King Leopold's Soliloquy - A Defense of his Congo Rule

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Title: King Leopold's Soliloquy - A Defense of his Congo Rule
Author: Twain, Mark
Language: English
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KING LEOPOLD’S SOLILOQUY

“IT IS I”

“Leopold II is the absolute
Master of the whole of the in-
ternal and external activity of
the Independent State of the
Congo. The organization of
justice, the army, the industrial
and commercial regimes are established freely by himself.
He would say, and with greater accuracy than did Louis XIV.,
‘The State, it is I.’” _Prof. F. Cattier, Brussels University._
“Let us repeat after so many others what has become
a platitude, the success of the African work is the work of
a sole directing will, without being hampered by the hesita-
tion of timorous politicians, carried out under his sole respon-
sibility,—intelligent, thought-
ful, conscious of the perils
and the advantages, dis-
counting with an admirable
prescience the great results of
a near future.” _M. Alfred Pos-
kine in “Bilans Congolais.”_

[Illustration:

“A memorial for the perpetuation of my name.”—_Page 27._
]

KING LEOPOLD’S SOLILOQUY
A DEFENSE OF HIS CONGO RULE

BY
MARK TWAIN

SECOND EDITION

THE P. R. WARREN CO.
BOSTON, MASS.
1905

------------------------------------------------------------------------

King Leopold’s Soliloquy

[_Throws down pamphlets which he has been reading. Excitedly combs his
flowing spread of whiskers with his fingers; pounds the table with his
fists; lets off brisk volleys of unsanctified language at brief
intervals, repentantly drooping his head, between volleys, and kissing
the Louis XI crucifix hanging from his neck, accompanying the kisses
with mumbled apologies; presently rises, flushed and perspiring, and
walks the floor, gesticulating_]

—— ——!! —— ——!! If I had them by the throat! [_Hastily kisses the
crucifix, and mumbles_] In these twenty years I have spent millions to
keep the press of the two hemispheres quiet, and still these leaks keep
on occurring. I have spent other millions on religion and art, and what
do I get for it? Nothing. Not a compliment. These generosities are
studiedly ignored, in print. In print I get nothing but slanders—and
slanders again—and still slanders, and slanders on top of slanders!
Grant them true, what of it? They are slanders all the same, when
uttered against a king.

Miscreants—they are telling _everything_! Oh, everything: how I went
pilgriming among the Powers in tears, with my mouth full of Bible and my
pelt oozing piety at every pore, and implored them to place the vast and
rich and populous Congo Free State in trust in my hands as their agent,
so that I might root out slavery and stop the slave raids, and lift up
those twenty-five millions of gentle and harmless blacks out of darkness
into light, the light of our blessed Redeemer, the light that streams
from his holy Word, the light that makes glorious our noble
civilization—lift them up and dry their tears and fill their bruised
hearts with joy and gratitude—lift them up and make them comprehend that
they were no longer outcasts and forsaken, but our very brothers in
Christ; how America and thirteen great European states wept in sympathy
with me, and were persuaded; how their representatives met in convention
in Berlin and made me Head Foreman and Superintendent of the Congo
State, and drafted out my powers and limitations, carefully guarding the
persons and liberties and properties of the natives against hurt and
harm; forbidding whisky traffic and gun traffic; providing courts of
justice; making commerce free and fetterless to the merchants and
traders of all nations, and welcoming and safeguarding all missionaries
of all creeds and denominations. They have told how I planned and
prepared my establishment and selected my horde of officials—“pals” and
“pimps” of mine, “unspeakable Belgians” every one—and hoisted my flag,
and “took in” a President of the United States, and got him to be the
first to recognize it and salute it. Oh, well, let them blackguard me if
they like; it is a deep satisfaction to me to remember that I was a
shade too smart for that nation that thinks itself so smart. Yes, I
certainly did bunco a Yankee—as those people phrase it. Pirate flag? Let
them call it so—perhaps it is. All the same, _they were the first to
salute it_.

[Illustration:

“They were the first to salute it”
]

These meddlesome American missionaries! these frank British consuls!
these blabbing Belgian-born traitor officials!—those tiresome parrots
are always talking, always telling. They have told how for twenty years
I have ruled the Congo State not as a trustee of the Powers, an agent, a
subordinate, a foreman, but as a sovereign—sovereign over a fruitful
domain four times as large as the German Empire—sovereign absolute,
irresponsible, above all law; trampling the Berlin-made Congo charter
under foot; barring out all foreign traders but myself; restricting
commerce to myself, through concessionaires who are my creatures and
confederates; seizing and holding the State as my personal property, the
whole of its vast revenues as my private “swag”—mine, solely
mine—claiming and holding its millions of people as my private property,
my serfs, my slaves; their labor mine, with or without wage; the food
they raise not their property but mine; the rubber, the ivory and all
the other riches of the land mine—mine solely—and gathered for me by the
men, the women and the little children under compulsion of lash and
bullet, fire, starvation, mutilation and the halter.

These pests!—it is as I say, they have kept back nothing! They have
revealed these and yet other details which shame should have kept them
silent about, since they were exposures of a king, a sacred personage
and immune from reproach, by right of his selection and appointment to
his great office by God himself; a king whose acts cannot be criticized
without blasphemy, since God has observed them from the beginning and
has manifested no dissatisfaction with them, nor shown disapproval of
them, nor hampered nor interrupted them in any way. By this sign I
recognize his approval of what I have done; his cordial and glad
approval, I am sure I may say. Blest, crowned, beatified with this great
reward, this golden reward, this unspeakably precious reward, why should
I care for men’s cursings and revilings of me? [_With a sudden outburst
of feeling_] May they roast a million æons in—[_Catches his breath and
effusively kisses the crucifix; sorrowfully murmurs, “I shall get myself
damned yet, with these indiscretions of speech.”_]

Yes, they go on telling everything, these chatterers! They tell how I
levy incredibly burdensome taxes upon the natives—taxes which are a pure
theft; taxes which they must satisfy by gathering rubber under hard and
constantly harder conditions, and by raising and furnishing food
supplies gratis—and it all comes out that, when they fall short of their
tasks through hunger, sickness, despair, and ceaseless and exhausting
labor without rest, and forsake their homes and flee to the woods to
escape punishment, my black soldiers, drawn from unfriendly tribes, and
instigated and directed by my Belgians, hunt them down and butcher them
and burn their villages—reserving some of the girls. They tell it all:
how I am wiping a nation of friendless creatures out of existence by
every form of murder, for my private pocket’s sake, and how every
shilling I get costs a rape, a mutilation or a life. But they never say,
although they know it, that I have labored in the cause of religion at
the same time and all the time, and have sent missionaries there (of a
“convenient stripe,” as they phrase it), to teach them the error of
their ways and bring them to Him who is all mercy and love, and who is
the sleepless guardian and friend of all who suffer. They tell only what
is against me, they will not tell what is in my favor.

They tell how England required of me a Commission of Inquiry into Congo
atrocities, and how, to quiet that meddling country, with its
disagreeable Congo Reform Association, made up of earls and bishops and
John Morleys and university grandees and other dudes, more interested in
other people’s business than in their own. I appointed it. Did it stop
their mouths? No, they merely pointed out that it was a commission
composed wholly of my “Congo butchers,” “the very men whose acts were to
be inquired into.” They said it was equivalent to appointing a
commission of wolves to inquire into depredations committed upon a
sheepfold. _Nothing_ can satisfy a cursed Englishman![1]

Footnote 1:

This visit had a more fortunate result than was anticipated. One
member of the Commission was a leading Congo official, another an
official of the government in Belgium, the third a Swiss jurist. It
was feared that the work of the Commission would not be more genuine
than that of innumerable so-called “investigations” by local
officials. But it appears that the Commission was met by a very
avalanche of awful testimony. One who was present at a public hearing
writes: “Men of stone would be moved by the stories that are being
unfolded as the Commission probes into the awful history of rubber
collection.” It is evident the commissioners were moved. Of their
report and its bearing upon the international issue presented by the
conceded conditions in the Congo State, something is said on a
supplementary page of this pamphlet. Certain reforms were ordered by
the Commission in the one section visited, but the latest word is that
after its departure conditions were soon worse than before its
coming.—M. T.

