namely, to insist upon the native right of self-government, holding
that the sum of our duty is to set up a civilized form of government
and then withdraw from control, leaving the native nation to maintain
it. The advocates of such a policy are guilty of a serious oversight in
forgetting that “democracy is not simply a form of government, but a
state of human evolution.” The native form of government cannot advance
far beyond the social life of the people, for they are sustained by
the same moral forces. As a matter of fact there is not in the world a
single example of a successful native government of a tropical country.
Failures are conspicuous on both sides of the Atlantic; for instance,
Hayti in the West Indies and Liberia in Africa. The tropical governments
of Central and South America are not in any sense native governments, but
are administered by a permanently resident foreign community, in their
own interest, whose moral standards tend to lower more and more as they
mingle with the native populations. A form of native government that
would compare with those of civilized nations is by no means possible
until the moral forces that have contributed to the highest civilization
are operative in their social life.
It is evident that the tropical nations if left to themselves will not
develop the resources of their country. But it is equally evident that
the civilized world will not, and ought not, to leave these resources
undeveloped. For civilization depends upon the tropics for many trade
products, including india-rubber, and the dependence increases at such a
rate that it is predicted that the main lines of commerce in the future
will run north and south instead of east and west, and the prediction is
not fanciful.
It would seem therefore that the development of the resources of the
tropics will be by the native under the supervision of the white man.
The ideal government will be based upon the clear recognition of mutual
need and mutual benefit; and the principle that will mould the form of
government and be constantly operative in its administration will be
the duty of the civilized nation to bring to the uncivilized its best
benefits, to their mutual advantage. The interest of the native himself
will be always the first consideration; for he has the first right to
the resources of his country and to the reward of his labour; and the
interest of the foreign nation second, in the greater sources of supply
and the enlarged market for her merchandise.
To give actuality and force to such a government three things will be
required in its administration, as suggested by Mr. Benjamin Kidd in his
book, “The Control of the Tropics”: first, its officers must be only
those who represent the highest moral ideals of civilization; second,
the most intimate contact must be maintained with the home government;
third, the policy and its administration must be constantly subject to
the severe scrutiny of public opinion. Public apathy, inconsiderate
confidence in our agents in the tropics—the conceit that they cannot go
far wrong because they are Americans, will lead to shame and degradation.
Such a moral motive and the conscientious discharge of the duty involved
constitute the white man’s right, and his _only_ right, to occupy the
black man’s country.
It was with Captain Button of the _Volta_ that I went up the Congo
to Boma and Matadi. I owe to several of the captains, and to Captain
Harrison in particular, a debt of gratitude for many kindnesses; but I
travelled most with Captain Button and from no other did I receive so
many kind, and often costly favours. More than once, upon finding me in
very bad health when his ship called at Gaboon, he fairly forced me to
go for a health-change; and on the occasion of my visit to the Congo I
was in such a miserable condition of health that a single attack of fever
would probably have been my last, when Captain Button swooped down upon
me and carried me off.
I had been troubled with abscesses, common enough on the coast, and when
I went aboard I had a very severe one on my left forearm. One night, near
the Congo, when I was suffering with the pain and had been awake several
nights, the captain had a stretcher placed on deck for me and advised
that I lay my arm in a basin of warm water which was placed beside me. He
then told the ship’s surgeon to examine my arm and see whether it ought
not to be lanced. But he told him not to mention the matter of lancing it
to me. I was weak and nervous with loss of sleep and he wished to save me
the additional pain of thinking about the lancing of it and consenting
to it. The doctor examined the arm and then having consulted with the
captain went below and got his lance. When he returned the captain was
sitting beside me ready to assist. The doctor a second time bent over the
arm as it was extended over the basin. Then I saw the gleam of a knife
which was instantly plunged into my arm. Ten minutes of agony during
which the captain poured on warm water,—and then _rest_; the first I had
had for many days, and a few minutes later I was asleep. That was the
last of the abscesses and from that time I gained perceptibly each day.
At Boma, the capital of the Congo Free State, sixty miles from the
mouth of the river, we lay in against the bank and moored the ship to
the shore. Close beside us was a sight upon which I gazed with gruesome
interest, the wreck of the steamship _Matadi_. My first voyage to Africa
was on the _Matadi_. I think it was on her next voyage that she was
wrecked. Like all the ships of her class she was called a palm-oil tub.
The steamers of the present service are incomparably better. The _Matadi_
was blown up by a fearful explosion of gunpowder that had been carelessly
stored. All the crew except one were drowned. There were also on board
two American missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Harvey, who went down with the
ship. They were in their cabin when the explosion occurred. The door
jammed and could never afterwards be opened, so that the bodies remain
there to this day. A smoke-stack protruding out of the water, a part of
a poop-deck, overgrown with grass, and an enormous side-piece flung upon
the shore—such were the innuendo of the scene.
