February 3, 1907.
OUGHT we to interfere? In this whole discussion I have looked at the
question solely from the humanitarian standpoint. I assume that
Secretary Root’s first presentation of the matter was carefully
prepared. He insisted that we had no grounds for interference, insofar
as the Berlin conference was concerned. It is only, then, from the point
of view of interest in the natives, the desire to save them from
suffering and from atrocity, that we can join with England in calling a
new conference of the world’s powers to consider Congo matters. Ought we
to pursue such a course? We ought not, and that for several reasons.
First—We should not interfere in Congo matters from philanthropic
reasons, unless we are ready to undertake the policing of the whole of
Africa. If the atrocities in the Congo are sufficient to involve us in
difficulty with Belgium or with Belgium’s king, the atrocities and
cruelty practiced in the French Congo, throughout German Africa, in the
Portuguese possessions, and even in the English colonies, must also
attract our notice. If we really intervene to save the African black man
from white oppression, we must do this job thoroughly and on a large
scale.
Second—We should not interfere with the conditions in Congo unless we
desire strained relations with France and Germany. No possible agitation
will bring about a second meeting of all the powers that participated in
the Berlin conference. Turkey alone, so far, has signified her
willingness to act with England. The only other nation in which there
seems to be the slightest trend toward participation is Italy. No
Scandinavian country—Sweden, Norway, Denmark—will join in the
movement. The many Scandinavians who, in one capacity or another, have
labored in the Congo Free State are, on the whole, well satisfied with
the conditions. Though there is a vigorous and aggressive Swedish
mission in the country, it is significant that its members have never
joined in the agitation. Nor is Holland, which has sent a large number
of individuals into the Congo State as employés of government and
concession companies, likely to favor an agitation. Austria, for various
reasons, stands aloof. France has a definite understanding whereby in
case of the dissolution of the Congo Free State she becomes heir to all
the district. Germany, responsible for the foundation of the Congo Free
State, has, on the whole, always favored its existence, and would
certainly oppose interference in its affairs. In case of the partition
of the Congo, Germany would be willing enough to take her share, but it
is really more to her interest both at home and abroad to maintain its
independence. All these European countries speak quite freely in regard
to England’s design. France and Germany would seriously oppose any
demonstration by England and the United States.
Third—We ought not to interfere unless we are really willing to play
the undignified part of pulling England’s chestnuts from the fire. What
would we, nationally, gain by the partition of the Congo? Our repeated
declarations about not wishing new territory in distant regions are, of
course, looked upon as twaddle by other nations. If we really mean them,
we must avoid the very appearance of evil. What will the natives gain by
partition? They will still have their oppressors, only they will be
divided around among three instead of being exploited by one. Suppose
the redistribution did take place. Suppose France, Germany, and England
divided the Congo between them; suppose—as would be certain—that
oppression and atrocity continued in the divided territory. Would we
still continue our noble effort in behalf of the suffering black
millions?
Fourth—We should not interfere, unless we wish to present a glaring
example of national inconsistency. Distance lends enchantment to the
view. We are solicitous about the Bantu in their home under the rule of
Leopold II.; we have 12,000,000 or more of them within our own United
States. The Bantu in the Congo we love. We suffer when he is whipped,
shudder when he is put upon a chain-gang, shriek when he is murdered.
Yet, here he may be whipped, put on the chain-gang, murdered, and if any
raise an outcry he is a sentimentalist. Our negro problem is a serious
and difficult one. We do not know how to treat it. But it is at our
door, and we can study it and strike out some mode of treatment. But the
years pass, and we do nothing. So complicated is it and so united
together and interdependent its issues and its elements, that any course
of action is dangerous, because we frequently cannot foresee the outcome
of well-meant effort. With this example constantly before us, one would
suppose that we would hesitate in meddling with the equally complicated
problem, regarding conditions of which we know little or nothing, on the
other side of the globe.
Fifth—We ought not to interfere, unless we come with clean hands. We
have an even closer parallel to Congo conditions than our negro problem
in the South. In the Philippines we found a people to be elevated; an
inscrutable Providence—so we say—thrust the Philippine Islands, with
their millions, upon us. A few years ago we heard much of benevolent
assimilation. Benevolent assimilation is the most dreadful of all forms
of cannibalism. Our Congo reformers emphasize the fact that the Congo
State was founded with many philanthropic assertions and with
high-sounding promises of improving and elevating the native population.
The parallel is close. We took the Philippines and Filipinos for their
good. So we said. Of course, we took them just as the European nations
have taken Africa—for exploitation. Had there been no hope of mines, of
timber, of cheap land for speculation, of railroads to be built, and
other enterprises to be undertaken and financed, we should never have
had such a tender interest in the advancement of the Filipinos. And how
has our benevolent assimilation proceeded? Just exactly as it always
proceeds everywhere in tropic lands with “lower peoples.” Torture,
punitive expeditions, betrayal of confidence and friendship,
depopulation—these have been the agencies through which we have
attempted to elevate a race.