[Illustration:

“They tell only what is against me.”—_Page 10._
]

And were the fault-finders frank with my private character? They could
not be more so if I were a plebeian, a peasant, a mechanic. They remind
the world that from the earliest days my house has been chapel and
brothel combined, and both industries working full time; that I
practised cruelties upon my queen and my daughters, and supplemented
them with daily shame and humiliations; that, when my queen lay in the
happy refuge of her coffin, and a daughter implored me on her knees to
let her look for the last time upon her mother’s face, I refused; and
that, three years ago, not being satisfied with the stolen spoils of a
whole alien nation, I robbed my own child of her property and appeared
by proxy in court, a spectacle to the civilized world, to defend the act
and complete the crime. It is as I have said: they are unfair, unjust;
they will resurrect and give new currency to such things as those, or to
any other things that count against me, but they will not mention any
act of mine that is in my favor. I have spent more money on art than any
other monarch of my time, and they know it. Do they speak of it, do they
tell about it? No, they do not. They prefer to work up what they call
“ghastly statistics” into offensive kindergarten object lessons, whose
purpose is to make sentimental people shudder, and prejudice them
against me. They remark that “if the innocent blood shed in the Congo
State by King Leopold were put in buckets and the buckets placed side by
side, the line would stretch 2,000 miles; if the skeletons of his ten
millions of starved and butchered dead could rise up and march in single
file, it would take them seven months and four days to pass a given
point; if compacted together in a body, they would occupy more ground
than St. Louis covers, World’s Fair and all; if they should all clap
their bony hands at once, the grisly crash would be heard at a distance
of—” Damnation, it makes me tired! And they do similar miracles with the
money I have distilled from that blood and put into my pocket. They pile
it into Egyptian pyramids; they carpet Saharas with it; they spread it
across the sky, and the shadow it casts makes twilight in the earth. And
the tears I have caused, the hearts I have broken—oh, nothing can
persuade them to let _them_ alone!

[_Meditative pause_] Well ... no matter, I _did_ beat the Yankees,
anyway! there’s comfort in that. [_Reads with mocking smile, the
President’s Order of Recognition of April 22, 1884_]

“... the government of the United States announces its sympathy with
and approval of the humane and benevolent purposes of (my Congo
scheme), and will order the officers of the United States, both on
land and sea, to recognize its flag as the flag of a friendly
government.”

Possibly the Yankees would like to take that back, now, but they will
find that my agents are not over there in America for nothing. But there
is no danger; neither nations nor governments can afford to confess a
blunder. [_With a contented smile, begins to read from “Report by Rev.
W. M. Morrison, American missionary in the Congo Free State”_]

“I furnish herewith some of the many atrocious incidents which have
come under my own personal observation; they reveal the _organized
system_ of plunder and outrage which has been perpetrated and is now
being carried on in that unfortunate country by King Leopold of
Belgium. I say King Leopold, because he and he _alone_ is now
responsible, since he is the _absolute sovereign_. _He styles
himself such._ When our government in 1884 laid the foundation of
the Congo Free State, by recognizing its flag, little did it know
that this concern, parading under the guise of philanthropy, was
really King Leopold of Belgium, one of the shrewdest, most heartless
and most conscienceless rulers that ever sat on a throne. This is
apart from his known corrupt morals, which have made his name and
his family a byword in two continents. Our government would most
certainly not have recognized that flag had it known that it was
really King Leopold individually who was asking for recognition; had
it known that it was setting up in the heart of Africa an _absolute
monarchy_; had it known that, having put down African slavery in our
own country at great cost of blood and money, it was _establishing a
worse form of slavery right in Africa_.”

[_With evil joy_] Yes, I certainly was a shade too clever for the
Yankees. It hurts; it gravels them. They can’t get over it! Puts a shame
upon them in another way, too, and a graver way; for they never can rid
their records of the reproachful fact that their vain Republic,
self-appointed Champion and Promoter of the Liberties of the World, is
the only democracy in history that has lent its power and influence to
the establishing of an _absolute monarchy_!

[Illustration:

“They go to them with their sorrows”
]

[_Contemplating, with an unfriendly eye, a stately pile of pamphlets_]
Blister the meddlesome missionaries! They write tons of these things.
They seem to be always around, always spying, always eye-witnessing the
happenings; and everything they see they commit to paper. They are
always prowling from place to place; the natives consider them their
only friends; they go to them with their sorrows; they show them their
scars and their wounds, inflicted by my soldier police; they hold up the
stumps of their arms and lament because their hands have been chopped
off, as punishment for not bringing in enough rubber, and as proof to be
laid before my officers that the required punishment was well and truly
carried out. One of these missionaries saw eighty-one of these hands
drying over a fire for transmission to my officials—and of course he
must go and set it down and print it. They travel and travel, they spy
and spy! And nothing is too trivial for them to print. [_Takes up a
pamphlet. Reads a passage from Report of a “Journey made in July, August
and September, 1903, by Rev. A. E. Scrivener, a British missionary”_]

“... Soon we began talking, and without any encouragement on my part
the natives began the tales I had become so accustomed to. They were
living in peace and quietness when the white men came in from the
lake with all sorts of requests to do this and that, and they
thought it meant slavery. So they attempted to keep the white men
out of their country but without avail. The rifles were too much for
them. So they submitted and made up their minds to do the best they
could under the altered circumstances. First came the command to
build houses for the soldiers, and this was done without a murmur.
Then they had to feed the soldiers and all the men and women—hangers
on—who accompanied them. Then they were told to bring in rubber.
This was quite a new thing for them to do. There was rubber in the
forest several days away from their home, but that it was worth
anything was news to them. A small reward was offered and a rush was
made for the rubber. ‘What strange white men, to give us cloth and
beads for the sap of a wild vine.’ They rejoiced in what they
thought their good fortune. But soon the reward was reduced until at
last they were told to bring in the rubber for nothing. To this they
tried to demur; but to their great surprise several were shot by the
soldiers, and the rest were told, with many curses and blows, to go
at once or more would be killed. Terrified, they began to prepare
their food for the fortnight’s absence from the village which the
collection of rubber entailed. The soldiers discovered them sitting
about. ‘What, not gone yet?’ Bang! bang! bang! and down fell one and
another, dead, in the midst of wives and companions. There is a
terrible wail and an attempt made to prepare the dead for burial,
but this is not allowed. All must go at once to the forest. Without
food? Yes, without food. And off the poor wretches had to go without
even their tinder boxes to make fires. Many died in the forests of
hunger and exposure, and still more from the rifles of the ferocious
soldiers in charge of the post. In spite of all their efforts the
amount fell off and more and more were killed. I was shown around
the place, and the sites of former big chiefs’ settlements were
pointed out. A careful estimate made the population of, say, seven
years ago, to be 2,000 people in and about the post, within a radius
of, say, a quarter of a mile. All told, they would not muster 200
now, and there is so much sadness and gloom about them that they are
fast decreasing.”

“We stayed there all day on Monday and had many talks with the
people. On the Sunday some of the boys had told me of some bones
which they had seen, so on the Monday I asked to be shown these
bones. Lying about on the grass, within a few yards of the house I
was occupying, were numbers of human skulls, bones, in some cases
complete skeletons. I counted thirty-six skulls, and saw many sets
of bones from which the skulls were missing. I called one of the men
and asked the meaning of it. ‘When the rubber palaver began,’ said
he, ‘the soldiers shot so many we grew tired of burying, and very
often we were not allowed to bury; and so just dragged the bodies
out into the grass and left them. There are hundreds all around if
you would like to see them.’ But I had seen more than enough, and
was sickened by the stories that came from men and women alike of
the awful time they had passed through. The Bulgarian atrocities
might be considered as mildness itself when compared with what was
done here. How the people submitted I don’t know, and even now I
wonder as I think of their patience. That some of them managed to
run away is some cause for thankfulness. I stayed there two days and
the one thing that impressed itself upon me was the collection of
rubber. I saw long files of men come in, as at Bongo, with their
little baskets under their arms; saw them paid their milk tin full
of salt, and the two yards of calico flung to the headmen; saw their
trembling timidity, and in fact a great deal that all went to prove
the state of terrorism that exists and the virtual slavery in which
the people are held.”