Boma is built on the side of a long, sloping hill. Its buildings, many
of them made of sheets of corrugated iron, are scattered in disorder.
Behind them on higher ground is the attractive, pale-coloured residence
of the governor. There is a good road and several avenues of palms and
a number of flower-gardens surrounding the residences. A well-ordered
hospital, a state school, a palace of justice, a prison for white men, a
fort and barracks are the more conspicuous buildings. Three street-lamps
and a native band that plays twice a week, probably by ear, make life
delightful and bring the city up to date. Boma looks well from the
river—as looks go in Africa. But when one remembers that for more than
twenty years it has been the capital of the Congo Free State, a territory
four times the size of Germany, from which also vast wealth has been
drawn and that Belgium’s civilizing agencies have been concentrated here,
one is not greatly impressed. At least it does not compare with the other
capitals of West Africa, the French Libreville, the German Dualla or the
English Calabar.
In the hospital at Boma one may see cases of the strange “sleeping
sickness,” that awful scourge that has in late years passed across Africa
from the east to the west decimating the population and often in the
farther east destroying entire towns. Until very recently there has been
no recovery. The patient sleeps without waking, except for food—sleeps
and wastes away for eight or ten months until he dies. The germ is now
supposed to be carried by the tsetse fly.
I of course witnessed no Belgian atrocities at Boma, and it would surely
have been a matter of amazement if I had. But still more amazing is
the report of certain casual travellers, who had no more opportunity
than myself for direct observation, to the effect that there are no
atrocities, because they did not witness them. If I had gone to King
Leopold’s representative, the governor at Boma, and had told him, in the
course of a neighbourly conversation, that I had heard about the Belgian
atrocities and had come to witness them that I might exploit them to the
horrified nations, and then had asked him to accommodate my purpose by
having at least a few atrocities performed in the front yard, including
the different varieties of murder, mutilation and torture, it would have
been parallel to the methods pursued by certain persons, who actually
heralded their arrival and their purpose all along the way, notified
Leopold’s agents in particular, perfected their investigations by asking
questions of these same agents, and then proclaimed that these cruel
reports of atrocities and atrocities represent an unparalleled conspiracy
on the part of several hundred men from half a score of nations, who
having lived many long years in the Congo have become prejudiced and have
accumulated a number of personal grievances against the Belgian officials
and are now seeking by the invention of innumerable charges of unheard-of
crimes to ruin the reputation of Good King Leopold and deprive him of his
rights. The administration of the Congo government is not a melodrama;
it is anything but that. Leopold’s atrocities are not placed on free
exhibition at Boma for the entertainment of travellers, some of whom are
immorally unconcerned in regard to the real suffering of the natives.
They are performed only for money and plenty of it. The motive is money
and the argument is that they pay. Though I was only a traveller, and not
a resident, in the Congo Free State, yet I can speak with some authority
on the question of the Belgian régime; for I lived several years in
the adjoining territory, the Congo Français, a large part of which was
farmed out in concessions to Belgian companies, whose policy and methods
were precisely those of the Congo Free State. Such a system, however, is
contrary to the spirit of the French, and one cannot think that it will
long endure.
Consider for a moment the various sources of the evidence against Leopold
and his agents. There are about two hundred Protestant missionaries in
the Congo Free State, representing the United States, Canada, Great
Britain, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. These missionaries, men
and women, have lived for years in the Congo, many of them twenty, and
even twenty-five years, and are scattered over the entire territory. They
speak the language of the people and therefore have the most intimate
knowledge of conditions. Their motive is only the good of the native, and
every influence that makes for the betterment of the native’s condition
contributes to their success. That they should not know the truth in
regard to the alleged atrocities of the Belgians is impossible; that they
should unite to falsify the truth is unthinkable. But their testimony is
all of one kind, and against Belgium, and constitutes probably the most
terrible indictment of a civilized government in the last two thousand
years, if not in the history of the world.
But there are other witnesses besides missionaries. In 1903 the British
government, in response to the entreaty and remonstrance of missionaries
and traders and English Chambers of Commerce, appointed Mr. Roger
Casement, British Consul to the Congo, to make a thorough investigation
of conditions in the Congo Free State. Mr. Casement, whom I had the
pleasure of meeting at Matadi, was peculiarly fitted for the task
assigned to him. He had spent twelve years in the consular service in
Africa. He had the unqualified confidence of the British government and
was held in the highest esteem and admiration by all classes of men in
the Congo. Mr. Poultney Bigelow says of him: “Roger Casement is the sort
of man depicted in Jules Verne’s novels, the man who is everlastingly
exploring and extricating himself from every imaginable difficulty by
superhuman tact, wit and strength.”
