des esclaves. Priere a MM. les agents de l'A.B.I.R. de bien vouloir me
signaler les mefaits que celui-ci pourrait commettre en route.
"Le Capitaine-Commandant,
(Signe) "SARRAZZYN."
"_Colquilhatville, le 1er Mai, 1896._"
Pretty good for the State which boasts that it has put down the slave
trade.
There is a passage showing the working of the rubber system which is so
clear and authoritative that I transcribe it in full:
"I went to the homes of these men some miles away and found out their
circumstances. To get the rubber they had first to go fully a two
days' journey from their homes, leaving their wives, and being absent
for from five to six days. They were seen to the forest limits under
guard, and if not back by the sixth day trouble was likely to ensue.
To get the rubber in the forests--which, generally speaking, are very
swampy--involves much fatigue and often fruitless searching for a
well-flowing vine. As the area of supply diminishes, moreover, the
demand for rubber constantly increases. Some little time back I
learned the Bongandanga district supplied seven tons of rubber a
month, a quantity which it was hoped would shortly be increased to ten
tons. The quantity of rubber brought by the three men in question
would have represented, probably, for the three of them certainly not
less than seven kilog. of pure rubber. That would be a very safe
estimate, and at an average of 7fr. per kilog. they might be said to
have brought in L2 worth of rubber. In return for this labour, or
imposition, they had received goods which cost certainly under 1_s._,
and whose local valuation came to 45 rods (1_s._ 10_d._). As this
process repeats itself twenty-six times a year, it will be seen that
they would have yielded L52 in kind at the end of the year to the
local factory, and would have received in return some 24_s._ or 25_s._
worth of goods, which had a market value on the spot of L2 7_s._ 8_d._
In addition to these formal payments they were liable at times to be
dealt with in another manner, for should their work, which might have
been just as hard, have proved less profitable in its yield of rubber,
the local prison would have seen them. The people everywhere assured
me that they were not happy under this system, and it was apparent to
a callous eye that in this they spoke the strict truth."
Again I insert a passage to show that Casement was by no means an
ill-natured critic:
"It is only right to say that the present agent of the A.B.I.R.
Society I met at Bongandanga seemed to me to try, in very difficult
and embarrassing circumstances, to minimize as far as possible, and
within the limits of his duties, the evils of the system I there
observed at work."
Speaking of the Mongalla massacres--those in which Lothaire was
implicated--he quotes from the judgment of the Court of Appeal:
"That it is just to take into account that, by the correspondence
produced in the case, the chiefs of the Concession Company have, if
not by formal orders, at least by their example and their tolerance,
induced their agents to take no account whatever of the rights,
property, and lives of the natives; to use the arms and the soldiers
which should have served for their defence and the maintenance of
order to force the natives to furnish them with produce and to work
for the Company, as also to pursue as rebels and outlaws those who
sought to escape from the requisitions imposed upon them.... That,
above all, the fact that the arrest of women and their detention, to
compel the villages to furnish both produce and workmen, was tolerated
and admitted even by certain of the administrative authorities of the
region."
Yet another example of the workings of the system:
"In the morning, when about to start for K----, many people from the
surrounding country came in to see me. They brought with them three
individuals who had been shockingly wounded by gun fire, two men and a
very small boy, not more than six years of age, and a fourth--a boy
child of six or seven--whose right hand was cut off at the wrist. One
of the men, who had been shot through the arm, declared that he was Y
of L----, a village situated some miles away. He declared that he had
been shot as I saw under the following circumstances: the soldiers had
entered his town, he alleged, to enforce the due fulfilment of the
rubber tax due by the community. These men had tied him up and said
that unless he paid 1,000 brass rods to them they would shoot him.
Having no rods to give them they had shot him through the arm and had
left him."
I may say that among my photographs are several with shattered arms who
have been treated in this fashion.
This is how the natives were treated when they complained to the white
man:
"In addition, fifty women are required each morning to go to the
factory and work there all day. They complained that the remuneration
given for these services was most inadequate, and that they were
continually beaten. When I asked the Chief W why he had not gone to D
F to complain if the sentries beat him or his people, opening his
mouth he pointed to one of the teeth which was just dropping out, and
said: 'That is what I got from the D F four days ago when I went to
tell him what I now say to you.' He added that he was frequently
beaten, along with others of his people, by the white man."
One sentry was taken almost red-handed by Mr. Casement:
"After some little delay a boy of about fifteen years of age appeared,
whose left arm was wrapped up in a dirty rag. Removing this, I found
the left hand had been hacked off by the wrist, and that a shot hole
appeared in the fleshy part of the forearm. The boy, who gave his name
as I I, in answer to my inquiry, said that a sentry of the La Lulanga
Company now in the town had cut off his hand. I proceeded to look for
this man, who at first could not be found, the natives to a
considerable number gathering behind me as I walked through the town.