[Illustration:

“Some bones which they had seen”
]

That is their way; they spy and spy, and run into print with every
foolish trifle. And that British consul, Mr. Casement, is just like
them. He gets hold of a _diary which had been kept by one of my
government officers_, and, although it is a private diary and intended
for no eye but its owner’s, Mr. Casement is so lacking in delicacy and
refinement as to print passages from it. [_Reads a passage from the
diary_]

“Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given
him. He must bring back all not used, and for every one used he must
bring back a right hand. M. P. told me that sometimes they shot a
cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a
living man. As to the extent to which this is carried on, he
informed me that in six months the State on the Mambogo River had
used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or
mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the people have told me
repeatedly that the soldiers kill the children with the butt of
their guns.”

When the subtle consul thinks silence will be more effective than words,
he employs it. Here he leaves it to be recognized that a thousand
killings and mutilations a month is a large output for so small a region
as the Mambogo River concession, silently indicating the dimensions of
it by accompanying his report with a map of the prodigious Congo State,
in which there is not room for so small an object as that river. That
silence is intended to say, “If it is a thousand a month in this little
corner, imagine the output of the whole vast State!” A gentleman would
not descend to these furtivenesses.

[Illustration:

FOOT AND HAND OF CHILD DISMEMBERED BY SOLDIERS, BROUGHT TO
MISSIONARIES BY DAZED FATHER. FROM PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT BARINGA,
CONGO STATE, MAY 15, 1904. SEE MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS, JANUARY, 1905

“Imagine the output of the whole vast State!”—_Page 18._
]

Now as to the mutilations. You can’t head off a Congo critic and make
him stay headed-off; he dodges, and straightway comes back at you from
another direction. They are full of slippery arts. When the mutilations
(severing hands, unsexing men, etc.) began to stir Europe, we hit upon
the idea of excusing them with a retort which we judged would knock them
dizzy on that subject for good and all, and leave them nothing more to
say; to wit, we boldly laid the custom on the natives, and said we did
not invent it, but only followed it. Did it knock them dizzy? did it
shut their mouths? Not for an hour. They dodged, and came straight back
at us with the remark that “if a Christian king can perceive a saving
moral difference between inventing bloody barbarities, and _imitating
them from savages_, for charity’s sake let him get what comfort he can
out of his confession!”

It is most amazing, the way that that consul acts—that spy, that
busy-body. [_Takes up pamphlet “Treatment of Women and Children in the
Congo State; what Mr. Casement Saw in 1903”_] _Hardly two years ago!_
_Intruding_ that date upon the public was a piece of cold malice. It was
intended to weaken the force of my press syndicate’s assurances to the
public that my severities in the Congo _ceased_, and ceased utterly,
_years and years ago_. This man is fond of trifles—revels in them,
gloats over them, pets them, fondles them, sets them all down. One
doesn’t need to drowse through his monotonous report to see that; the
mere subheadings of its chapters prove it. [_Reads_]

“Two hundred and forty persons, _men, women and children_, compelled
to supply government with _one ton_ of carefully prepared foodstuffs
_per week_, receiving in remuneration, all told, the princely sum of
15s. 10d!”

Very well, it was liberal. It was not much short of a penny a week for
each nigger. It suits this consul to belittle it, yet he knows very well
that I could have had both the food and the labor for nothing. I can
prove it by a thousand instances. [_Reads_]

“Expedition against a village behindhand in its (compulsory)
supplies; result, slaughter of sixteen persons; among them three
women and a boy of five years. Ten carried off, to be prisoners till
ransomed; among them a child, who died during the march.”

But he is careful not to explain that we are _obliged_ to resort to
ransom to collect debts, where the people have nothing to pay with.
Families that escape to the woods sell some of their members into
slavery and thus provide the ransom. He knows that I would stop this if
I could find a less objectionable way to collect their debts.... Mm—here
is some more of the consul’s delicacy! He reports a conversation he had
with some natives:

Q. “How do you know it was the _white_ men themselves who ordered
these cruel things to be done to you? These things must have been
done without the white man’s knowledge by the black soldiers.”

A. “The white men told their soldiers: ‘You only kill _women_; you
cannot kill men. You must prove that you kill men.’ So then the
soldiers when they killed us” (here he stopped and hesitated and
then pointing to ... he said:) “then they ... and took them to the
white men, who said: ‘It is true, you have killed _men_.’”

Q. “You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being
shot?”

All [_shouting out_]: “_Nkoto! Nkoto!_” (“Very many! Very many!”)

“There was no doubt that these people were not inventing. Their
vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement, were not
simulated.”

Of course the critic had to divulge that; he has no self-respect. All
his kind reproach me, although they know quite well that I took no
pleasure in punishing the men in that particular way, but only did it as
a warning to other delinquents. Ordinary punishments are no good with
ignorant savages; they make no impression. [_Reads more sub-heads_]

“Devastated region; population reduced from 40,000 to 8,000.”

He does not take the trouble to say how it happened. He is fertile in
concealments. He hopes his readers and his Congo reformers, of the
Lord-Aberdeen-Norbury-John-Morley-Sir-Gilbert-Parker stripe, will think
they were all killed. They were not. The great majority of them escaped.
They fled to the bush with their families because of the rubber raids,
and it was there they died of hunger. Could we help that?

[Illustration:

On Dress Parade
]

One of my sorrowing critics observes: “Other Christian rulers tax their
people, but furnish schools, courts of law, roads, light, water and
protection to life and limb in return; King Leopold taxes his stolen
nation, but provides _nothing in return but hunger, terror, grief,
shame, captivity, mutilation and massacre_.” That is their style! I
furnish “nothing”! I send the gospel to the survivors; these
censure-mongers know it, but they would rather have their tongues cut
out than mention it. I have several times required my raiders to give
the dying an opportunity to kiss the sacred emblem; and if they obeyed
me I have without doubt been the humble means of saving many souls. None
of my traducers have had the fairness to mention this; but let it pass;
there is One who has not overlooked it, and that is my solace, that is
my consolation.

[_Puts down the Report, takes up a pamphlet, glances along the middle of
it_]

This is where the “death-trap” comes in. Meddlesome missionary spying
around—Rev. W. H. Sheppard. Talks with a black raider of mine after a
raid; cozens him into giving away some particulars. The raider remarks:

“‘I demanded 30 slaves from this side of the stream and 30 from the
other side; 2 points of ivory, 2,500 balls of rubber, 13 goats, 10
fowls and 6 dogs, some corn chumy, etc.’

‘How did the fight come up?’ I asked.

‘I sent for all their chiefs, sub-chiefs, men and women, to come on
a certain day, saying that I was going to finish all the palaver.
When they entered these small gates (the walls being made of fences
brought from other villages, the high native ones) I demanded all my
pay or I would kill them; so they refused to pay me, and I ordered
the fence to be closed so they couldn’t run away; then we killed
them here inside the fence. The panels of the fence fell down and
some escaped.’

‘How many did you kill?’ I asked.

‘We killed plenty, will you see some of them?’

That was just what I wanted.

He said: ‘I think we have killed between eighty and ninety, and
those in the other villages I don’t know, I did not go out but sent
my people.’

He and I walked out on the plain just near the camp. There were
three dead bodies with the flesh carved off from the waist down.

‘Why are they carved so, only leaving the bones?’ I asked.