Mr. Casement’s report of the results of his investigation is a revealing
document. It confirms the worst charges that had been made. It abounds in
such incidents as the following: “This man himself, when I visited him
in Boma gaol, in March, 1901, said that more than a hundred women and
children had died of starvation at his hands, but that the responsibility
was due to his superior’s orders and neglect.”
But even Belgians have been, and are to-day, among those who denounce the
Belgian king. For instance, a Belgian agent, named Lecroix, confessed
that he had been instructed by his chief to massacre all the natives of a
certain village, including women and children, for not bringing in enough
rubber. He also told how that on one occasion his chief had put sixty
women in chains, all but five of whom died of starvation.
At last the feeling became so strong in Europe that in September, 1904,
King Leopold appointed a Commission of Inquiry consisting of three
persons, two of whom were his own subjects; the third was an eminent
Swiss jurist. This was somewhat like King Leopold investigating himself.
But the Commission seems to have listened impartially to the testimony.
With the eyes of Europe upon them they proceeded to the Congo and spent
four and a half months in taking the sworn testimony of “hundreds of
witnesses.” The contrast between what the Commission _expected_ to find,
and what they actually found, may be best expressed in the words that
M. Janssens, president of the Commission, is reported to have spoken
publicly before leaving Boma: “I came here with a feeling of confidence,
expecting to find everything in order. I did not think I was about to
come into contact with such putridity as I have found.”
In general the report of King Leopold’s Commission confirms all the
charges, including the very worst, that had ever been made against the
Congo government.
To such an extent is this true that those who are working against the
continuance of King Leopold’s rule in the Congo would be willing to base
their appeal on the report of the Commission alone. It is a lengthy and
exhaustive document, but a few brief extracts will convey a fair idea of
the whole; for instance the following:
“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 obviously cannot 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.
“They brought before the Commission a multitude of native witnesses,
who revealed a great number of crimes and excesses alleged to have been
committed by the sentries.... The truth of the charges is borne out by
a mass of evidence and official reports.... The agents examined by the
Commission did not even attempt to refute them.
“According to the witnesses, these auxiliaries convert themselves into
despots, demanding women and food, not only for themselves, but for a
retinue of parasites which a love of rapine causes to become associated
with them. They kill without pity all those who attempt to resist.
“If we accept Stanley’s figures it is incontestable that a large part of
the population must have disappeared; for, from Stanley Pool to Nouvelle
Anvers, the banks of the river are almost deserted.”
Thus much from the report of King Leopold’s Commission. What is called
the “sentry system” is the most atrocious factor in this policy. As a
matter of course coercion must be used in the enforcement of a continuous
labour-tax. An army of thirty thousand native soldiers is maintained
for the suppression and exploitation of the people, who are unarmed and
defenseless. Thus can a king do when he becomes a trader. This army
is raised by conscription, and is practically an army of slaves. The
conscripts are removed from their own people and are made to serve among
strangers. Despair is never a sanctifying grace; and these desperate
men are armed and compelled to a life of continual cruelty and shocking
crime, whereby they are in course of time transformed into foulest
fiends. To them is committed the oversight of those who collect rubber
and the punishment of those who come short. This is the “sentry system.”
When I visited Boma and Matadi the commonest subject of conversation,
both by traders and missionaries, was the Belgian atrocities.
Matadi is one hundred and ten miles from the sea. Between Boma and
Matadi, at a bend in the river, there is a fearful whirlpool called the
Devil’s Caldron, at least it is “fearful” in the wet season when the
river is highest and the current swiftest. This vortex is the shape of a
funnel. As we left it on our right and passed across the outer rim, the
big ocean steamer listed to starboard. A short time before, a lighter
loaded with cargo and manned by Kruboys had been drawn into it. Several
persons watched it as it swept around in a narrowing circle until at last
near the centre it suddenly took a header and plunged into the abyss with
its human freight.
Matadi is built on the side of a perpendicular rock, which Richard
Harding Davis says is “not so large as Gibraltar, nor so high as the
Flatiron Building, but it is a little more steep than either. Three
narrow streets lead to its top. They are of flat stones, with cement
gutters. The stones radiate the heat of stove-lids. They are worn to a
mirror-like smoothness, and from their surface the sun strikes between
your eyes, at the pit of your stomach, and blisters the soles of your
mosquito boots.”