You will tell me that what I am about to quote is ancient history and
has lost its force. It is no more ancient than the bulk of the
atrocities and cruelties within the Congo. We quote a newspaper of April
12, 1902:
“From the Philippines authentic news is now at hand tending to confirm
the charges of barbarity on the part of American army officers, which
have hitherto been strenuously and sweepingly denied. This news comes in
Associated Press dispatches reporting the court-martial trial of Major
Waller, now in progress at Manila. This officer led an expedition last
winter into the interior of the island of Samar. After being given up
for dead, he and his party returned to camp January 28th, delirious from
privation. Major Waller was next heard of in this connection in a
dispatch of March 6th from Manila. He had been subjected to
court-martial proceedings, on charges of having, while on this ill-fated
expedition, executed natives of the island of Samar without trial. One
of the specifications alleged that in one instance the accused had
caused a native to be tied to a tree, and on one day to be shot in the
thigh, on the next in the arm, on the third in the body, and on the
fourth to be killed. Friends of Major Waller attributed his horrible
action to delirium caused by privation; but Major Waller himself refused
to make this defense, insisting that he had acted under superior
authority.”
This sounds like an indictment of the Belgians in the Congo put forth by
the Congo Reform Association. It is revolting; it is horrible; it
probably is true. Personally, I believe that Major Waller must have
suffered from the physical, the mental, the moral disintegration which
the tropics so constantly produce in white men. It is unlikely that he
was by nature a man of exceptional cruelty. He became what he
was—either permanently or for a time—through the environment in which
he lived. He had excuse; so have the Belgians. There is another respect
in which this quotation sounds Congo-like. Major Waller insisted that he
had “acted under superior authority.”
This phrase, he “acted under superior authority,” is constantly harped
upon by Morel and others of the Congo agitators. Much is made of it, and
we are constantly asked to trace home the order which issued from
superior authority From whom came Major Waller’s orders? In his trial,
February 8th, 1902, he disclosed the startling nature of General Smith’s
orders, as he had understood them. He swore that General Smith had said:
“I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill, the more you will
please me. The interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness. Kill
every native over ten years old.”
When serious complaints of maladministration are brought before the
Belgian authorities of the Congo, investigation and trial are usually
ordered. The Congo agitators lay great stress upon the fact that in the
Congo these trials are farces; that the accused is rarely sentenced to
punishment; that sometimes after his acquittal he is lionized, made a
hero of, advanced in office. This is an unpardonable crime when
committed by the Belgians. Lothaire—and really Lothaire was as bad as
any—was thus treated. One would imagine from the chorus of complaint
along this line that every English or American officer accused of
cruelty, misgovernment or maladministration was promptly and severely
punished.
Major Waller received the verdict that he had acted “in accordance with
the rules of war, the orders of his superior, and the military
exigencies of the situation.” This, again, can hardly be improved upon
in all the cases put forward joyously by the reformers. When complaint
is made it is never treated honestly. There is always whitewashing. Why
howl over Belgian failure to punish? Waller’s verdict shows that we do
precisely the same thing in the same circumstances. But look at what was
done with General Smith, the man who ordered that down to ten years of
age the natives should be killed. He, too, was ordered to undergo
court-martial. From a newspaper of May 3d, 1902, we quote: “At the
opening, Colonel Woodruff announced his willingness to simplify the
proceedings by admitting that most of the accusations were true. He said
he was willing, in behalf of General Smith, to admit that inasmuch as
the country was hostile, General Smith did not want any prisoners, and
that he had issued orders to Major Waller to kill all persons capable of
bearing arms, fixing the age limit at ten years, because many boys of
that age had borne arms against the American troops, and that he had
ordered Major Waller also to burn the homes of the people and to make
Samar a howling wilderness.”
What was done with General Smith? His court-martial began on April 25.
Its result was, of course, a whitewash; it always is, whether the person
tried is American, French, German, or Belgian. It is curious, however,
to observe how others were affected by this case. There was one man who
knew better than any other all the facts relating to the Philippines.
His utterance, which we shall quote, was expressed, indeed, before this
trial, but it was expressed with full knowledge of similar facts. That
man, on March 5th, made the assertion: “It is not the fact that the
warfare in the Philippines has been conducted with marked severity; on
the contrary, the warfare has been conducted with marked humanity and
magnanimity on the part of the United States army.” What a pity that we
are less ready to talk of marked humanity and magnanimity of others! Can
Waller’s crime be surpassed by anything from Congo; can any order be
more cruel than General Smith’s?