‘My people ate them,’ he answered promptly. He then explained, ‘The
men who have young children do not eat people, but all the rest ate
them.’ On the left was a big man, shot in the back and without a
head. (All these corpses were nude.)

‘Where is the man’s head?’ I asked.

‘Oh, they made a bowl of the forehead to rub up tobacco and diamba
in.’

We continued to walk and examine until late in the afternoon, and
counted forty-one bodies. The rest had been eaten up by the people.

On returning to the camp, we crossed a young woman, shot in the back
of the head, one hand was cut away. I asked why, and Mulunba N’Cusa
explained that they always cut off the right hand to give to the
State on their return.

‘Can you not show me some of the hands?’ I asked.

So he conducted us to a framework of sticks, under which was burning
a slow fire, and there they were, the right hands—I counted them,
eighty-one in all.

There were not less than sixty women (Bena Pianga) prisoners. I saw
them.

We all say that we have as fully as possible investigated the whole
outrage, and find it was a plan previously made to get all the stuff
possible and to catch and kill the poor people in the ‘death-trap.’”

[Illustration:

MULUNBA CHIEF OF CANNIBAL TRIBE NEAR LUEBO, CONGO STATE FIGURE
REPRODUCED FROM PHOTOGRAPH

“Mulunba N’Cusa explained.”—_Page 24._
]

_Another_ detail, as we see!—cannibalism. They report cases of it with a
most offensive frequency. My traducers do not forget to remark that,
inasmuch as I am absolute and with a word can prevent in the Congo
anything I choose to prevent, then whatsoever is done there by my
permission is my act, my _personal_ act; that _I_ do it; that the hand
of my agent is as truly my hand as if it were attached to my own arm;
and so they picture me in my robes of state, with my crown on my head,
munching human flesh, saying grace, mumbling thanks to Him from whom all
good things come. Dear, dear, when the soft-hearts get hold of a thing
like that missionary’s contribution they quite lose their tranquility
over it. They speak out profanely and reproach Heaven for allowing such
a fiend to live. Meaning me. They think it irregular. They go shuddering
around, brooding over the reduction of that Congo population from
25,000,000 to 15,000,000 in the twenty years of my administration; then
they burst out and call me “the King with Ten Million Murders on his
Soul.” They call me a “record.” The most of them do not stop with
charging merely the 10,000,000 against me. No, they reflect that but for
me the population, by natural increase, would now be 30,000,000, so they
charge another 5,000,000 against me and make my total death-harvest
15,000,000. They remark that the man who killed the goose that laid the
golden egg was responsible for the eggs she would subsequently have laid
if she had been let alone. Oh, yes, they call me a “record.” They remark
that twice in a generation, in India, the Great Famine destroys
2,000,000 out of a population of 320,000,000, and the whole world holds
up its hands in pity and horror; then they fall to wondering where the
world would find room for its emotions if I had a chance to trade places
with the Great Famine for twenty years! The idea fires their fancy, and
they go on and imagine the Famine coming in state at the end of the
twenty years and prostrating itself before me, saying: “Teach me, Lord,
I perceive that I am but an apprentice.” And next they imagine Death
coming, with his scythe and hour-glass, and begging me to marry his
daughter and reorganize his plant and run the business. For the whole
world, you see! By this time their diseased minds are under full steam,
and they get down their books and expand their labors, with me for text.
They hunt through all biography for my match, working Attila,
Torquemada, Ghengis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, and the rest of that crowd
for all they are worth, and evilly exulting when they cannot find it.
Then they examine the historical earthquakes and cyclones and blizzards
and cataclysms and volcanic eruptions: verdict, none of them “in it”
with me. At last they do really hit it (as they think), and they close
their labors with conceding—reluctantly—that I have _one_ match in
history, but only one—the _Flood_. This is intemperate.

But they are always that, when they think of me. They can no more keep
quiet when my name is mentioned than can a glass of water control its
feelings with a seidlitz powder in its bowels. The bizarre things they
can imagine, with me for an inspiration! One Englishman offers to give
me the odds of three to one and bet me anything I like, up to 20,000
guineas, that for 2,000,000 years I am going to be the most conspicuous
foreigner in hell. The man is so beside himself with anger that he does
not perceive that the idea is foolish. Foolish and unbusinesslike: you
see, there could be no winner; both of us would be losers, on account of
the loss of interest on the stakes; at four or five per cent.
compounded, this would amount to—I do not know how much, exactly, but,
by the time the term was up and the bet payable, a person could buy hell
itself with the accumulation.

Another madman wants to construct a memorial for the perpetuation of my
name, out of my 15,000,000 skulls and skeletons, and is full of
vindictive enthusiasm over his strange project. He has it all ciphered
out and drawn to scale. Out of the skulls he will build a combined
monument and mausoleum to me which shall exactly duplicate the Great
Pyramid of Cheops, whose base covers thirteen acres, and whose apex is
451 feet above ground. He desires to stuff me and stand me up in the sky
on that apex, robed and crowned, with my “pirate flag” in one hand and a
butcher-knife and pendant handcuffs in the other. He will build the
pyramid in the centre of a depopulated tract, a brooding solitude
covered with weeds and the mouldering ruins of burned villages, where
the spirits of the starved and murdered dead will voice their laments
forever in the whispers of the wandering winds. Radiating from the
pyramid, like the spokes of a wheel, there are to be forty grand avenues
of approach, each thirty-five miles long, and each fenced on both sides
by skull-less skeletons standing a yard and a half apart and festooned
together in line by short chains stretching from wrist to wrist and
attached to tried and true old handcuffs stamped with my private
trade-mark, a crucifix and butcher-knife crossed, with motto, “By this
sign we prosper;” each osseous fence to consist of 200,000 skeletons on
a side, which is 400,000 to each avenue. It is remarked with
satisfaction that it aggregates three or four thousand miles
(single-ranked) of skeletons,—15,000,000 all told—and would stretch
across America from New York to San Francisco. It is remarked further,
in the hopeful tone of a railroad company forecasting showy extensions
of its mileage, that my output is 500,000 corpses a year when my plant
is running full time, and that therefore if I am spared ten years longer
there will be fresh skulls enough to add 175 feet to the pyramid, making
it by a long way the loftiest architectural construction on the earth,
and fresh skeletons enough to continue the transcontinental file (on
piles) a thousand miles into the Pacific. The cost of gathering the
materials from my “widely scattered and innumerable private graveyards,”
and transporting them, and building the monument and the radiating grand
avenues, is duly ciphered out, running into an aggregate of millions of
guineas, and then—why then, (—— ——!! —— ——!!) this idiot asks me to
_furnish the money!_ [_Sudden and effusive application of the crucifix_]
He reminds me that my yearly income from the Congo is millions of
guineas, and that “_only_” 5,000,000 would be required for his
enterprise. Every day wild attempts are made upon my purse; they do not
affect me, they cost me not a thought. But _this one_—this one troubles
me, makes me nervous; for there is no telling what an unhinged creature
like this may think of next.... _If he should think of Carnegie_—but I
must banish that thought out of my mind! it worries my days; it troubles
my sleep. That way lies madness. [_After a pause_] There is no other
way—I have got to buy Carnegie.

[Illustration:

“My yearly income from the Congo is millions of guineas.”—_Page 29._
]

[_Harrassed and muttering, walks the floor a while, then takes to the
Consul’s chapter-headings again. Reads_]

“Government starved a woman’s children to death and killed her
sons.”

“Butchery of women and children.”

“_The native has been converted into a being without ambition
because without hope._”

“Women chained by the neck by rubber sentries.”

“Women refuse to bear children because, with a baby to carry, they
cannot well run away and hide from the soldiers.”

