robbing and badly treating an important chief. _In my presence_ he
laid his complaint before M. Mueller, reporting the seizure of his
wives and goods and the personal violence he had suffered at the hands
of M. Mueller's soldiers stationed in his town. _I saw M. Mueller kick
him off his veranda._ Within forty-eight hours there were no
'sentries' or their followers left in that chief's town--they were
killed and mutilated--and soon after M. Mueller, with another white
officer and many soldiers, were killed, and the revolt began."
Such is some of the evidence, a very small portion of the whole narrative
furnished by Mr. Clark. Remember that it is extracted from a long series
of letters written to various people during a succession of years. One
could conceive a single statement being a concoction, but the most
ingenious apologist for the Congo methods could not explain how such a
document as this could be other than true.
So much for Mr. Clark, the American. The evidence of Mr. Scrivener, the
Englishman, covering roughly the same place and date, will follow. But
lest the view should seem too Anglo-Saxon, let me interpolate a paragraph
from the travels of a Frenchman, M. Leon Berthier, whose diary was
published by the Colonial Institute of Marseilles in 1902:
"Belgian post of Imesse well constructed. The Chef de Poste is absent.
He has gone to punish the village of M'Batchi, guilty of being a
little late in paying the rubber tax.... A canoe full of Congo State
soldiers returns from the pillage of M'Batchi.... Thirty killed, fifty
wounded.... At three o'clock arrive at M'Batchi, the scene of the
bloody punishment of the Chef de Poste at Imesse. Poor village! The
debris of miserable huts.... One goes away humiliated and saddened
from these scenes of desolation, filled with indescribable feelings."
In showing the continuity of the Congo horror and the extent of its
duration (an extent which is the shame of the great Powers who acquiesced
in it by their silence), I have marshalled witnesses in their successive
order. Messrs. Glave, Murphy and Sjoblom have covered the time from 1894
to 1897; Mr. Clark has carried it on to 1900; we have had the deeds of
1901-4 as revealed in the Boma Law Courts. I shall now give the experience
of Rev. Mr. Scrivener, an English missionary, who in July, August and
September, 1903, traversed a section of the Crown Domain, that same region
specially assigned to King Leopold in person, in which Mr. Clark had spent
so many nightmare years. We shall see how far the independent testimony of
the Englishman and the American, the one extracted from a diary, the other
from a succession of letters, corroborate each other:
"At six in the morning woke up to find it still raining. It kept on
till nine, and we managed to get off by eleven. All the cassava bread
was finished the day previous, so a little rice was cooked, but it was
a hungry crowd that left the little village. I tried to find out
something about them. They said they were runaways from a district a
little distance away, where rubber was being collected. They told us
some horrible tales of murder and starvation, and when we heard all we
wondered that men so maltreated should be able to live without
retaliation. The boys and girls were naked, and I gave them each a
strip of calico, much to their wonderment....
"Four hours and a half brought us to a place called Sa.... On the way
we passed two villages with more people than we had seen for days.
There may have been 120. Close to the post was another small village.
We decided to stay there the rest of the day. Three chiefs came in
with all the adult members of their people, and altogether there were
not 300. And this where, not more than six or seven years ago, there
were at least 3,000! It made one's heart heavy to listen to the tales
of bloodshed and cruelty. And it all seemed so foolish. To kill the
people off in the wholesale way in which it has been done in this Lake
district, because they would not bring in a sufficient quantity of
rubber to satisfy the white man--and now here is an empty country and
a very much diminished output of rubber as the inevitable
consequence...."
Finally Mr. Scrivener emerged in the neighbourhood of a "big State
station." He was hospitably received, and had many chats with his host,
who seems to have been a very decent sort of man, doing his best under
very trying circumstances. His predecessor had worked incalculable havoc
in the country, and the present occupant of the post was endeavouring to
carry out the duties assigned to him (those duties consisting, as usual,
of orders to get all the rubber possible out of the people) with as much
humanity as the nature of the task permitted. In this he, no doubt, did
what was possible as one whom the system had not yet degraded to its
level--one of the rare few: and one cannot wonder that they should be
rare, seeing the nature of the bonds, and the helplessness in which an
official is placed who does not carry out the full desires of his
superiors. But he had only succeeded in getting himself into trouble with
the district commander in consequence. He showed Mr. Scrivener a letter
from the latter upbraiding him for not using more vigorous means, telling
him to talk less and shoot more, and reprimanding him for not killing more
than one man in a district under his care where there was a little
trouble.
