and Edward Nyanza, with their drainage systems.