[Illustration:

“Women chained by the neck”
]

“Statement of a child. ‘I, my mother, my grandmother and my sister,
we ran away into the bush. A great number of our people were killed
by the soldiers.... After that they saw a little bit of my mother’s
head, and the soldiers ran quickly to where we were and caught my
grandmother, my mother, my sister and another little one younger
than us. Each wanted my mother for a wife, and argued about it, so
they finally decided to kill her. They shot her through the stomach
with a gun and she fell, and when I saw that I cried very much,
because they killed my grandmother and mother and I was left alone.
I saw it all done!’”

It has a sort of pitiful sound, although they are only blacks. It
carries me back and back into the past, to when my children were little,
and would fly—to the bush, so to speak—when they saw me coming....
[_Resumes the reading of chapter-headings of the Consul’s report_]

“They put a knife through a child’s stomach.”

“They cut off the hands and brought them to C. D. (white officer)
and spread them out in a row for him to see. They left them lying
there, because the white man had seen them, so they did not need to
take them to P.”

“Captured children left in the bush to die, by the soldiers.”

“Friends came to ransom a captured girl; but sentry refused, saying
the white man wanted her because she was young.”

[Illustration:

FROM PHOTOGRAPH, IKOKO, CONGO STATE

“Somehow—I wish it had not laughed”
]

“Extract from a native girl’s testimony. ‘On our way the soldiers
saw a little child, and when they went to kill it the child laughed,
so the soldier took the butt of his gun and struck the child with it
and then cut off its head. One day they killed my half-sister and
cut off her head, hands and feet, because she had bangles on. Then
they caught another sister, and sold her to the W. W. people, and
now she is a slave there.’”

The little child laughed! [_A long pause. Musing_] That innocent
creature. Somehow—I wish it had not laughed. [_Reads_]

“Mutilated children.”

“Government encouragement of inter-tribal slave-traffic. The
monstrous fines levied upon villages tardy in their supplies of
foodstuffs compel the natives to sell their fellows—and children—to
other tribes in order to meet the fine.”

“A father and mother forced to sell their little boy.”

“Widow forced to sell her little girl.”

[_Irritated_] Hang the monotonous grumbler, what would he have me do!
Let a widow off merely because she is a widow? He knows quite well that
there is nothing much left, now, _but_ widows. I have nothing against
widows, as a class, but business is business, and I’ve got to live,
haven’t I, even if it does cause inconvenience to somebody here and
there? [_Reads_]

“Men intimidated by the torture of their wives and daughters. (To
make the men furnish rubber and supplies and so get their captured
women released from chains and detention.) The sentry explained to
me that he caught the women and brought them in (chained together
neck to neck) by direction of his employer.”

“An agent explained that he was forced to catch women in preference
to men, as then the men brought in supplies quicker; but he did not
explain how the children deprived of their parents obtained their
own food supplies.”

“A file of 15 (captured) women.”

“Allowing women and children to die of starvation in prison.”

[_Musing_] Death from _hunger_. A lingering, long misery that must be.
Days and days, and still days and days, the forces of the body failing,
dribbling away, little by little—yes, it must be the hardest death of
all. And to see food carried by, every day, and you can have none of it!
Of course the little children cry for it, and that wrings the mother’s
heart.... [_A sigh_] Ah, well, it cannot be helped; circumstances make
this discipline necessary. [_Reads_]

“The crucifying of sixty women!”

How stupid, how tactless! Christendom’s goose flesh will rise with
horror at the news. “Profanation of the sacred emblem!” That is what
Christendom will shout. Yes, Christendom will buzz. It can hear me
charged with half a million murders a year for twenty years and keep its
composure, but to profane the Symbol is quite another matter. It will
regard this as serious. It will wake up and want to look into my record.
Buzz? Indeed it will; I seem to hear the distant hum already.... It was
wrong to crucify the women, clearly wrong, manifestly wrong, I can see
it now, myself, and am sorry it happened, sincerely sorry. I believe it
would have answered just as well to skin them.... [_With a sigh_] But
none of us thought of that; one cannot think of everything; and after
all it is but human to err.

It will make a stir, it surely will, these crucifixions. Persons will
begin to ask again, as now and then in times past, how I can hope to win
and keep the respect of the human race if I continue to give up my life
to murder and pillage. [_Scornfully_] When have they heard me say I
wanted the respect of the human race? Do they confuse me with the common
herd? do they forget that I am a king? What king has valued the respect
of the human race? I mean deep down in his private heart. If they would
reflect, they would know that it is impossible that a king should value
the respect of the human race. He stands upon an eminence and looks out
over the world and sees multitudes of meek human things worshiping the
persons, and submitting to the oppressions and exactions, of a dozen
human things who are in no way better or finer than themselves—made on
just their own pattern, in fact, and out of the same quality of mud.
When it _talks_, it is a race of whales; but a king knows it for a race
of tadpoles. Its history gives it away. If men were really _men_, how
could a Czar be possible? and how could I be possible? But we _are_
possible; we are quite safe; and with God’s help we shall continue the
business at the old stand. It will be found that the race will put up
with us, in its docile immemorial way. It may pull a wry face now and
then, and make large talk, but it will stay on its knees all the same.

[Illustration:

“Made on just their own pattern”
]

Making large talk is one of its specialties. It works itself up, and
froths at the mouth, and just when you think it is going to throw a
brick,—it heaves a poem! Lord, what a race it is!

A CZAR—1905

“A pasteboard autocrat; a despot out of date;
A fading planet in the glare of day;
A flickering candle in the bright sun’s ray,
Burnt to the socket; fruit left too late,
High on a blighted bough, ripe till it’s rotten.

By God forsaken and by time forgotten,
Watching the crumbling edges of his lands,
A spineless god to whom dumb millions pray,
From Finland in the West to far Cathay,
Lord of a frost-bound continent he stands,
Her seeming ruin his dim mind appalls,
And in the frozen stupor of his sleep
He hears dull thunders, pealing as she falls,
And mighty fragments dropping in the deep.”[2]

Footnote 2:

B. H. Nadal, in _New York Times_.

It is fine, one is obliged to concede it; it is a great picture, and
impressive. The mongrel handles his pen well. Still, with opportunity, I
would cruci—flay him.... “A spineless god.” It is the Czar to a dot—a
god, and spineless; a royal invertebrate, poor lad; soft-hearted and out
of place. “A spineless god _to whom dumb millions pray_.” Remorselessly
correct; concise, too, and compact—the soul and spirit of the human race
compressed into half a sentence. On their knees—140,000,000. On their
knees to a little tin deity. Massed together, they would stretch away,
and away, and away, across the plains, fading and dimming and failing in
a measureless perspective—why, even the telescope’s vision could not
reach to the final frontier of that continental spread of human
servility. Now _why_ should a king value the respect of the human race?
It is quite unreasonable to expect it. A curious race, certainly! It
finds fault with me and with my occupations, and forgets that neither of
us could exist an hour without its sanction. It is our confederate and
all-powerful protector. It is our bulwark, our friend, our fortress. For
this it has our gratitude, our deep and honest gratitude—but not our
respect. Let it snivel and fret and grumble if it likes; that is all
right; we do not mind that.

[_Turns over leaves of a scrapbook, pausing now and then to read a
clipping and make a comment_] The poets—how they do hunt that poor Czar!
French, Germans, English, Americans—they all have a bark at him. The
finest and capablest of the pack, and the fiercest, are Swilburne
(English, I think), and a pair of Americans, Thomas Bailey Eldridge and
Colonel Richard Waterson Gilder, of the sentimental periodical called
_Century Magazine and Louisville Courier-Journal_. They certainly have
uttered some very strong yelps. I can’t seem to find them—I must have
mislaid them.... If a poet’s bite were as terrible as his bark, why dear
me—but it isn’t. A wise king minds neither of them; but the poet doesn’t
know it. It’s a case of little dog and lightning express. When the Czar
goes thundering by, the poet skips out and rages alongside for a little
distance, then returns to his kennel wagging his head with satisfaction,
and thinks he has inflicted a memorable scare, whereas nothing has
really happened—the Czar didn’t know he was around. They never bark at
me; I wonder why that is. I suppose my Corruption-Department buys them.
That must be it, for certainly I ought to inspire a bark or two; I’m
rather choice material, I should say. Why—here _is_ a yelp at me.
[_Mumbling a poem_]

“... What gives thee holy right to murder hope
And water ignorance with human blood?

