The Belgian Government, in fact, as the new owner of
the Crown Domain and the National Domain, acts on the principle that the natives never owned land in any definite sense, and that therefore they have not been pillaged. Mr. Morel produces a mass of evidence, the collection of which is a marked proof of his untiring zeal, to demonstrate that the Congo natives used the produce of the soil in trade with European markets from time immemorial, and that when the "Congo Free State" was established this trade was consider. able, and a currency existed. He demonstrates further the reality of the former communal tenure of land by the natives. Ne one would dispute the justice of appropriation by the Belgian Government in the case of vacant lands, but M. Vandervelde, the Belgian Socialist who played so honour- able a part in the negotiations which ended in annexation, and who has lately visited the Congo, says that he saw no vacant lands. We have always admitted that a complete economic reversal of the conditions of native labour is necessary, and we hope that Mr. Morel's collection of evidence (which may be bought for 3d., post-free, from the Congo Reform Association, Granville House, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C.) may be useful to the British Foreign Office in insisting—and Treaties lay on us the responsibility of doing so—on the establishment of new conditions in the Congo.
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