I have said that this would be called ancient history. At Leopoldville I
asked about atrocities; the response was that at present there was
nothing serious to complain of in that region beyond the kwanga tax;
when I reached Ikoko, where undoubtedly many cruel things have taken
place, they told me that at present such things did not occur there,
that to find them I must go to the A. B. I. R.; that the fish tax was
too heavy, but that of cruelties, atrocities and mutilations there had
been none for years. At Bolobo I heard precisely the same story—the
most frightful things had taken place at Lake Leopold II.—that recently
nothing serious had happened at Bolobo itself. I presume that there are
outrages and cruelties of recent date in the A. B. I. R. and the Antwerp
Concession. But here, again, the parallel between the Congo and the
Philippines is close. While the Waller and Smith incident is ancient,
there is plenty doing at the present time. We quote a paper August 18,
1906: “The Pulajanes—wild tribesmen of the Philippine island of
Leyte—continue their fighting. Five Americans, including a lieutenant
and a surgeon, were killed in a hand-to-hand encounter in the town of
Burauen on the 9th. It was reported on the 14th that Governor-General
Ide has determined to exterminate the Pulajanes, even if it should take
every American soldier on the islands to do it.”
This sounds like depopulation. And why is depopulation worse in Africa
than in the Philippines? Why should a President who views the latter
with complacency—and I may say with commendation—feel so keenly with
reference to the former? A special message of commendation was promptly
sent to an American leader for his killing of hundreds of men, women,
and children; depopulation on a large scale and of the same kind as he
reprobates when done by Leopold’s soldiers. Our friends of the Congo
Reform Association are strangely silent in regard to such letters of
commendation; they are much grieved because Lothaire was lionized, but
they hurrah over the accumulating honors of a Funston.
When our hands are clean and when we have given the Filipinos their
well-deserved independence and free government, and left them to work
out their own salvation, then and not till then, should we intervene in
the Congo Free State for reasons of humanity. I say when we have left
the Filipinos to work out their own salvation; we have strange ideas
regarding the kindnesses we do to other peoples. Thus Cuba is supposed
to be under an eternal debt of obligation to us for the government which
we set up in that unhappy land. We devised a model government, according
to our own ideas; to be sure, it is a government so expensive to keep up
that few, if any, portions of the United States with the population of
Cuba could possibly support it. We put in sanitary improvements,
nominally for the benefit of Cubans, but actually with a shrewd
afterthought for ourselves, which we demanded should be maintained at
any price. Of course, it is impossible for a country with the population
and resources of Cuba to maintain them. This will give us repeated
opportunities for interference in the affairs of the island,
interference which ultimately may weary the people into assent to
uniting with us. They will lose both independence and happiness, and we
will gain an added problem; and the only persons profited will be those
who are, and will be, exploiting the island for their selfish ends.
So, in the Philippines, we will develop a government which,
theoretically, may seem perfect. The difficulty is that it must be much
less suitable for Filipinos than a less perfect government, planned and
carried out along lines of their own ideas. Lately a Filipino in this
country has said something which has the ring of truth. “We have money
enough to maintain a better and less expensive government than that
costly one which is trying to make the people what the government wants
them to be, and not to make itself what the people want and expect,
dictating laws one day which next day are canceled and changed in a
thousand places and in a thousand ways, so that justice is converted
into a mere babel. Believe me, dear sir, that even our ephemeral
government at Malolos showed no such incapacity. This is due to the fact
that he who governs the house does not belong to the house, and
everybody knows the old Spanish proverb, ‘The fool is wiser in his own
house than the wise man in his neighbor’s.’”
If it is necessary for us as a nation to look for African adventure; if
to give a strenuous President the feeling that he is “doing something”
we must meddle in the affairs of the Dark Continent, there is a district
where we might intervene with more of reason, and consistency, and grace
than we are doing by going to the Congo. We once established on African
soil, whether wisely or not I do not intend to discuss, a free republic
for the blacks. In Liberia we have an American enterprise, pure and
simple. It has not been a great success. It is just possible—though I
doubt it—that Liberia would at several times have profited and been
advantaged by our instruction and interest. But it seems to possess
little interest for us. Just now, like the Congo, it is attracting
British attention. Whether it has large or little value, whether it
possesses great opportunities or not, it is now a center of interest to
Great Britain. She does not need our help in pulling chestnuts from the
fire there, and there has been strange silence and ignorance in this
country regarding it as a new sphere for English influence. If we assist
England in expanding her African possessions at the expense of the Congo
Free State, Liberia will be the next fraction of Africa to succumb to
English rule. England’s methods of procedure are various. It might be a
useful lesson for our statesmen and politicians to study Liberia’s
prospects with care. We are still young in the business of grabbing
other people’s lands. England could teach us many lessons. The latest
one may well be worthy our attention, since, in a certain sense, it
deals with a district where we naturally possess an interest.
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