· · · · ·

From what high universe-dividing power
Draw’st thou thy wondrous, ripe brutality?

· · · · ·

O horrible.... Thou God who seest these things
Help us to blot this terror from the earth.”

... No, I see it is “To the Czar,”[3] after all. But there are those who
would say it fits me—and rather snugly, too. “Ripe brutality.” They
would say the Czar’s isn’t ripe yet, but that mine is; and not merely
ripe but rotten. Nothing could keep them from saying that; they would
think it smart. “This terror.” Let the Czar keep that name; I am
supplied. This long time I have been “the monster”; that was their
favorite—the monster of crime. But now I have a new one. They have found
a fossil Dinosaur fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high, and set
it up in the museum in New York and labeled it “Leopold II.” But it is
no matter, one does not look for manners in a republic. Um ... that
reminds me; I have never been caricatured. Could it be that the corsairs
of the pencil could not find an offensive symbol that was big enough and
ugly enough to do my reputation justice? [_After reflection_] There is
no other way—I will buy the Dinosaur. And suppress it. [_Rests himself
with some more chapter-headings. Reads_]

Footnote 3:

Louise Morgan Sill, in _Harper’s Weekly_.

“More mutilation of children.” (Hands cut off.)

“Testimony of American Missionaries.”

“Evidence of British Missionaries.”

It is all the same old thing—tedious repetitions and duplications of
shop-worn episodes; mutilations, murders, massacres, and so on, and so
on, till one gets drowsy over it. Mr. Morel intrudes at this point, and
contributes a comment which he could just as well have kept to
himself—and throws in some italics, of course; these people can never
get along without italics:

“It is one heartrending story of human misery from beginning to end,
and _it is all recent_.”

Meaning 1904 and 1905. I do not see how a person can act so. This Morel
is a king’s subject, and reverence for monarchy should have restrained
him from reflecting upon me with that exposure. This Morel is a
reformer; a Congo reformer. That sizes _him_ up. He publishes a sheet in
Liverpool called “The West African Mail,” which is supported by the
voluntary contributions of the sap-headed and the soft-hearted; and
every week it steams and reeks and festers with up-to-date “Congo
atrocities” of the sort detailed in this pile of pamphlets here. I will
suppress it. I suppressed a Congo atrocity book there, after it was
actually in print; it should not be difficult for me to suppress a
newspaper.

[Illustration:

“The only witness I couldn’t bribe”
]

[_Studies some photographs of mutilated negroes—throws them down.
Sighs_] The kodak has been a sore calamity to us. The most powerful
enemy that has confronted us, indeed. In the early years we had no
trouble in getting the press to “expose” the tales of the mutilations as
slanders, lies, inventions of busy-body American missionaries and
exasperated foreigners who had found the “open door” of the Berlin-Congo
charter closed against them when they innocently went out there to
trade; and by the press’s help we got the Christian nations everywhere
to turn an irritated and unbelieving ear to those tales and say hard
things about the tellers of them. Yes, all things went harmoniously and
pleasantly in those good days, and I was looked up to as the benefactor
of a down-trodden and friendless people. Then all of a sudden came the
crash! That is to say, the incorruptible _kodak_—and all the harmony
went to hell! The only witness I have encountered in my long experience
that I couldn’t bribe. Every Yankee missionary and every interrupted
trader sent home and got one; and now—oh, well, the pictures get sneaked
around everywhere, in spite of all we can do to ferret them out and
suppress them. Ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand presses are saying
the good word for me all the time and placidly and convincingly denying
the mutilations. Then that trivial little kodak, that a child can carry
in its pocket, gets up, uttering never a word, and knocks them dumb!

... What is this fragment? [_Reads_]

“But enough of trying to tally off his crimes! His list is
interminable, we should never get to the end of it. His awful shadow
lies across his Congo Free State, and under it an unoffending nation
of 15,000,000 is withering away and swiftly succumbing to their
miseries. It is a land of graves; it is _The_ Land of Graves; it is
the Congo Free Graveyard. It is a majestic thought: that is, this
ghastliest episode in all human history is the work of _one man
alone_; one solitary man; just a single individual—Leopold, King of
the Belgians. He is personally and solely responsible for all the
myriad crimes that have blackened the history of the Congo State. He
is _sole_ master there; he is absolute. He could have prevented the
crimes by his mere command; he could stop them today with a word. He
withholds the word. For his pocket’s sake.

[Illustration:

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, CONGO STATE

“The pictures get sneaked around everywhere.”—_Page 40._
]

“It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and laying waste
a country for mere sordid money’s sake, and solely and only for
that. Lust of conquest is royal; kings have always exercised that
stately vice; we are used to it, by old habit we condone it,
perceiving a certain dignity in it; but _lust of money—lust of
shillings—lust of nickels—lust of dirty coin_, not for the nation’s
enrichment but for _the king’s alone_—this is new. It distinctly
revolts us, we cannot seem to reconcile ourselves to it, we resent
it, we despise it, we say it is shabby, unkingly, out of character.
Being democrats we ought to jeer and jest, we ought to rejoice to
see the purple dragged in the dirt, but—well, account for it as we
may, we don’t. We see this awful king, this pitiless and
blood-drenched king, this money-crazy king towering toward the sky
in a world-solitude of sordid crime, unfellowed and apart from the
human race, sole butcher for personal gain findable in all his
caste, ancient or modern, pagan or Christian, proper and legitimate
target for the scorn of the lowest and the highest, and the
execrations of all who hold in cold esteem the oppressor and the
coward; and—well, it is a mystery, but _we do not wish to look_; for
he is a king, and it hurts us, it troubles us, by ancient and
inherited instinct it shames us to see a king degraded to this
aspect, and we shrink from hearing the particulars of how it
happened. _We shudder_ and _turn away_ when we come upon them in
print.”

Why, certainly—_that_ is my protection. And you will continue to do it.
I know the human race.

[Illustration:

FROM PHOTOGRAPH, IKOKO, CONGO STATE

“To THEM it must appear
very awful and
mysterious.”—
Joseph Con-
rad
]

AN ORIGINAL MISTAKE

“This work of ‘civilization’ is
an enormous and continual
butchery.” “All the facts we
brought forward in this cham-
ber were denied at first most
energetically; but later, little
by little, they were proved by documents and by official texts.”
“The practice of cutting off hands is said to be contrary
to instructions; but you are content to say that indulgence
must be shown and that this bad habit must be corrected
‘little by little’ and you plead, moreover, that only the hands
of _fallen_ enemies are cut off, and that if hands are cut off
‘enemies’ not quite dead, and who, after recovery, have
had the bad taste to come to
the missionaries and show
them their stumps, it was
due to an original mistake in
thinking that they were
dead.” _From Debate in Bel-
gian Parliament, July, 1903._

SUPPLEMENTARY

Since the first edition of this pamphlet was issued, the Congo story has
entered upon a new chapter. The king’s Commission concedes the
correctness of the delineation contained in the foregoing pages. It
affirms the prevalence of frightful abuses under the king’s rule. For
eight months the king held back the Report but his commissioners had
been too deeply moved by the horrors unfolded before them in their visit
to the Congo State and the testimony presented to them had reached the
world through other sources. The digest of the report, as forwarded from
Brussels to the European and American press, was skilfully edited; and
the report itself does its best to gloss over the king’s responsibility
for the shame; but the story told in the genuine document is essentially
as hideous as anything found in the depositions of plain-speaking
missionaries. So the facts are clear,—indisputable, undisputed. The
train of revilers of missionary testimony, whose roseate pictures of
conditions under the king’s rule have beguiled the uninformed, hurries
out at the wings and Leopold is left to hold the stage, with the
skeleton that refuses longer to stay hidden in his Congo closet.

