Henry Wellington Wack

“ How are we to avoid a repetition of the unfortunate events, to which I have just alluded, amongst the numerous African tribes? How are we to guard against exposing our merchants, our colonies, and their goods to these dangers? How shall we defend the lives of our missionaries and religion itself against the outburst of savage customs and barbarous passions?
Finding ourselves in the presence of those whom we are urging to undertake the work of civilisation in Africa, it is our duty to save them from such regrettable experiences as marked the corresponding phase in America. ”

“ They have placed the Negro in the midst of the uncovered wealth of a vast and fertile country; of waterways teeming with traffic; of a magnificent forest stored with rubber; timber of great variety, ivory, oil, and fruit; of promising fields of coffee, cotton, cocoa, tea, and sugar; deposits of gold, copper, coal, and iron. This short era of civilisation has created in the Congo over four hundred commercial houses doing a thriving business with Europe; built railways over mountain routes where only Belgian engineers and Belgian capital had the courage and the skill to venture. ”

“ Without these splendid flowing highways of commerce, pulsing from the heart of the continent to the sea, the wonderful progress of the last quarter of a century would not have been possible. Following the lead of the Congo and its tributaries, Belgian pioneers have moved through the great wilderness, planting the plough and the cross, until to-day Central Africa, so long curtained from the eyes of civilised man, lies bare to the world. ”

“ A tragedy which appears unreal, so unutterably ghastly its concomitants, but the grimness of whose reality is incapable of superlative treatment. Destroying, decimating, degrading, its poisonous breath sweeps through the forests of the Congo. Men fall beneath it as grass beneath the scythe, by slaughter, famine, torture, sickness, and misery. Women and children flee from it, but not fast enough, though the mother destroy the unborn life within her that her feet may drag less heavily through the bush. ”

“ Thirty years ago what is now the Congo Free State was a wild tangle of luxuriant tropical growth through which hordes of black savages roamed, fought, and practised their unspeakable barbarities, living almost entirely upon the spontaneous products of Nature. The white magician has waved his wand and the scene is transformed. In, and far around, each of the numerous governmental stations or posts, life and property are as secure now as in any part of Europe or America. ”

“ The eyes of all the world are bent toward the bloody battle-fields of France; but I prefer to regard those almost impenetrable African wilds where a small band of men, whose numbers may be counted on the fingers of one hand, add year by year to our knowledge of those little-known regions, carrying with them the blessings of civilisation and of truth, heralding the extinction of what for so many ages has been the world’s curse—slavery. ”

“ The men-hunters reduced to impotence, their bands dispersed, their chiefs disappeared, the fortresses of slavery laid level with the ground, the natives rebuilding their villages under the shadow of the posts of the State, giving themselves up to the peaceful pursuits of cultivation of the soil—an era of tranquillity succeeding the sombre and sanguinary episodes of the old régime. Every mail from Africa brings proof of the progress of this period of pacification, and shows the natives, delivered from an odious yoke, recovering confidence, and living peaceably in their own abodes. ”

“ In the midst of it all the black man’s hands and acquired energy have provided him with new value to himself and to the State. He is at the plough, on the cart and the railway, on the wharf and upon the road and the farm, in the shop and factory, learning the uses of the white man’s implements of labour, and imitating his enlightened ways. Industry and order, Christianity, civilisation, and material progress have succeeded tribal wars, cannibalism, and the horrible atrocities of the slave chase. This has been achieved by the brawny men of Belgium in less than twenty years. ”

“ We are proud of modern civilisation. We congratulate ourselves upon the progress of international law among civilised nations. We are therefore justified, it seems to me, in asking of the states which participate in the European concert of public law, whether it would not be possible to assert this principle of duty towards the community of states as a means of solving the question of the Congo, without awaiting the stern necessity of intervening to put an end to war, or, at the least, the occasion of offering mediation to avert a recourse to the sad arbitrament of the sword. ”

“ Americans, who had poured out their blood like water in a similar cause—the accounts given by explorers and missionaries of the horrors of the slave trade, rampant in Central Africa, were as the smell of powder to the war-horse. Only a few people are interested in geography as a science. A vastly greater number are affected by a widening of the area for trade. But the effectual suppression of slavery is a question that comes home to everybody. No one can stand aside, indifferent to it. ”

“ If King Leopold recognised the preposterous claim of Portugal over the mouth of the Congo River, the entire region in which he was interested would be without a free way to the sea, a fatal bar to its proper development.
To deal with Portugal in this matter, even supposing her alleged right to be well founded, would have presented no insuperable difficulty; poor nations like poor individuals being ever open to sell their commodities at something more than their market value. But just at this juncture an unexpected act on the part of Great Britain added enormously to the difficulty. ”

“ The Constitution of the United States defines the term State as combining the idea of people, territory, and government. Defining the difference between a government in law and a government in fact, Montague Bernard says, in Neutrality of Great Britain [Pg 69] during American Civil War: “A de jure government is one which, in the opinion of the person using the phrase, ought to possess the powers of sovereignty, though at the time it may be deprived of them. A de facto government is one which is really in possession of them, although the possession may be wrongful or precarious.” ”