Mr. Scrivener had the opportunity while at this State post, under the
_regime_ of a man who was endeavouring to be as humane as his instructions
allowed, to actually see the process whereby the secret revenues of the
"Crown Domain" are obtained. He says:
"Everything was on a military basis, but, so far as I could see, the
one and only reason for it all was rubber. It was the theme of every
conversation, and it was evident that the only way to please one's
superiors was to increase the output somehow. I saw a few men come in,
and the frightened look even now on their faces tells only too
eloquently of the awful time they have passed through. As I saw it
brought in, each man had a little basket, containing, say, four or
five pounds of rubber. This was emptied into a larger basket and
weighed, and being found sufficient, each man was given a cupful of
coarse salt, and to some of the head-men a fathom of calico.... I
heard from the white men and some of the soldiers some most gruesome
stories. The former white man (I feel ashamed of my colour every time
I think of him) would stand at the door of the store to receive the
rubber from the poor trembling wretches, who after, in some cases,
weeks of privation in the forest, had ventured in with what they had
been able to collect. A man bringing rather under the proper amount,
the white man flies into a rage, and seizing a rifle from one of the
guards, shoots him dead on the spot. Very rarely did rubber come in
but one or more were shot in that way at the door of the store--'to
make the survivors bring more next time.' Men who had tried to run
from the country and had been caught, were brought to the station and
made to stand one behind the other, and an Albini bullet sent through
them. 'A pity to waste cartridges on such wretches.' Only the roads to
and fro from the various posts are kept open, and large tracts of
country are abandoned to the wild beasts. The white man himself told
me that you could walk on for five days in one direction, and not see
a single village or a single human being. And this where formerly
there was a big tribe!...
"As one by one the surviving relatives of my men arrived, some
affecting scenes were enacted. There was no falling on necks and
weeping, but very genuine joy was shown and tears were shed as the
losses death had made were told. How they shook hands and snapped
their fingers! What expressions of surprise--the wide-opened mouth
covered with the open hand to make its evidence of wonder the more
apparent.... So far as the State post was concerned, it was in a very
dilapidated condition.... On three sides of the usual huge quadrangle
there were abundant signs of a former population, but we only found
three villages--bigger, indeed, than any we had seen before, but sadly
diminished from what had been but recently the condition of the
place.... Soon we began talking, and, without any encouragement on my
part, they 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 to do 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 was their good fortune. But soon
the reward was reduced until 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 the rubber entailed. The soldiers
discovered them sitting about. 'What, not gone yet?' Bang! 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. And off the poor wretches had to go, without even their
tinderboxes to make fires. Many died in the forests from exposure and
hunger, 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 that they are
fast decreasing.... Lying about in the grass, within a few yards of
the house I was occupying, were numbers of human 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 round 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 has been done here....
"In due course we reached Ibali. There was hardly a sound building in
the place.... Why such dilapidation? The Commandant away for a trip
likely to extend into three months, the sub-lieutenant away in another
direction on a punitive expedition. In other words, the station must
be neglected, and rubber-hunting carried out with all vigour. I stayed
here two days, and the one thing that impressed itself upon me was the
collection of rubber. I saw long files of men come, as at Mbongo, 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 head-men; saw
their trembling timidity, and, in fact, a great deal more, to prove
the state of terrorism that exists, and the virtual slavery in which
the people are held....
"So much for the journey to the Lake. It has enlarged my knowledge of
the country, and also, alas! my knowledge of the awful deeds enacted
in the mad haste of men to get rich. So far as I know, I am the first
white man to go into the _Domaine Prive_ of the King, other than the
employees of the State. I expect there will be wrath in some quarters,
but that cannot be helped."
So far Mr. Scrivener. But perhaps the reader may think that there really
was a missionary plot to decry the Free State. Let us have some
travellers, then. Here is Mr. Grogan from his "Cape to Cairo":
"The people were terrorized and were living in marshes." This was on
the British frontier. "The Belgians have crossed the frontier,
descended into the valley, shot down large numbers of natives, British
subjects, driven off the young women and cattle, and actually tied up
and burned the old women. I do not make these statements without
having gone into the matter. I remarked on the absence of women and
the reason was given. It was on further inquiry that I was assured by
the natives that white men had been present when the old women had
been burned.... They even described to me the personal appearance of
the white officers with the troops.... The wretched people came to me
and asked me why the British had deserted them."