One thing the report omits to do. It does not brand or judge the system
out of which the foul breed of iniquities has sprung,—the king’s claim
to personal ownership of 800,000 square miles of territory, with all
their products, and his employment of savage hordes to realize on his
claim. Judgment of this policy the Commission holds to be beyond its
function. Being thus disqualified for striking at the roots of the
enormity, the commissioners propose such superficial reforms as occur to
them. And the king hastens to take up with their suggestion by calling
to his assistance in the work of reform a new Commission. Of this body
of fourteen members all but two are committed by their past record to
defense and maintenance of the king’s Congo policy.

So ends the king’s investigation of himself; doubtless less jubilantly
than he had planned, but withal as ineffectively as it was foredoomed to
end. One stage is achieved. The next in order is action by the Powers
responsible for the existence of the Congo State. The United States is
one of these. Such procedure is advocated in petitions to the President
and Congress, signed by John Wanamaker, Lyman Abbott, Henry Van Dyke,
David Starr Jordan and many other leading citizens. If ever the
sisterhood of civilized nations have just occasion to go up to the Hague
or some other accessible meeting place, a foreordained hour for their
assembling has now struck.

SOME THINGS THE REPORT OF THE KING’S COMMISSION SAYS.

“Apart from the rough plantations which barely suffice to feed the
natives themselves and to supply the stations, all the fruits of the
soil are considered as the property of the State or of the
concessionaire societies.... It has even been admitted that on the land
occupied by them the natives cannot dispose of the produce of the soil
except to the extent in which they did so before the constitution of the
State.”

“Each official in charge of a Station, or agent in charge of a factory,
claimed from the natives, without asking himself on what grounds, the
most divers imposts in labor or in kind, either to satisfy his own needs
and those of his Station, or to exploit the riches of the Domaine....
The agents themselves regulated the tax and saw to its collection and
had a direct interest in increasing its amount, since they received
proportional bonuses on the produce thus collected.”

“Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, whom we heard at
Leopoldville, were unanimous in accentuating the general wretchedness
existing in the region. One of them said that “this system which compels
the natives to feed 3000 workmen at Leopoldville, will, if continued for
another five years, wipe out the population of the district.”

“Judicial officials have informed us of the sorry consequences of the
porterage system; it exhausts the unfortunate people subjected to it,
and threatens them with partial destruction.”

“In the majority of cases the native must go one or two days’ march
every fortnight, until he arrives at that part of the forest where the
rubber vines can be met with in a certain degree of abundance. There the
collector passes a number of days in a miserable existence. He has to
build himself an improvised shelter which cannot, obviously, replace his
hut. He has not the food to which he is accustomed. He is deprived of
his wife, exposed to the inclemencies of the weather and the attacks of
wild beasts. When once he has collected the rubber he must bring it to
the State station, or to that of the Company, and only then can he
return to his village where he can sojourn for barely more than two or
three days because the next demand is upon him.”

“It was barely denied that in the various posts of the A. B. I. R. which
we visited, the imprisonment of women hostages, the subjection of the
chiefs to servile labor, the humiliations meted out to them, the
flogging of rubber collectors, the brutality of the black employees set
over the prisoners, were the rule commonly followed.”

“According to the witnesses, these auxiliaries, especially those
stationed in the villages, convert themselves into despots, claiming the
women and the food; they kill without pity all those who attempt to
resist their whims. The truth of the charges is borne out by a mass of
evidence and official reports.”

“The consequences are often very murderous. And one must not be
astonished. If in the course of these delicate operations, whose object
it is to seize hostages and to intimidate the natives, constant watch
cannot be exercised over the sanguinary instincts of the soldiers, when
orders to punish are given by superior authority, it is difficult to
prevent the expedition from degenerating into massacres, accompanied by
pillage and incendiarism.”

THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND THE CONGO STATE.

The International Association of the Congo was recognized by the United
States April 22, 1884. Nine months afterward, recognition was secured
from Germany and, later, successively from the other European Powers.
Two international conferences were held at which the Powers constituted
themselves guardians of the people of the Congo territory, the
Association binding itself to regard the principles of administration
adopted. In both these conferences the United States government
prominently participated. The Act of Berlin was not submitted by the
President of the United States for ratification by the Senate because
its adoption as a whole was thought by him to involve responsibility for
support of the territorial claims of rival Powers in the Congo region.
The Act of Brussels, with a proviso safeguarding this point, was
formally ratified by the United States. Whether we are without
obligation to reach a hand to this expiring people, the intelligent
reader will judge for himself.

“Stanley saw neither fortress nor flag of any civilization save that
of the United States, which he carried along the arterial water
course.... The first appeal for recognition and for moral support
was naturally and justly made to the government whose flag was first
carried across the region.”—_Mr. Kasson in North American Review,
February, 1886._

“This Government at the outset testified its lively interest in the
well-being and future progress of the vast region now committed to
your Majesty’s wise care, by being the first among the Powers to
recognize the flag of the International Association of the Congo as
that of a friendly State.”—_President Cleveland to King Leopold,
September 11, 1885._

“The recognition by the United States was the birth into new life of
the Association, seriously menaced as its existence was by opposing
interests and ambitions.”—_Mr. Stanley, “The Congo,” vol. 1, page
383._

“He (the President of the United States) desires to see in the
delimitation of the region which shall be subjected to this
beneficent rule (of the International Association of the Congo) the
widest expansion consistent with the just territorial rights of
other governments.”—_Address of Mr. Kasson, U. S. Representative at
Berlin Conference, 1884._

“So marked was the acceptance by the Berlin Conference of the views
presented on the part of the United States that Herr Von Bunsen,
reviewing the action of the Conference, assigns after Germany the
first place of influence in the Conference to the United
States.—_Mr. Kasson in North American Review, February, 1886._

“In sending a representative to this Assembly, the Government of the
U. S. has wished to show the great interest and deep sympathy it
feels in the great work of philanthropy which the Conference seeks
to realize. Our country must feel beyond all others an immense
interest in the work of this Assembly.”—_Mr. Terrell, U. S.
Representative at Brussels Conference, 1st session, November 19,
1889._

“Mr. Terrell informs the Conference that he has been authorized by
his Government to sign the General Act adopted by the Conference.

“The President says that the U. S. Minister’s communication will be
received by the Conference with extreme satisfaction.”—_Records of
Brussels Conference, June 28, 1890._

“Claiming, as at Berlin, to speak in the name of Almighty God, the
signatories (at Brussels) declared themselves to be ‘equally
animated by the firm intention of putting an end to the crimes and
devastations engendered by the traffic in African slaves, of
protecting effectually the aboriginal populations and of ensuring
the benefits of peace and civilization.’”—_“Civilization in Congo
land,” H. R. Fox Bourne._

“The President continues to hope that the Government of the U. S.,
which was the first to recognize the Congo Free State, will not be
one of the last to give it the assistance of which it may stand in
need.”—_Remarks of Belgian President of Brussels Conference, session
May 14, 1890._

[Illustration:

A WITNESS BEFORE THE COMMISSION REV. JOHN H. HARRIS MISSIONARY AT
BARINGA, CONGO STATE
]

[Illustration:

A WITNESS BEFORE THE COMMISSION LOMBOTO A NATIVE OF BARINGA, CONGO
STATE
]

“There, great chiefs from Europe, stands the man who has murdered
our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters for rubber. Why, why I
say, has he done this?”—_The witness Lomboto, confronting the
Director of the A. B. I. R. Society at the hearing at Baringa._

OUGHT KING LEOPOLD TO BE HANGED?[4]

INTERVIEW BY MR. W. T. STEAD WITH THE REV. JOHN H. HARRIS, BARINGA,
CONGO STATE, IN THE ENGLISH REVIEW OF REVIEWS FOR SEPTEMBER, 1905.

