Albert I of Belgium

“ The credit institutions of this country have a patriotic function to accomplish—that of encouraging the expansion of capital in the Congo and of thus powerfully cooperating in the success of the highly civilizing work which helps promote the honor of our course of action in Africa. ”

“ What we lack in the Congo and what we need is a well-established system of means of communication, and, if I dare to thus express myself, a special policy of railways. This policy must have a national character. We can not better show its vital importance than by citing the example of the United States. ”

“ Our policy in regard to the means of transportation in the Congo must be seconded with fearlessness and foresight; we must take into consideration, first of all, the general interest of the colony. Enterprises as vast in scope as these we have undertaken bring with them great duties and necessitate incessant efforts. ”

“ But, aside from the noble task of the administrative and political organization, there is another, that of the economical, rational, and progressive exploitation of the country, and in which are destined to participate, in a fertile toil, all our national forces. ”

“ This task comprised the exploring of those mysterious territories of Central Africa, their effective occupation by means of advance posts which were to be created, the crushing of the slave traders who spread terror and misery through all this part of the continent—in a word, the organizing of a real State by the delimitation of a vast district and the exerting to its furthermost frontiers, of the beneficent action of the metropolis—a glorious but difficult mission coming to our officers as early as 1878. ”

“ Present methods of colonization do not consist, as in former days, in the importation of arms, liquors, and the excessive exploitation of a country, but in introducing, into remote and primitive regions worthier customs sanctioned by Christianity, in spreading therein the discoveries of science and the marvels of modern technique. ”

“ In Russia the roads into Asia were the object of an immense effort considered as necessary to the extension and the maintenance of the political and economical power of the, Empire. The English, the French, the Germans have for many years past made the creation of railways the corner stone of their colonial action. ”