Further on he says:
"Every village had been burned to the ground, and as I fled from the
country I saw skeletons, skeletons everywhere. And such postures! What
tales of horror they told."
Just a word in conclusion from another witness, Mr. Herbert Frost:
"The power of an armed soldier among enslaved people is absolutely
paramount. By chief or child, every command, wish, or whim of the
soldier must be obeyed or gratified. At his command with rifle ready a
man will ... outrage his own sister, give to his persecutor the wife
he loves most of all, say or do anything, indeed, to save his life.
The woes and sorrows of the race whom King Leopold has enslaved have
not decreased, for his Commissaire officers and agents have introduced
and maintain a system of deviltry hitherto undreamed of by his
victims."
Does this all seem horrible? But in the face of it is there not something
more horrible in a sentence of this kind?--
"Our only programme, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of moral and
material regeneration, and we must do this among a population whose
degeneration in its inherited conditions it is difficult to measure.
The many horrors and atrocities which disgrace humanity give way
little by little before our intervention."
It is King Leopold who speaks.
VII
CONSUL ROGER CASEMENT'S REPORT
Up to this time the published reports as to the black doings of King
Leopold and his men were, with the exception of a guarded document from
Consul Pickersgill, in 1898, entirely from private individuals. No doubt
there were official reports but the Government withheld them. In 1904,
this policy of reticence was abandoned, and the historic report of Consul
Roger Casement confirmed, and in some ways amplified, all that had reached
Europe from other sources.
A word or two as to Mr. Casement's own personality and qualifications may
not be amiss, since both were attacked by his Belgian detractors. He is a
tried and experienced public servant, who has had exceptional
opportunities of knowing Africa and the natives. He entered the Consular
Service in 1892, served on the Niger till 1895, was Consul at Delagoa Bay
to 1898, and was finally transferred to the Congo. Personally, he is a man
of the highest character, truthful, unselfish--one who is deeply respected
by all who know him. His experience, which deals with the Crown Domain
districts in the year 1903, covers some sixty-two pages, to be read in
full in "White Book, Africa, No. 1, 1904." I will not apologize for the
length of the extracts, as this, the first official exposure, was an
historical document and from its publication we mark the first step in
that train of events which is surely destined to remove the Congo State
from hands which have proved so unworthy, and to place it in conditions
which shall no longer be a disgrace to European civilization. It may be
remarked before beginning that at some of these conversations with the
natives Mr. Scrivener was present, and that he corroborates the account
given by the Consul.
The beginning of Mr. Casement's report shows how willing he was to give
praise where praise was possible, and to say all that could be said for
the Administration. He talks of "energetic European intervention," and
adds, "that very much of this intervention has been called for no one who
formerly knew the Upper Congo could doubt." "Admirably built and admirably
kept stations greet the traveller at many points." "To-day the railway
works most efficiently." He attributes sleeping sickness as "one cause of
the seemingly wholesale diminution of human life which I everywhere
observed in the regions re-visited; a prominent place must be assigned to
this malady. The natives certainly attribute their alarming death-rate to
this as one of the inducing causes, although they attribute, and I think
principally, their rapid decrease in numbers to other causes as well."
The Government work shop "was brightness, care, order, and activity, and
it was impossible not to admire and commend the industry which had created
and maintained in constant working order this useful establishment."
These are not the words of a critic who has started with a prejudiced mind
or the desire to make out a case.
In the lower reaches of the river above Stanley Pool Casement found no
gross ill-usage. The natives were hopeless and listless, being debarred
from trade and heavily taxed in food, fish and other produce. It was not
until he began to approach the cursed rubber zones that terrible things
began to dawn upon him. Casement had travelled in 1887 in the Congo, and
was surprised to note the timidity of the natives. Soon he had his
explanation:
"At one of these village, S----, after confidence had been restored
and the fugitives had been induced to come in from the surrounding
forest, where they had hidden themselves, I saw women coming back,
carrying their babies, their household utensils, and even the food
they had hastily snatched up, up to a late hour of the evening.
