THE CONGO FREE STATE.*
Ms. Fox Bouabis has made difficulties for himself. He would have done better to leave Sir H. M. Stanley alone. He will urge, of course, that the foundations of the Congo Free state were virtually laid and the course of its policy de- termined by this explorer, and that he is under a certain responsibility for what has followed. That may or may not be the case. All that we affirm is that for the present purpose it would have been wiser to take the case as it stands. Mr. Fox Bourne contends that the rulers of the Congo Free State, whether at Brussels or on the spot, have entirely departed from the principles to which they are bound by international obligations, and have brought the country into a condition far worse even than that of the old slave-raiding days. He should have been content with proving this assertion. It is here that he is confronted with difficulties that are not of his own making. Official documents are, as might be expected, incom- plete and generally unsatisfactory. To draw up a description of the Free State as it really is, is as impossible as it would be impossible to write a true history of the Napoleonic Wars from the bulletins of Napoleon. Mr. Fox Bourne has to use the reports of travellers, of newspaper correspondents, and other sources of information of a more or less contentious character. We quite believe that he has done his best to arrive at the truth, but some of his authorities are certainly open to criticism. He quotes, for instance, a statement from the Petit Bleu of Brussels that a certain Belgian official, Van Eycken by name (now dead), ordered his native troops to "hang the women and children [of a certain village] on the palisades in the form of a cross." Now it is impossible to forget that the Petit Bleu was in the habit of telling this kind of story about the British troops in South Africa. It may have had cogent inducements in the latter case which were wanting in the former, but its veracity is not the less dis- credited, and it would have been well for Mr. Fox Bourne to caution his read ers. For ourselves, while we think it right to give as wide a circulation as possible to the statements made in Civilisation in Congoland, and while we have a strong inclination, after watching for years the administration of the Congo Free State as far as it is possible for English publicists to watch it, to believe in Mr. Fox Bourne's allegations, we must leave the responsibility for them with the author. In other words, though we desire to be strictly impartial and just to the Congo Administration, our readers must not suppose that we have any desire to shield that anachronism among Govern- ments. On the contrary, we are extremely doubtful of its doings, and believe that it could hardly be so universally distrusted had it a clean bill of health. That we entertain such suspicions, however, is not a ground for less, but for greater, caution in dealing with the case against it. We do not wish to give any one the excuse to say that we are carried away by prejudice.
We may start with facts which are beyond dispute. The objects which the Berlin Conference sought to secure were "free access to the centre of the African continent for the commerce of all nations," and the "promotion of the moral and material well-being of the native populations." Bismarck congratu- lated the Conference on having accomplished these results. What has actually happened ? This, as one observer has put it with terrible brevity; that tribes which survived three cen- turies of slave-hunting will be destroyed by half-a-century of philanthropy. " Philanthropy " is the ironical name for a system of forced labour which involves all the evils of slavery, and has none of its mitigations. The owner of slaves has at least the interests of property to restrain him, though they often fail of their effect, and he may be moved by kindly personal feeling,—on the whole, it is probable, a more potent motive. The system of forced labour is wholly impersonal, and is untouched by any alleviations. The State powers which control it are necessarily uninfluenced by feeling, and the con- sideration of interest is too remote to be in any way effective.
e Congo State, which was to provide an asylum of peace where the African races could gradually be developed into a
• Civilisation in Congoland: a Story of International Wrongdoing. By R. B. Fox Beams. London : P. S. King and Son. [101. 6d- net.] civilised and happy community, is nothing but a gigantic machine for enriching the sovereign power in the first instance, and various private companies in the second, through the col- lecting by forced labour of ivory and rubber. This is what Mr. Glave, an independent traveller of high character, wrote
The station [New Kasongo, on the Lualaba River] is surrounded by villages that pay tribute in different ways. Some do paddling, others build, others again bring in wood for building purposes. Some bring in ivory and rubber. The place has a population of 15,000, nearly all slaves. I left New Kasongo and followed the right or east bank of the Lualaba to Nyangwe, which is built on a treeless plain ; all the timber for building purposes comes from the opposite bank of the river. Lemery has done good work here. He says Nyaugwe can be made to produce fifteen tons of rubber a month, when more tribes are brought under control. Also a good deal of ivory is brought in for tribute and for sale. In connection with the station there are five thousand auxiliaries, who are sent all over the country to beat the natives into submission to the State."
After travelling some way further, to Bayonge, he says
This is a post under Lemery. The natives have complained that they are compelled to bring rubber, which is bought by the officers of the Congo Free State ; half of the price paid goes to the mgwana, or chief, of the district, and half goes to the natives. Many villagers refuse to bring rubber ; then they are attacked and killed or taken prisoners. While I was at Bayonge an expedition sent by Manahuto, under the orders of Lemery, arrived after having a fight with natives on the other side of the Uzimbu. Many natives are said to have been killed, and thirty prisoners taken, mostly women."