For the somewhat startling suggestion in the heading of this interview,
the missionary interviewed is in no way responsible. The credit of it,
or, if you like, the discredit, belongs entirely to the editor of the
_Review_, who, without dogmatism, wishes to pose the question as a
matter for serious discussion. Since Charles I’s head was cut off,
opposite Whitehall, nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, the sanctity
which doth hedge about a king has been held in slight and scant regard
by the Puritans and their descendants. Hence there is nothing
antecedently shocking or outrageous in the discussion of the question
whether the acts of any Sovereign are such as to justify the calling in
of the services of the public executioner. It is not, of course, for a
journalist to pronounce judgment, but no function of the public writer
is so imperative as that of calling attention to great wrongs, and no
duty is more imperious than that of insisting that no rank or station
should be allowed to shield from justice the real criminal when he is
once discovered.

Footnote 4:

The above article which came to hand as the foregoing was in press is
commended to the king and to readers of his Soliloquy.—M. T.

The controversy between the Congo Reform Association and the Emperor of
the Congo has now arrived at a stage in which it is necessary to take a
further step towards the redress of unspeakable wrongs and the
punishment of no less unspeakable criminals. The Rev. J. H. Harris, an
English missionary, has lived for the last seven years in that region of
Central Africa—the Upper Congo—which King Leopold has made over to one
of his vampire groups of financial associates (known as the A.B.I.R.
Society) on the strictly business basis of a half share in the profits
wrung from the blood and misery of the natives. He has now returned to
England, and last month he called at Mowbray House to tell me the latest
from the Congo. Mr. Harris is a young man in a dangerous state of
volcanic fury, and no wonder. After living for seven years face to face
with the devastations of the vampire State, it is impossible to deny
that he does well to be angry. When he began, as is the wont of those
who have emerged from the depths, to detail horrifying stories of
murder, the outrage and torture of women, the mutilation of children,
and the whole infernal category of horrors, served up with the
background of cannibalism, sometimes voluntary and sometimes, incredible
though it seems, enforced by the orders of the officers, I cut him
short, and said:—

“Dear Mr. Harris, as in Oriental despatches the India Office translator
abbreviates the first page of the letter into two words ‘after
compliments,’ or ‘a.c.,’ so let us abbreviate our conversation about the
Congo by the two words ‘after atrocities,’ or ‘a.a.’ They are so
invariable and so monotonous, as Lord Percy remarked in the House the
other day, that it is unnecessary to insist upon them. There is no
longer any dispute in the mind of any reasonable person as to what is
going on in the Congo. It is the economical exploitation of half a
continent carried on by the use of armed force wielded by officials the
aim-all and be-all of whose existence is to extort the maximum amount of
rubber in the shortest possible time in order to pay the largest
possible dividend to the holders of shares in the concessions.”

“Well,” said Mr. Harris reluctantly, for he is so accustomed to speaking
to persons who require to be told the whole dismal tale from A to Z,
“what is it you want to know?”

“I want to know,” I said, “whether you consider the time is ripe for
summoning King Leopold before the bar of an international tribunal to
answer for the crimes perpetrated under his orders and in his interest
in the Congo State.”

Mr. Harris paused for a moment, and then said:—“That depends upon the
action which the king takes upon the report of the Commission, which is
now in his hands.”

“Is that report published?”

“No,” said Mr. Harris; “and it is a question whether it will ever be
published. Greatly to our surprise, the Commission, which every one
expected would be a mere blind whose appointment was intended to throw
dust in the eyes of the public, turned out to be composed of highly
respectable persons who heard the evidence most impartially, refused no
_bona fide_ testimony produced by trustworthy witnesses, and were
overwhelmed by the multitudinous horrors brought before them, and who,
we feel, _must_ have arrived at conclusions which necessitate an entire
revolution in the administration of the Congo.”

“Are you quite sure, Mr. Harris,” I said, “that this is so?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Harris, “quite sure. The Commission impressed us all in
the Congo very favorably. Some of its members seemed to us admirable
specimens of public-spirited, independent statesmen. They realized that
they were acting in a judicial capacity; they knew that the eyes of
Europe were upon them, and, instead of making their inquiry a farce,
they made it a reality, and their conclusions must be, I feel sure, so
damning to the State, that if King Leopold were to take no action but to
allow the whole infernal business to proceed unchecked, any
international tribunal which had powers of a criminal court, would upon
the evidence of the Commission alone, send those responsible to the
gallows.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “at present the Hague Tribunal is not armed
with the powers of an international assize court, nor is it qualified to
place offenders, crowned or otherwise, in the dock. But don’t you think
that in the evolution of society the constitution of such a criminal
court is a necessity?”

“It would be a great convenience at present,” said Mr. Harris; “nor
would you need one atom of evidence beyond the report of the Commission
to justify the hanging of whoever is responsible for the existence and
continuance of such abominations.”

“Has anybody seen the text of the report?” I asked.

“As the Commission returned to Brussels in March, some of the contents
of that report are an open secret. A great deal of the evidence has been
published by the Congo Reform Association. In the Congo the
Commissioners admitted two things: first, that the evidence was
overwhelming as to the existence of the evils which had hitherto been
denied, and secondly, that they vindicated the character of the
missionaries. They discovered, as anyone will who goes out to that
country, that it is the missionaries, and the missionaries alone, who
constitute the permanent European element. The Congo State officials
come out ignorant of the language, knowing nothing of the country, and
with no other sense of their duties beyond that of supporting the
concession companies in extorting rubber. They are like men who are dumb
and deaf and blind, nor do they wish to be otherwise. In two or three
years they vanish, giving place to other migrants as ignorant as
themselves, whereas the missionaries remain on the spot year after year;
they are in personal touch with the people, whose language they speak,
whose customs they respect, and whose lives they endeavor to defend to
the best of their ability.”

“But, Mr. Harris,” I remarked, “was there not a certain Mr. Grenfell, a
Baptist Missionary, who has been all these years a convinced upholder of
the Congo State?”

“’Twas true,” said Mr. Harris, “and pity ’tis ’twas true; but ’tis no
longer true. Mr. Grenfell has had his eyes opened at last, and he has
now taken his place among those who are convinced. He could no longer
resist the overwhelming evidence that has been brought against the Congo
Administration.”[5]

Footnote 5:

Mr. Grenfell’s station is in the Lower Congo, a section remote from
the vast rubber areas of the interior.

“Was the nature of the Commissioners’ report,” I resumed, “made known to
the officials of the State before they left the Congo?”

“To the head officials—yes,” said Mr. Harris.

“With what result?”

“In the case of the highest official in the Congo, the man who
corresponds in Africa to Lord Curzon in India, no sooner was he placed
in possession of the conclusions of the Commission than the appalling
significance of their indictment convinced him that the game was up, and
he went into his room and cut his throat. I was amazed on returning to
Europe to find how little the significance of this suicide was
appreciated. A paragraph in the newspaper announced the suicide of a
Congo official. None of those who read that paragraph could realize the
fact that that suicide had the same significance to the Congo that the
suicide, let us say, of Lord Milner would have had if it had taken place
immediately on receiving the conclusions of a Royal Commission sent out
to report upon his administration in South Africa.”

“Well, if that be so, Mr. Harris,” I said, “and the Governor-General
cuts his throat rather than face the ordeal and disgrace of the
exposure, I am almost beginning to hope that we may see King Leopold in
the dock at the Hague, after all.”

“I will comment upon that,” Mr. Harris said, “by quoting you Mrs.
Sheldon’s remark made before myself and my colleagues, Messrs. Bond,
Ellery, Ruskin, Walbaum and Whiteside, on May 19th last year, when, in
answer to our question, ‘Why should King Leopold be afraid of submitting
his case to the Hague tribunal?’ Mrs. Sheldon answered, ‘Men do not go
to the gallows and put their heads in a noose if they can avoid it.’”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "King Leopold's Soliloquy - A Defense of his Congo Rule" ***

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