Meeting some of these returning women in one of the fields I asked
them why they had run away at my approach, and they said, smiling, 'We
thought you were Bula Matadi' (_i. e._, 'men of the Government'). Fear
of this kind was formerly unknown on the Upper Congo; and in much more
out-of-the-way places visited many years ago the people flocked from
all sides to greet a white stranger. But to-day the apparition of a
white man's steamer evidently gave the signal for instant flight."
"... Men, he said, still came to him whose hands had been cut off by
the Government soldiers during those evil days, and he said there were
still many victims of this species of mutilation in the surrounding
country. Two cases of the kind came to my actual notice while I was in
the lake. One, a young man, both of whose hands had been beaten off
with the butt-ends of rifles against a tree, the other a young lad of
eleven or twelve years of age, whose right hand was cut off at the
wrist. This boy described the circumstances of his mutilation, and, in
answer to my inquiry, said that although wounded at the time he was
perfectly sensible of the severing of his wrist, but lay still fearing
that if he moved he would be killed. In both these cases the
Government soldiers had been accompanied by white officers whose names
were given to me. Of six natives (one a girl, three little boys, one
youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during
the rubber _regime_, all except one were dead at the date of my visit.
The old woman had died at the beginning of this year, and her niece
described to me how the act of mutilation in her case had been
accomplished."
The fines inflicted upon villages for trifling offences were such as to
produce the results here described:
"The officer had then imposed as further punishment a fine of 55,000
brass rods (2,750 fr.)--L110. This sum they had been forced to pay,
and as they had no other means of raising so large a sum they had,
many of them, been compelled to sell their children and their wives. I
saw no live-stock of any kind in W---- save a very few fowls--possibly
under a dozen--and it seemed, indeed, not unlikely that, as these
people asserted, they had great difficulty in always getting their
supplies ready. A father and mother stepped out and said that they had
been forced to sell their son, a little boy called F, for 1,000 rods
to meet their share of the fine. A widow came and declared that she
had been forced, in order to meet her share of the fine, to sell her
daughter G, a little girl whom I judged from her description to be
about ten years of age. She had been sold to a man in Y----, who was
named, for 1,000 rods, which had then gone to make up the fine."
The natives were broken in spirit by the treatment:
"One of them--a strong, indeed, a splendid-looking man--broke down and
wept, saying that their lives were useless to them, and that they knew
of no means of escape from the troubles which were gathering around
them. I could only assure these people that their obvious course to
obtain relief was by appeal to their own constituted authorities, and
that if their circumstances were clearly understood by those
responsible for these fines I trusted and believed some satisfaction
would be forthcoming."
These fines, it may be added, were absolutely illegal. It was the officer,
not the poor, harried natives, who had broken the law.
"These fines, it should be borne in mind, are illegally imposed; they
are not 'fines of Court'; are not pronounced after any judicial
hearing, or for any proved offence against the law, but are quite
arbitrarily levied according to the whim or ill-will of the executive
officers of the district, and their collection, as well as their
imposition, involves continuous breaches of the Congolese laws. They
do not, moreover, figure in the account of public revenues in the
Congo 'Budgets'; they are not paid into the public purse of the
country, but are spent on the needs of the station or military camp of
the officer imposing them, just as seems good to this official."
Here is an illustrative anecdote:
"One of the largest Congo Concession Companies had, when I was on the
Upper River, addressed a request to its Directors in Europe for a
further supply of ball-cartridge. The Directors had met this demand by
asking what had become of the 72,000 cartridges shipped some three
years ago, to which a reply was sent to the effect that these had all
been used in the production of india-rubber. I did not see this
correspondence, and cannot vouch for the truth of the statement; but
the officer who informed me that it had passed before his own eyes was
one of the highest standing in the interior."
Another witness showed the exact ratio between cartridges and rubber:
"'The S. A. B. on the Bussira, with 150 guns, get only ten tons
(rubber) a month; we, the State, at Momboyo, with 130 guns, get
thirteen tons per month.' 'So you count by guns?' I asked him.
'Partout,' M. P. said. 'Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber
cartridges are given to 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 they, the State, on the
Momboyo 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 children with
the butt of their guns."
That the statement about the cutting off of living hands is correct is
amply proved by the Kodak. I have photographs of at least twenty such
mutilated Negroes in my own possession.
Here is a copy of a dispatch from an official quoted in its naked
frankness: