THE CONGO REPORT. and that any abuses which might have
existed years ago were being, or had been, firmly repressed. If not openly by the Congolese authorities themselves, yet by news- papers and persons acting under their inspiration, it has been strenuously asserted that the movement in England. for the reform of the administration of the Free State was prompted by the most ignoble motives ; and in Belgium, a country resting under deep national obligations to England, and possessing a people naturally as much alive as any nation in Western Europe to the promptings of humanity, there has been a general disposition to accept this view. It is inconceivable that such impressions should survive the publication of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry.
The significance of the findings of the Commission is greatly enhanced by two facts. In the first place, it could in no sense be regarded. as a tribunal animated by a temper unfriendly to what may be called the defendant State. The President was Dr. Edmond Janssens, Advocate- General of the Brussels Appeal Court, and its two other members were Baron Nisco, President of the Appeal Court at Boma, and M. de Schumacher, a Swiss jurist. A Commission so constituted was morally certain to make every possible allowance for the difficulties of administering a savage country, and every reasonable discount from the testimony as to abuses given by any witnesses, such as English Protestant missionaries, or natives, who might be conceived to appear before it under the inspiration of prejudice or of vindictive motive. And, as a matter of fact, the friendly temper of the Commis- sioners is shown by the glowing compliments which they pay to the Free State Government towards the end of the Report. In the second place, it is to be noted that they deliberately adopt a point of view at variance with that held by most, if not all, of those who have been the severest critics of the administration of the Congo State. They hold, that is to say, that the natives of that State may rightly be forced to labour, for the exploitation of the natural riches of their country. For " it is on that basis alone," in their opinion, " that the Congo can enter into the pathway of modern civilisation, and that the population can be reclaimed from its natural state of barbarism." But, that principle being admitted, it is essential, in the view of the Commissioners, that it be applied in an equitable and " paternal " manner. They directed their investigations to the question whether it had been so applied, and the outcome of their Report is, in regard to large areas and great numbers of the natives, an emphatic negative. Space will not allow of our dwelling on the oppressive quality which they attribute to the compulsory labour employed in porterage. It is enough to say that they quote Magis- trates as having assured them, in respect of two important porterage routes, in regions where the amounts to be trans- ported are " enormous," and the population among whom the work has to be distributed sparse, that the cora& " exhausts the unfortunate populations who are sub- jected to it, and menaces them with partial destruction." With earnest emphasis the Commissioners insist that the " crushing " (ecrasant) character of this corvee should be reduced as much as possible by utilising waterways wherever practicable, "even if the duration of the trans- port is thus prolonged and its cost made heavier." It might, indeed, seem that a " paternal " Government would have adopted. these views years ago. But the gravest charges brought against the Congo Administration have, no doubt, related to the means adopted for securing the largest possible amount of rubber from native gatherers of that most valuable product. To begin with, the natives hate the work, not for any arduous quality in itself, but for the circumstances attending it under present conditions. Nominally, it appears, there is a recent Congolese law limiting the time during which public labour may be exacted to forty effective hours in a month ; but in practice, the Commissioners tell us, this law is " flagrantly violated."
For, owing to the distances which they very often have to cover between their villages and the places in the forest where the rubber-bearing trees are to be found, the native gatherers find that, " whatever their activity in the forest "—where they have to put up with an improvised shelter against weather and wild beasts, and have no one to cook their food for them—" the greater part of their time is absorbed " in collecting and rendering their tale of rubber. And supposing they fail to render it ? In that case, the Commissioners pass measured, indeed, but none the less weighty, condemnation upon the steps to which, until lately, the white agents of the State, or of the commercial companies, generally resorted. They applied the principle—in itself, perhaps, sound enough— of collective responsibility on the part of villages, or of groups of natives acknowledging one chief, by arresting the chiefs and putting them often to servile work—thereby striking at the root of the only recognisable authority among the natives—or by seizing hostages " at hazard, often women." This latter practice, it appears, has for a long time been prohibited by the State, " but without securing its suppression." Having got these prisoners or hostages, the agents kept them as long as they thought proper,—in certain cases for several months. The places in which they were kept were " sometimes in a very bad state, they were in want of necessaries, and the mortality among them was considerable." Rubber-gatherers who had failed to produce the requisite amount were flogged by some chefs de poste, who possessed no legal authority whatever to employ such discipline, even supposing— which seems by no means clear—that they were dealing with the actual defaulters. Blacks set to look after the prisoners were sometimes guilty of very serious acts of violence against them.
These abuses, say the Commissioners, " are certainly not unknown" on the territory of the Domain prive; but the witnesses, including two Protestant missionaries who are quoted—though not by name—agree that latterly there has been a great improvement, one of them going so far as to say that in the part of the Royal Domain in which he lives " all was now well." But, they proceed, "unfortunately it is not so in the regions exploited by certain commercial companies," and in particular the territory occupied by the " A.B.I.R.,"—i.e., the so-called Anglo-Belgian Indiarubber Company. There, " it was scarcely disputed that the imprisonment of female hostages, the subjection of chiefs to servile work, the humiliations inflicted on them, the lash given to rubber-gatherers, the brutalities of the blacks set to watch those under detention, were habitually practised." Analogous facts had been declared to the Commissioners to prevail in Lulonga, and they do not question the justice of the allegations. This seems nearly enough in the way of condemnation, but it is by no means all. Perhaps the worst of all the findings of the Commissioners are those which relate to the savaaeries of the armed black " sentinels " who are charged with the duty of invigilating the work of the rubber-gatherers in the forest, or looking after them in their villages. How many scores or hundreds of murders have been committed by these officials the Com- missioners do not undertake to say, but they have no doubt, nor can any sane and humane person entertain any, du caracterefuneste de l'institution. The only other point which we can notice here is the practice of military attacks upon villages defaulting in the amount of rubber due from them, which, as the Commissioners point out, are, by a "deplorable confusion," sometimes reported in official documents as if they were expeditions into an enemy's country.
We have been mainly concerned to show, by fairly drawn extracts from the Report, how fully it justifies the action of those who in this country have agitated on behalf of the oppressed Congolese, and, very particularly, the steady pressure by which Lord. Lansdowne contri- buted so largely to the appointment of the Commission of Inquiry. The evidence taken by the Commission is not published with its Report, as might have been expected. Its publication, if not given spontaneously, ought to be resolutely insisted on. But what, in regard to the general question, ought now to be the attitude of the British Government and of public opinion here is a matter for further, and mature, consideration. Xing Leopold has appointed a new Commission to study the conclu- sions of the Report, and devise practical measures for dealing with the subjects of which it treats. The Inquiry Commissioners recommend, among other things, the effective application of the " forty hours a month " law in regard to the corvee ; the suppression of the rysterne funeste of black sentinels, and of the wearing of arms by black agents of the Government or of the companies in the villages ; the withdrawal of the right of using force from the companies ; and the regulation of military expeditions. That is all very good and proper, and the public opinion of England and of Europe might be willing to leave the whole subject to be dealt with by the King of the Belgians and his friends but for the unfortunate memory that a local Commission of Amelioration was appointed some ten years ago, with the result that all which we now read of has happened since, and that most of what we now read as proved has been strenuously denied, and its asserters vilified, by the advocates of the Congo State. Seeing that that State was the creation of Europe, it is beyond question that some collective European action is called for to secure guarantees that the objects set out in the Berlin Act shall in future be loyally observed.
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