After some delay the sentry appeared, carrying a cap-gun. The boy,
whom I placed before him, then accused him to his face of having
mutilated him. The men of the town, who were questioned in
succession, corroborated the boy's statement. The sentry, who gave his
name as K K, could make no answer to the charge. He met it by vaguely
saying some other sentry of the Company had mutilated I I; his
predecessor, he said, had cut off several hands, and probably this was
one of the victims. The natives around said that there were two other
sentries at present in the town, who were not so bad as K K, but that
he was a villain. As the evidence against him was perfectly clear, man
after man standing out and declaring he had seen the act committed, I
informed him and the people present that I should appeal to the local
authorities for his immediate arrest and trial."
The following extract must be my final quotation from Consul Casement's
report:
"I asked then how this tax was imposed. One of them, who had been
hammering out an iron neck-collar on my arrival, spoke first. He said:
"'I am N N. These other two beside me are O O and P P, all of us
Y----. From our country each village had to take twenty loads of
rubber. These loads were big: they were as big as this....' (Producing
an empty basket which came nearly up to the handle of my
walking-stick.) 'That was the first size. We had to fill that up, but
as rubber got scarcer the white man reduced the amount. We had to take
these loads in four times a month.'
"_Q._ 'How much pay did you get for this?'
"_A._ (Entire audience.) 'We got no pay! We got nothing!'
"And then N N, whom I asked again, said:
"'Our village got cloth and a little salt, but not the people who did
the work. Our chiefs eat up the cloth; the workers got nothing. The
pay was a fathom of cloth and a little salt for every big basketful,
but it was given to the chief, never to the men. It used to take ten
days to get the twenty baskets of rubber--we were always in the forest
and then when we were late we were killed. We had to go further and
further into the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food,
and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then
we starved. Wild beasts--the leopards--killed some of us when we were
working away in the forest, and others got lost or died from exposure
and starvation, and we begged the white man to leave us alone, saying
we could get no more rubber, but the white men and their soldiers
said: "Go! You are only beasts yourselves; you are nyama (meat)." We
tried, always going further into the forest, and when we failed and
our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us.
Many were shot, some had their ears cut off: others were tied up with
ropes around their necks and bodies and taken away. The white men
sometimes at the posts did not know of the bad things the soldiers did
to us, but it was the white men who sent the soldiers to punish us for
not bringing in enough rubber.'
"Here P P took up the tale from N N:
"'We said to the white men, "We are not enough people now to do what
you want us. Our country has not many people in it and we are dying
fast. We are killed by the work you make us do, by the stoppage of our
plantations, and the breaking up of our homes." The white man looked
at us and said: "There are lots of people in Mputu"' (Europe, the
white man's country). '"If there are lots of people in the white man's
country there must be many people in the black man's country." The
white man who said this was the chief white man at F F----; his name
was A B; he was a very bad man. Other white men of Bula Matadi who had
been bad and wicked were B C, C D, and D E.' 'These had killed us
often, and killed us by their own hands as well as by their soldiers.
Some white men were good. These were E F, F G, G H, H I, I K, K L.'
"These ones told them to stay in their homes and did not hunt and
chase them as the others had done, but after what they had suffered
they did not trust more any one's word, and they had fled from their
country and were now going to stay here, far from their homes, in this
country where there was no rubber.
"_Q._ 'How long is it since you left your homes, since the big trouble
you speak of?'
"_A._ 'It lasted for three full seasons, and it is now four seasons
since we fled and came into the K---- country.'
"_Q._ 'How many days is it from N---- to your own country?'
"_A._ 'Six days of quick marching. We fled because we could not endure
the things done to us. Our chiefs were hanged, and we were killed and
starved and worked beyond endurance to get rubber.'
"_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._ (P P): 'The white men told their soldiers: "You kill only 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 the private parts of my bulldog--it was lying asleep at my
feet), he said: 'then they cut off those things and took them to the
white men, who said: "It is true, you have killed men."'
"_Q._ 'You mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to
be mutilated like that, and those parts of you carried to him?'
"P P, O O, and all (shouting): 'Yes! many white men. D E did it.'
"_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, was not simulated.
Doubtless they exaggerated the numbers, but they were clearly telling
what they knew and loathed. I was told that they often became so
furious at the recollection of what had been done to them that they
lost control over themselves. One of the men before me was getting
into this state now."
