THE REPORTED ATROCITIES IN THE CONGO.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.1
have been abroad, and out of the reach of the Spectator, or I should have thanked you sooner for the valuable support given in your issue of April 2nd to this Society's appeal to our Government with reference to abuses in the Congo basin. I now ask leave to make two obser- vations. The first is that under the conditions of the Congo State's establishment and investment with authority by the signatories to the Berlin General Act of 1885 it is equitably precluded from the exercise of functions of ownership which, rightly or wrongly, are recognised as pertinent to the civilised possessors, by right of conquest or otherwise, of other un- civilised areas. The Torrens Act, as adopted by Great Britain in Australia, and extensively imitated elsewhere, is claimed by the Congo Government as a precedent and warrant for the Domaine Prive that now absorbs nearly the whole of the enormous territory assigned to it. Its enforcement of the claim is in violation of the Berlin Conference's provisions for securing international equality of trading rights and oppor- tunities throughout the Congo basin, as well as protection and "moral and material advancement" of its indigenous populations. This latter point is the one with which our Society is especially concerned. My second observation is that by scandalously abusing the privileges of the Torrens Act, to which it wrongfully appeals for sanction, the Congo Government is imposing far greater and more ruinous tyranny on the natives than the slavery from which it undertook to rescue them. By handing over huge slices of its Domaine Prive to privileged companies, in most of which it holds half the shares, or is otherwise entitled to half the profits ; by lending to them its fares publique, largely composed of cannibals, for any sort of oppres- sion serviceable in extorting rubber and other produce from the inhabitants, whose forced labour is infinitely worse than the slavery that is nominally superseded ; and by other processes, the Congo State, according to abundant testimony which has never been refuted, appears to be committing and encouraging crimes against humanity to which the atrocities of Spanish and Portuguese adventurers in America three or four centuries ago afford no parallel. The enormity and extent of the crimes may be exaggerated, and all we ask is that the allegations shall be honestly inquired into and that whatever truth is in them shall be honestly exposed and proper action taken thereon. But our demand is strengthened, and a prima fade case for it is fully made out, by the pernicious legislation, lending itself to all sorts of abuse, which is briefly referred to in our Society's present appeal, and authoritatively described in M. Cattier's learned and semi-official treatise on "Droit et Administration dims l'Etat Independant du Congo."
[We cannot take any responsibility for the allegations made by Mr. Fox Bourne in the above letter, for the facts on which they are based are necessarily outside our own know- ledge, but we are sure that he writes with sincerity of purpose and in good faith.—ED. Spectator.]
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