“ The number of enemies to be fought, the organisation of their bands, their installation from a remote date in the regions which they terrorised, their supply in firearms and munitions, the subjection even of the natives, were so many grounds of apprehension and disquietude as to the final issue of the struggle undertaken, and as to the fate ultimately reserved for the African populations. It really seemed, in that encounter between civilisation and slavery, of which the stake was the life and liberty of millions of human beings, as if failure would dispel for ever the hope of a better future. ”

“ It is, at bottom, the contributions made by the Congo natives to the public charges which are criticised, as if there existed a single country or colony in which the inhabitants do not, under one form or another, bear a part in such charges. A State without resources is inconceivable. On what legitimate grounds could the exemption of natives from all taxes be based, seeing that they are the first to benefit by the material and moral advantages introduced into Africa? As they have no money, a contribution in the shape of labour is required from them. ”

“ It has been the pleasure of our beloved King, Leopold II., Sovereign of the Congo Free State, to appoint a Commission, composed of eminent men, to undertake with the utmost freedom a judicial investigation upon all and singular the vague charges from time to time used by the promoters of the Congo Reform Association in prostituting certain public journals in England. Your Excellency may be assured of the utmost integrity of the gentlemen who compose this Commission, and that the Congo Government will afford them all the help in its power to place the truth before the eyes of the world. ”

“ The village sentinels are either withdrawn, or squatting low, asleep; the houses are closed; every one sleeps; all is repose; the sense of security is absolute. Suddenly the sound of a gun, then cries of terror are raised, breaking the great silence, followed by a fusillade, which seems to come from all sides, piercing the straw walls. The boatmen have fired, leaving their canoes to their women; they have rushed forward, attacking the village in front, while the others are assailing it from the rear. The inhabitants, suddenly roused from their sleep, rush terrified from their houses. ”

“ History teaches us that the march of the caravans which traverse the sandy deserts of Northern Africa has been rendered possible by the existence of certain spots where nature has made provision of water and vegetation where travellers and camels can rest and refresh themselves. Why should not a philanthropic association be permitted to imitate this foresight of nature, and to establish, like these oases, free cities at certain distances upon the banks of the great river of Equatorial Africa, to facilitate the progress of a humane civilisation and the development of a beneficent commerce? ”

“ The mere fact of the acquisition of a political sovereignty over a certain territory does not in itself confer on the Sovereign—at least according to modern law—the ownership of all property over which private individuals have acquired rights. But the recognition of these same rights, the fixing of just titles of acquisition, the regulation of the legal system relating to property and especially of the condition of vacant land, all that constitutes an essential attribute of sovereignty, in conformity with the necessities of public order and the general welfare of society. ”

“ It is not infrequent that the cable conveys to us intimation that in some sections of your own free and glorious country an inflamed mob seizes upon a black inhabitant and burns him at the stake. Our governmental experience has taught us that such acts would have been impossible if your Government had been advised in time to prevent them. And yet we know that your Government is the subject of harsh criticism by self-constituted associations formed in the same country whence come those who accuse the sincere governmental effort of the Congo Free State. ”

“ There was call for the explorer and the pioneer, but it seemed as if ages must elapse before there was need of the carriers of commerce.
To conduct broad highways from the coast to the centre, through a territory so vast in extent, so dangerous, and so impenetrable, would seem indeed a task for centuries. Such, too, it is safe to assume, would still be the situation had it not been for the magnificent water-system of the region and the great colonising genius who turned its natural destiny to the civilising course of an onward industry. ”

“ France, at least, has recognised the right of King Makoko, suzerain of the Batakes, to cede to a European State his rights of sovereignty, and the right of the chiefs subordinate to his authority to cede the possession of the parts of the territory they occupied. Why should it be forbidden to a native chief to cede his territory to an international European company, which, according to the law of nations, is perfectly capable of accepting and exercising such a sovereignty? ”

“ Christian nations were deep in the slave trade in the sixteenth century. A black cloud of human flesh, aggregating sixteen million souls, was imported into America upon Western slave dhows in three centuries, exclusive of the twenty-odd million Negroes who perished in transit. More atrocious than the pestilential slave dhow was the slaughter of blacks by the slave-raider, that fiend incarnate who until a few years ago carried on his inhuman traffic under the very gaze of Christian Europe. Indeed, Europe herself was a slave-dealer for centuries. ”

“ The principles of the Congo Government are that the soil shall maintain those who develop its resources for the betterment of the sower and the reaper. The civilisation of the native by industry and other forms of instruction in the attributes of order, civic life, and all that he may be capable of absorbing of enlightened freedom. For the privilege of residing within the sphere of a State so governed, the white man is the most taxed member of society in the world. Shall savages alone be exempt from labour and just contribution to organised government? ”

“ King Leopold saw in the crime of slavery both the offence to God and the prejudice to man, and was prepared to exert his utmost energy and, if necessary, expend the last franc of his private fortune, to stamp out the evil. In this heroic endeavour his Majesty was ably seconded by his minister, the distinguished Baron Lambermont, who has recorded his opinion of slavery in these words: “The slave trade is the very denial of every law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high treason against humanity. ”

“ These odious and appalling accusations, the echo of which follows a man through his whole life, are made against him, and made against him by whom? By a man who had been in the service of the Congo State itself, who, in the year 1897, as I have shown, made himself the defender of the administration of the Congo State, and declared in an article which was put in the interview which he had with L’Étoile Belge, that there was no foundation whatever for the accusations which had been made against the Belgian officers, and he was able to say so because he knew the truth. ”