Such is the story--or a very small portion of it--which His Majesty's
Consul conveyed to His Majesty's Government as to the condition of those
natives, who, "in the name of Almighty God," we had pledged ourselves to
defend!
The same damning White Book contained a brief account of Lord Cromer's
experience upon the Upper Nile in the Lado district. He notes that for
eighty miles the side of the river which is British territory was crowded
with native villages, the inhabitants of which ran along the bank calling
to the steamer. The other bank (Congolese territory), was a deserted
wilderness. The "Tuquoque" argument which King Leopold's henchmen are so
fond of advancing will find it hard to reconcile the difference. Lord
Cromer ends his report:
"It appears to me that the facts which I have stated above afford
amply sufficient evidence of the spirit which animates the Belgian
Administration, if, indeed, Administration it can be called. The
Government, so far as I could judge, is conducted almost exclusively
on commercial principles, and, even judged by that standard, it would
appear that those principles are somewhat short-sighted."
In the same White Book which contains these documents there is printed the
Congolese defence drawn up by M. de Cuvelier. The defence consists in
simply ignoring all the definite facts laid before the public, and in
making such statements as that the British have themselves made war upon
natives, as if there were no distinction between war and massacre, and
that the British have put a poll-tax upon natives, which, if it be
reasonable in amount, is a perfectly just proceeding adopted by all
Colonial nations. Let the possessors of the Free State use this system,
and at the same time restore the freedom of trade by throwing open the
country to all, and returning to the natives that land and produce which
has been taken from them. When they have done this--and punished the
guilty--there will be an end of anti-Congo agitation. Beyond this, a large
part (nearly half) of the Congo Reply (_notes sur le rapport de Mr.
Casement, de Dec. 11, 1903_), is taken up by trying to show that in one
case of mutilation the injuries were, in truth, inflicted by a wild boar.
There must be many wild boars in Congo land, and their habits are of a
singular nature. It is not in the Congo that these boars are bred.
VIII
KING LEOPOLD'S COMMISSION AND ITS REPORT
The immediate effect of the publication as a State paper of the general
comment of Lord Cromer, and of the definite accusations of Consul
Casement, was a demand both in Belgium and in England for an official
inquiry. Lord Landsdowne stipulated that this inquiry should be impartial
and thorough. It was also suggested by the British Government that it
should be international in character, and separated from the local
administration. Very grudgingly and under constant pressure the King
appointed a Commission, but whittled down its powers to such a point that
its proceedings must lose all utility. Such were the terms that they
provoked remonstrance from men like M. A. J. Wauters, the Belgian
historian of the Congo Free State, who protested in the _Mouvement
Geographique_ (August 7th, 1904) that such a body could serve no useful
end. Finally, their functions were slightly increased, but they possessed
no punitive powers and were hampered in every direction by the terms of
their reference.
The _personnel_ of the Commission was worthy of the importance of the
inquiry. M. Janssens, a well-known jurist of Belgium, was the president.
He impressed all who came in contact with him as a man of upright and
sympathetic character. Baron Nisco's appointment was open to criticism, as
he was himself a Congo functionary, but save for that fact there was no
complaint to make against him. Dr. Schumacher, a distinguished Swiss
lawyer, was the third Commissioner. The English Government applied to have
a representative upon the tribunal, and with true Congo subtlety the
request was granted after the three judges had reached the Congo. The
Englishman, Mr. Mackie, hurried out, but was only in time to attend the
last three sittings, which were held in the lower part of the river, far
from the notorious rubber agents. It is worth noting that on his arrival
he applied for the minutes of the previous meetings and that his
application was refused. In Belgium the evidence of the Commission has
never been published, and it is safe to say that it never will be.
Fortunately the Congo missionaries took copious notes of the proceedings
and of the testimony which came immediately under their own notice. It is
from their evidence that I draw these accounts. If the Congo authorities
contest the accuracy of those accounts, then let them confute them forever
and put their accusers to confusion by producing the actual minutes which
they hold.
The first sitting of any length of which there are records is that at
Bolobo, and extended from November 5th to 12th, 1904. The veteran, Mr.
Grenfell, gave evidence at this sitting, and it is useful to summarize his
views as he was one of the men who held out longest against the
condemnation of King Leopold, and because his early utterances have been
quoted as if he were a supporter of the system. He expressed to the
Commissioners his disappointment at the failure of the Congo Government to
realize the promises with which it inaugurated its career. He declared he
could no longer wear the decorations which he had received from the
Sovereign of the Congo State. He gave it as his opinion that the ills the
country was suffering from were due to the haste of a few men to get rich,
and to the absence of anything like a serious attempt to properly police
the country in the interests of the people. He instanced the few judicial
officers, and the virtual impossibility of a native obtaining justice,
owing to witnesses being compelled to travel long distances, either to
Leopoldville or Boma. Mr. Grenfell spoke out emphatically against the
administrative _regime_ on the Upper River, so far as it had been brought
under his notice.
