Kingdom of Kongo

“ The professions of the African powers are peaceful, but in the division of these unknown millions of square miles it requires but little penetration to discern the elements for protracted strife in future generations. The agreement between Germany and England, by far the most important of the compacts to extend the protection of European nations to particular zones not embraced in the Kongo Free State, exemplifies in a marked degree the disputes that may arise, and with what avidity the civilized nations have sought mutual recognition of their right to dominate in specified spheres. ”

“ To me, the fact of greatest interest about the Congo is that it is owned, and the twenty millions of people who inhabit it are owned by one man. The land and its people are his private property. I am not trying to say that he governs the Congo. He does govern it, but that in itself would not be of interest. His claim is that he owns it. Though backed by all the mailed fists in the German Empire, and all the Dreadnoughts of the seas, no other modern monarch would make such a claim. ”

“ The Congo Free State has indeed, without breaking any Treaty, solved the problem which has baffled the combined wisdom of all the ancient great colonial Powers. It exists on its own resources without poisoning the natives with alcohol; it extracts much wealth from the soil without fear of ever exhausting it; it opens up great tracts of land without running heavily into debt, and—noblest of all—it daily converts naked cannibal savages into self-respecting responsible people. ”

“ It holds on the coast only the mouth of the river, its main possessions lying in the interior, Belgium is the only country that has planted colonies inland. Like all the interior of equatorial Africa, the valley of the Kongo is well watered and has continuous rains. The land is rich and fertile, but is practically inaccessible, and, before any extensive commerce can be carried on, must be connected by railroad with the ocean. The Compagnie du Congo has just completed a survey for a railroad on the south side of the Kongo, from Matadi, opposite Vivi, to Stanley Pool. ”

“ Perhaps having encountered a more powerful nation in her path may account for this, but the total area within her "sphere" is nevertheless not insignificant, reaching as it does over three-quarters of a million of square miles. In the Kongo Free State we find another million square miles, which many believe will ultimately become a Belgian colony; but in any event, occupying as it does the larger part of the basin of the Kongo, it is destined to be the scene of an activity in the development of the continent fruitful of the most important results. ”

“ The countries in which people know how to work are strong, and in the van of progress. Such a future seems to me reserved for the Congo State if it perseveres in its present course.
The story of the Congo Free State offers great opportunity for speculation and for prophecy. Taking a broad view of the opinion prevalent in Europe and the United States, the conclusion that Great Britain seeks to acquire important territory in Central Africa is inevitable. This theory of the anti-Congo campaign is strenuously denied by all unofficial persons engaged in that campaign. ”

“ Germany does not permit and will not permit the English to penetrate into its territory, except under certain restrictions. England would not have managed the Congo better than King Leopold has done if she had been mistress of it, as she might have become in 1877.
The white man must remain master of the Congo. Drive him out of it, and you will see war arise anew between one native village and another, a return to barbarism. It is difficult to govern so vast a country; yet, in a limited number of years, the King of the Belgians has put an end to the horrible Arab slave trade. ”

“ It has never placed itself under the guardianship of any Power or collection of Powers. It has no connection with Belgium except the fact that King Leopold happens to be king of each of them. The two Governments are entirely independent.
One of the great achievements of the Congo State has been the suppression of the Arab slave-traders, who were in the habit of invading Central Africa, carrying off slaves to the eastern markets, and laying waste the country through which they passed. It is estimated that 100,000 natives were killed each year in these slave raids. ”

“ Many of the people of the Congo are not cannibals, but there is always war and fighting between the different tribes, and it is dangerous to travel because so many are always watching to rob and kill strangers. The lions and other wild beasts are dangerous, but the bands of fighting men are still more to be feared. Everything is wild and unsafe, and there is no law outside the village, so each one has to protect himself. Among the dark-skinned Central African people each village has a chief who keeps order within it, and often a group of villages of one tribe has a great chief. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A civil community was to be created of savage hordes; to maintain itself by its own people led on to civilisation by a few Europeans with a courage and zeal the equatorial sun should not subdue. The vast field it occupied and the untamed characteristics of its large population, the early philanthropic aims of its royal patron, and a general desire to carry out the principles enunciated at the Berlin Conference, all contributed to invest the Congo State Government with a special character, and to saddle it with original duties supposedly beyond its powers to perform. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The Kongo is but one line on which the general advance is being made upon the interior of the continent. The French seem determined upon extending their influence on the northern and western coasts, and the Portuguese, English, Germans, and Italians are pronounced in their efforts on the eastern coast, while the English are careful, too, of their interests from the south, and seem to have almost unlimited scope north of Victoria Nyanza. The progress of the advancing colonization will necessarily be accelerated or retarded by the geographic conditions encountered in the different regions. ”

“ And the most remarkable feature of it is, that the man who makes this claim is the man who was placed over the Congo as a guardian, to keep it open to the trade of the world, to suppress slavery. That, in the Congo, he has killed trade and [33] made the products of the land his own, that of the natives he did not kill he has made slaves, is what to-day gives the Congo its chief interest. It is well to emphasize how this one man stole a march on fourteen Powers, including the United States, and stole also an empire of one million square miles. ”

“ It is the most astonishing thing that the British Government have given the Casement report so much credence.
The agitation now going on with respect to atrocities in the Congo is based on things that happened a long time ago. There is no doubt that in times gone by atrocities have occurred; but, thanks to the altered methods and conditions of administration, such things are not likely to recur. The basin of the Congo, mainly the Belgian Congo, is practically the sole rubber-producing area of the world. This territory also contains the lowest class of natives in the whole of Africa. ”

“ Portugal of any African territory at the mouth of the Congo dangerous to all the tribes of the interior, and cannot be sanctioned by the treaty powers while it is attended with such incidents without an abandonment of all treaty obligations and duties relating to the slave trade.
The importance of the Congo River to the continent of Africa as a channel through which civilisation and all its attendant advantages will be introduced into a region inhabited by 50,000,000 of people cannot be too highly estimated. ”

“ It is the special pride of its founder that the vast state of the Congo has been formed without bloodshed, except at the cost of the cruel Arab slave-hunters, and of the not less cruel cannibals like Msiri or the Batetelas, that a thousand treaties have been signed without a gunshot, and that from the commencement the highest ideals of modern civilisation have been aimed at, and, considering the stupendous difficulties of the task, practically attained in the administration. ”

“ Uganda and British East Africa are far behind the Congo Free State. Not more than a third of Uganda is opened up to administrative control. I once spent ten months in Uganda, and visited every station in it, walking 2300 miles and returning down the Nile. The Belgians have got stations everywhere in the Congo practically, and most of the natives, except in one or two areas, are entirely under control. The Uganda native is a fat, lazy chap, who will do no work. There is no industry in Uganda. The Belgians pay the Congo natives for their labour. ”

“ And were the country not so rich in rubber and ivory, were the natives not sweated so severely, he also would be a bankrupt shopkeeper. For the Congo is not only one vast trading post, but also it is a trading post badly managed. Even in the republics of Central America where the government changes so frequently, and where each new president is trying to make hay while he can, there is better administration, more is done for the people, the rights of other nations are better respected. ”

“ The moment Congo independently chooses its own way of life, I wish that the Congolese people may preserve and develop all of their spiritual, moral and religious values, values that are common and that transcend political changes, racial differences or borders. Remain one, and you will prove worthy to play the great role you have been called to play in the history of Africa. People of Congo, My country and I, we recognize with joy and emotion that Congo is granted access on this day, June 30, 1960, in complete harmony and friendship with Belgium, to independence and international sovereignty. ”

“ The collection of rubber, on which the whole fabric of Congo finance rests, involves a disregard of liberty, an indifference to suffering, a destruction of human life, almost inconceivable. Those who best know the country estimate that the population is annually reduced, under King Leopold's rule, by at least a hundred thousand. No great war, no famine, no pestilence in the world's history has been so merciless a scourge as civilization in Congoland. ”

“ At first, where King Leopold’s ideas for the regeneration of Africa attracted any attention at all, they were regarded with bland smiles as utopian visions, more creditable to the heart than to the head of the princely visionary. But true genius, though it may be hampered and delayed in its onward march, is not to be extinguished either by active opposition or cold indifference. Of such calibre is King Leopold, or there would to-day be no Congo Free State, nor what some past-masters in the obscuration of the obvious are sometimes pleased to call “the Congo Question.” ”

“ Where Europe, whose interests in Africa are material as well as moral, has not seen fit to join a British traders’ campaign against a small neutralised State, it would seem that the United States Government could not be led into action on the pretext that its recognition of a friendly Government invested it with police powers over the internal affairs of the State so recognised. “Territory” and “commerce” are the tightly furled, secretly carried banners of the raid upon the Congo State. This exaggerated humanitarian solicitude for the African black is purely pretence. ”

“ Such a Congress would surely result in the partition of the Congo lands—a partition in which Great Britain, whose responsibilities of empire are already too vast, might well play the most self-denying part. If France, having given a pledge to rule her Congo lands in the same excellent fashion as she does the rest of her African Empire, were to extend her borders to the northern bank of the river along its whole course until it turns to the south, then an orderly government might be hoped for in those regions. ”

“ If the Congo State is attacked, England may admit that she, more than any other nation, has been the object of attacks and accusations of every kind, and the list would be long of the campaigns which have at various times, and even quite recently, been directed against her colonial administration. She has certainly not escaped criticism in regard to her numerous and bloody wars against native populations, nor the reproach of oppressing natives and invading their liberty. Has she not been blamed in regard to the long insurrections in Sierra Leone ”

“ The German Government will willingly lend its help in placing the Congo Free State in a position to acquire the means which may seem necessary to assist its development and to enable it to continue its valuable services to the cause of civilisation and humanity. ”