BELGIUM AND THE CONGO.
[TO TER EDITOs OF THE SPECTATOR:]
merely write to say that I am thoroughly in accord with your editorial comment upon my letter of last week. I should like to be allowed to say this, because there is no desire on the part of the Congo Reform Association to force the Government "into hasty or ill-considered action." The Association has consistently supported Sir Edward Grey, as is well known. But it would be idle to deny that fears are entertained in many influential quarters lest the Government should, through political opportunism, be led to acquiesce in a scheme of Belgian annexation which, while satisfying a Constitutional amour propre somewhat roughly handled of late by the Sovereign of the Congo State, allowed the essentials of the present system to remain. This fear is founded not at all upon lack of confidence in Sir Edward Grey, but upon a realisation of the hundred-and-one forms of pressure which can be brought—and are being 'brought—upon the Government to choose what may appear to be outwardly the easiest course, —viz., to agree to Belgian annexation on any lines at all in order to get rid of a difficulty. This fear is intensified by the knowledge that the predatory oligarchy which battens upon the slave-labour of the. Congo natives, and which controls many of the media serving to transmit abroad what purports to be "Belgian" opinion, has everything to lose by the restora- tion to the Congo natives of their economic rights. Finally, there is the great danger which I, personally, share with many others in fearing,—viz., that the present Belgian Ministry, and its narrow Parliamentary majority (for whom defeat means political extinction at the polls for the party it represents), may be identified by our Government with the Belgian people, whose views in this matter we claim, on evidence which is indisputable, they do not represent. It was because my reading of your article led me to think—erroneously, I now feel sure—that the abolition of the "monstrous system under which not only the property of the natives, but the natives themselves, are confiscated." was not, in your view, the cardinal essentiality of recognition by our Government of Belgian annexation, that I ventured to address you on the
subject.—I am, Sir, itc., E. D. MOREL,
Hon. Secretary Congo Reform Association. Hawartieu, near Chester.
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