4 DECEMBER 1909, Page 18

The Times of Monday published a long article from its

special correspondent who is inquiring at Brussels' into the Congo reform scheme.' "The conversations I have had during the last few days," he says, "with Belgians who have taken the most prominent part in the long-drawn-out campaign for the reform of the Congo have impressed me above all things with the fact that the attitude of the Congo reformers in England threatens for the first time to overshoot the mark, and to defeat rather than to promote the cause which they and their Belgian friends have equally at heart." - It seems that the' most unbending Belgian critics of the Congo Administration —men like M. Vandervelde, M. Beernaert, M. Speyer, and M. Cattier—believe that JY,.. Renkin's scheme is a reasonable basis of reform; and if that be so it would be,- to say the least of it, undiplomatic in Congo reformers here to refuse to

sympathise with them. - •