Mr. Scrivener, a gentleman who had been twenty-three years on the Congo,
was the next witness. His evidence was largely the same as the "Diary"
from which I have already quoted, concerning the condition of the Crown
Domain. Many witnesses were examined. "How do you know the names of the
men murdered?" a lad was asked. "One of them was my father," was the
dramatic reply. "Men of stone," wrote Mr. Scrivener, "would be moved by
the stories that are unfolded as the Commission probes this awful history
of rubber collection."
Mr. Gilchrist, another missionary, was a new witness. His testimony was
concerned with the State Domain and the Concessionnaire area, principally
on the Lulanga River. He said:
"I also told them what we had seen on the Ikelemba, of the signs of
desolation in all the districts, of the heartrending stories the
people told us, of the butcheries wrought by the various white men of
the State and companies who had, from time to time, been stationed
there among whom a few names were notorious. I pointed out to them the
fact that the basin of the Ikelemba was supposed to be free-trade
territory also, but that everywhere the people of the various
districts were compelled to serve the companies of these respective
districts, in rubber, gum copal or food. At one out-of-the-way place
where we were on the south bank, two men arrived just as we were
leaving, with their bodies covered with marks of the chicotte, which
they had just received from the trader of Bosci because their quantity
had been short. I said to the Commissaire, given favourable
conditions, particularly freedom, there would soon be a large
population in these interior towns, the Ngombe and Mongo."
In answer to questions the following facts were solicited:
"_Unsettled condition of the people._ The older people never seem to
have confidence to build their houses substantially. If they have any
suspicion of the approach of a canoe or steamer with soldiers they
flee.
"_Chest disease, pneumonia, etc._ These carry off very many. The
people flee to the islands, live in the open air, expose themselves to
all kinds of weather, contract chills, which are followed by serious
lung troubles, and die. For years we never saw a new house because of
the drifting population. They have a great fear of soldiers. In the
case of many the absence from the villages is temporary; in the case
of a few they permanently settle on the north bank of the river.
"_Want of proper nourishment._ I have witnessed the collecting of the
State imposition, and after this was set aside the natives had nothing
but leaves to eat."
Also, that fines, which the Commission at once declared to be illegal,
were constantly levied on the people, and that these fines had continued
after the matter had been reported to the Governor-General. In spite of
this declaration of illegality, no steps were taken in the matter, and M.
de Bauw, the chief offender, was by last accounts the supreme executive
official of the district. At every turn one finds that there is no
relation at all between law and practice in the Congo. Law is habitually
broken by every official from the Governor-General downward if the profits
of the State can be increased thereby. The only stern enforcement of the
laws is toward the foreigner, the Austrian Rubinck, or the Englishman
Stokes, who is foolish enough to think that an international agreement is
of more weight than the edicts of Boma. These men believed it, and met
their death through their belief without redress, and even, in the case of
the Austrian, without public remonstrance.
The next considerable session of the Commission was at Baringa. Mr. Harris
and Mr. Stannard, the missionaries at this station, had played a noble
part throughout in endeavouring within their very limited powers to shield
the natives from their tormentors. In both cases, and also in that of Mrs.
Harris, this had been done at the repeated risk of their lives. Their
white neighbours of the rubber factories made their lives miserable also
by preventing their receipt of food from the natives, and harassing them
in various ways. On one occasion a chief and his son were both murdered by
the order of the white agent because they had supplied the Harris
household with the fore-quarter of an antelope. Before giving the terrible
testimony of the missionaries--a testimony which was admitted to be true
by the chief agent of the A.B.I.R. Company on the spot, it would be well
to show the exact standing of this Corporation and its relation to the
State. These relations are so close that they become to all intents and
purposes the same. The State holds fifty per cent. of the shares; it
places the Government soldiers at the company's disposal; it carries up in
the Government steamers and supplies licenses for the great number of
rifles and the quantity of cartridges which the company needs for its
murderous work. Whatever crimes are done by the company, the State is a
close accomplice. Finally, the European directors of this bloodstained
company are, or were at the time, the Senator Van der Nest, who acted as
President; and as Council: Count John d'Oultremont, Grand Marshal of the
Belgian Court; Baron Dhanis, of Congo fame, and M. van Eetevelde, the
creature of the King, and the writer of so many smug despatches to the
British Government about the mission of civilization and the high purpose
of the Congo State. Now listen to some of the testimony as condensed by
Mr. Harris: