On Tuesday, France and the Congo Free State signed an
agreement which completes the ruin of the much- belauded agreement entered into by as with the King of the Belgians last May. We had proposed to form a buffer-State between our sphere and that of France by letting the Congo State occupy a belt of territory along the left bank of the Upper Nile. The Congo State has, how- ever, now agreed not to advance so far north, but takes from France about a degree of latitude beyond what has hitherto been considered her boundary in the Congo basin. The frontier between her and France is now to run up the thaZweg of the Ubanghi as far as the confluence of the Mbomu. After that, it is to consist of (1) the thalweg of the Mbomu to its source ; (2), a straight line joining the water- shed between the Congo and the Nile basins. " From this point the frontier of the Congo Free State is constituted by the said watershed up to its intersection with longitude 390 E." This is not very perspicuous, even when worked out on one of Justus Perthes's maps (the map-publishers referred to in the Treaty) ; but roughly it means that the watershed of the Congo is to belong to the Free State. By the fourth article of the Treaty, the Free State is to renounce all occupation and use no political influence west or north of its new frontier. It is rumoured in Paris that in order to obtain this agree- ment France has given up the mysterious right of pre-emption which she claims in regard to the Free State.
