CRUEL GREED
A missionary from a north China city wrote to the Missionary Review of the World:
Recently some professional procurers going the rounds of the cities of northern China buying girls for the brothels of Shanghai stopt here in their diabolical quest. They negotiated a sale with a mother living near us for her seventeen-year-old daughter. As this daughter’s feet were not small enough to command the sum desired, the mother arose at midnight while the children were sleeping and proceeded to beat the feet of the daughter in question to a pulp. The agonizing pain, the heartrending screams were of no avail. The feet were bound into a smaller compass by this process and a more advantageous sale expedited.
(638)
Dr. William H. Leslie, for many years a missionary in the Kongo, recently confirmed many of the stories of the atrocities that have marked the rule of the Belgians in that country. This is what he says:
With my own eyes I have witnessed many of the most horrible examples of cruelty practised upon the poor natives in that country. I have seen natives with one hand cut off and I have seen them with both cut off, and in many cases the poor victims were children.
Dr. Leslie also said that much of the cruelty had been practised in order to impress upon the blacks the necessity of their bringing to market the rubber wanted by their persecutors, and to emphasize the dire results that would follow their failure to do so.
(639)
CRUELTY, CHINESE