“It was obviously impossible that I should ... verify on the spot, as in the case of the boy, the statements they made. In that one case the truth of the charges preferred was amply demonstrated.”[94]
It is also to this case that he alludes in his letter of the 12th September, 1903, to the Governor-General, where he says:—
“When speaking to M. le Commandant Stevens at Colquilhatville on the 10th instant, when the mutilated boy Epondo stood before us as evidence of the deplorable state of affairs I reprobated, I said, ‘I do not accuse an individual, I accuse a system.’ ”
It is only natural to conclude that if the rest of the evidence in the Consul’s Report is of the same value as that furnished to him in this particular case, it cannot possibly be regarded as conclusive. And it is obvious that in those cases in which the Consul, as he himself admits, did not attempt to verify the assertions of the natives, these assertions are worth, if possible, still less.
It is doubtless true that the Consul deliberately incurred the certain risk of being misled owing to the manner in which he interrogated the natives, which he did, as a matter of fact, through two interpreters—“through Vinda, speaking in Bobangi, and Bateko, repeating his utterances ... in the local dialect;[95] so that the Consul was at the mercy not only of the truthfulness of the native who was being questioned, but depended also on the correctness of the translations of two other natives, one of whom was a servant of his own, and the other apparently the missionaries’ interpreter.[96] But any one who has ever been in contact with the native knows how much he is given to lying; the Rev. C. H. Harvey[97] states that—
“The natives of the Congo who surrounded us were contemptible, perfidious and cruel, impudent liars, dishonest, and vile.”
It is also important, if one wishes to get a correct idea of the value of this evidence, to note that while Mr. Casement was questioning the natives, he was accompanied by two local Protestant English missionaries, whose presence must alone have necessarily affected the evidence.[98]
We should ourselves be going too far if from all this we were to conclude that the whole of the native statements reported by the Consul ought to be rejected. But it is clearly shown that his proofs are insufficient as a basis for a deliberate judgment, and that the particulars in question require to be carefully and impartially tested.
On examining the Consul’s voluminous Report for other cases which he has seen, and which he sets down as cases of mutilation, it will be observed that he mentions two as having occurred on Lake Mantumba[99] “some years ago.”[100] He mentions several others, in regard to the number of which the particulars given in the Report do not seem to agree,[101] as having taken place in the neighbourhood of Bonginda,[102] precisely in the country of the Epondo inquiry, where, as has been seen, the general feeling was excited and prejudiced. It is these cases which, he says, he had not time to inquire into fully,[103] and which, according to the natives, were due to agents of the La Lulanga Company. Were these instances of victims of the practice of native customs which the natives would have been careful not to admit? Were the injuries which the Consul saw due to some conflict between neighbouring villages or tribes? Or were they really due to the black subordinates of the Company? This cannot be determined by a perusal of the Report, as the natives in this instance, as in every other, were the sole source of the Consul’s information, and he, for his part, confined himself to taking rapid notes of their numerous statements for a few hours in the morning of the 5th September, being pressed for time, in order to reach K* (Bossunguma) at a reasonable hour.[104]
Notwithstanding the weight which he attaches to the “air of frankness” and the “air of conviction and sincerity”[105] on the part of the natives, his own experience shows clearly the necessity for caution, and renders rash his assertion “that it was clear that these men were stating either what they had actually seen with their eyes or firmly believed in their hearts.”[106]