Another observer, this time a Member of the Belgian Senate, is not less emphatic :-
" The cruel impression conveyed by the mutilated forests,' he wrote, ' is heightened in the places where, till lately, native villages nestled, hidden and protected by thick and lofty foliage. The inhabitants have fled. They have fled in spite of encouraging palavers and promises of peace and kind treatment. They have burnt their huts, and great heaps of cinders mark the sites, amid deserted palm-groves and trampled-down banana fields. The terrors caused by the memory of inhuman floggings, of massacres, of rapes and abductions, haunt their poor brains, and they go as fugitives to seek shelter in the recesses of the hospitable bush, or, across the frontiers, to find it in French or Portuguese Congo, not yet afflicted with so many labours and alarms, far from the roads traversed by white men, those baneful intruders, and their train of strange and disquieting habits.' The outlook was as gloomy when he wandered along the path trodden by the caravans to the Pool and back again. 'We are constantly meeting these carriers, I either isolated or in Indian file ; blacks, blacks, miserable blacks, with horribly filthy loin-cloths for their only garments ; their bare and frizzled heads supporting their loads—chest, bale, ivory-tusk, hamper of rubber, or barrel ; for the most part broken down, sink- ing under the burdens made heavier by their weariness and in- sufficiency of food, consisting of a handful of rice and tainted dried fish ; pitiful walking caryatids ; beasts of burden with the lank limbs of monkeys, pinched-up features, eyes fixed and round with the strain of keeping their balance and the dulness of exhaustion. Thus they come and go by thousands, organised in a system of human transport, requisitioned by the State armed with its irre- sistible force publique, supplied by the chiefs whose slaves they are and who pounce on their wages; jogging on, with knees bent and stomach protruding, one arm raised up and the other resting on a long stick; dusty and malodorous ; covered with insects as their huge procession passes over mountains and through valleys ; dying on the tramp, or, when the tramp is over, going to their villages to die of exhaustion."
Such extracts might be repeated ad nauseam. Forced labour, though certainly not contemplated by the Brussels Conference, has been worked in the course of the history of the world without destructive effects to the races sub- jected to it. For ages upon ages it was the dominant, one might almost say the only, system. But in the Congo State it is complicated with the worst abuses by officials, who for various reasons have but a brief tenure of power and make haste to be rich. And it is enforced in the most barbarous way. Companies of savage mercenaries, often without any white leader, go about the country and visit any defaulting village with the most cruel punishment. They have no interest in the matter; they have their pay, which they supplement with loot, and with what is far more valuable to them, unrestrained indulgence in cruelty and lust. Many of these mercenaries are cannibals, and one result of employing them is that cannibalism is largely on the increase. Such is the result of the policy of a Christian nation, a policy guided more largely than in any other European country by clerical
advisers.
There are minor counts in Mr. Fox Bourne's indictment. The bad example of the Congo State is, be declares, working evil outside its borders. The French are giving up a policy
of justice andiindness for one of rapacity; the Portuguese' who bad shown signs of improvement, are retrograding. Nor is the danger of serious international complications altogether absent. The execution of Mr. Stokes by Major Lothaire and the shameless denial of justice by the Belgian Courts would at some times have been made a casus belli. Belgium presumes on its position, on the weakness which European guarantees have made more inexpugnable than any strength. But if these charges, if even a part of them, can be estab- lished, the days of the Congo Free State are numbered.
We have tried to give the general sense and drift of Mr. Fox Bourne's arraignment of the Congo Free State, but for ourselves, as we have said above, we suspend judgment But though we have not sufficient first-hand knowledge to enable us to say definitely that he has proved his ea se, we do say most emphatically that he has made out a sound primcifacie case for investigation, and that action ought to be taken on it by the signatories of the Berlin Act, and so the virtual guarantors of the Congo Free State. If Europe is really assenting to the horrors described by Mr. Fox Bourne, she is committing a great crime. Therefore, in our view, the Powers should investigate the matter, and if the case is proved should take action. It is, it seems to us, for Britain to demand investigation. We have always stood for the slave against the slave-owner, for the oppressed against the oppressor. If we are not to abandon that duty, we ought surely now, as a nation and a Government, to demand to know the truth about the Congo Free State.
Before leaving the subject of the Congo Free State we must also mention the appearance of another book dealing with its administration. This book is The Curse of Central Africa, by Captain Burrows (London : R. A. Everett and Co., 21s.) We cannot, however, criticise it, as we understand that actions are pending in the Courts in regard to statements in its pages. But as soon as the contents of the book are no longer sub judies, we hope to return to it, and to give our readers an account of Captain Burrows's indictment.
Previous page