Matadi is not much more than a railroad terminus. Between the Lower
and Upper Congo, that is, between Matadi and Leopoldville, on Stanley
Pool, the river is not navigable, owing to the rapids. A railroad two
hundred and fifty miles long unites these two places. It was built at a
tremendous cost both of money and of life. Out of four hundred Chinese
imported at one time, for work on the railroad, two hundred and fifty
died within three years. Kruboys and others were brought from the north
and engaged to work according to a certain definite contract; but in most
cases the contract was disregarded and they were practically enslaved,
working until they died. The railroad, the _Chemin de Fer du Congo_, is
exceedingly useful and has also proved a paying investment. The fare from
Matadi to Leopoldville, two hundred and fifty miles, was fifty dollars,
when I was at Matadi, that is, twenty cents a mile. But I imagine that
those who had made the journey on foot over that rough country, did not
begrudge the exorbitant fare.
Henry M. Stanley, starting from Matadi, blasted the rocks in order to
make a road by which the sections of his boat could be dragged along _en
route_ to the Upper Congo. Until I visited Matadi I did not know the
meaning of the name which the natives gave to Stanley, _Bula Matadi_.
It means _Breaker of Rocks_—a name to be proud of, surely; and one
which Stanley deserved. His authority was superseded by that of the
government of the Congo, which to this day is called by the natives
_Bula Matadi—Breaker of Rocks_ and incidentally of _men_. It happened
that Consul Casement was at Matadi; and the captain and I were invited
to a picnic which was given in his honour. It was a novel experience for
Africa. We rowed down the river and landed for our lunch in a peculiar
and pleasant place on piles of rock, of historic and even legendary
interest.
During those days there was a representative missionary gathering
at Matadi and I had the opportunity of meeting and conversing with
missionaries from all over the Congo Free State. Some of them I had
known before. All whom I met had but one story to tell in regard to the
“Belgian atrocities,” a story that might have been a chapter from the
history of Hell.
They told of seeing more than fifty severed hands at a time, including
hands of children, which the soldiers were taking to the white men to
prove that they had killed people according to their orders. The black
soldiers had also eaten the flesh of their victims. Sometimes the agents
demanded an amount of food from the natives for themselves and the
entire post which the natives could only continue to furnish by buying
from other natives; and they were expecting that when they could buy
no more they would be killed. In some villages when the impost of food
was delivered the people had nothing left for themselves, and fed on
leaves. When the rubber in certain districts was becoming exhausted
and the tax was not reduced the people mixed the latex (juice of the
rubber vine) with an inferior latex, and when they did so the agent,
if it was discovered, made them eat it. The work about the posts was
done by slaves, mostly women, and at night these women were obliged to
be at the disposal of the native soldiers. Missionaries themselves had
met soldiers driving to the post women tied together with ropes, to be
held as hostages until their husbands could bring a certain amount of
rubber. This was the usual means of compelling men to bring rubber. They
often tortured the women in order to intimidate the men. But many of
the hostages could not be redeemed and were starved to death. They told
of the mutilations of the living, of hands and feet chopped off, and of
men unsexed. They told of four or five men placed in a row one behind
another and shot with one bullet, and of women and children crucified.
They told of the population of certain districts reduced from thousands
to hundreds, and in other districts wiped out entirely. It is estimated
by some that since the ascendency of King Leopold in the Congo the total
population has decreased from twenty-five millions to fifteen millions,
there being ten million murders set down to the account of the king.
Returning from Matadi to the steamer in the sultry tropical night, it
seemed as if the very atmosphere were drenched with blood, that we
breathed its vapours, and that the great swift-rolling tide beneath us
was the blood of the slain millions, hurrying out to incarnadine the sea
that boats against the shores of all the civilized world.
The greed of Leopold and the apathy of the nations are together
responsible for the existence of present conditions in the Congo. It is
irrelevant to answer that there are also atrocities in Portuguese and
other possessions of Africa. There is more oppression and cruelty in the
Congo Free State than in all the rest of Africa. Moreover, we have no
authority over Portugal and can exercise only the right of appeal and its
moral influence. But the Powers signatory to the Brussels Act, with the
United States in the lead, created the Congo Free State, and are still
the formal guardians of its people. A conference of those Powers would
without doubt deal with other evils in Africa besides those of the Congo
Free State. To the average man, unversed in the forms of international
usage, it would seem within the competence of any one of the Powers
which committed to King Leopold a sacred trust upon certain definite
conditions, to urge upon the other responsible powers the duty of meeting
again to inquire whether those conditions have been fulfilled and to
adjudicate the issues relating to their non-fulfillment.
Meanwhile, the Congo State lies bleeding at every pore, and those who are
hoping and praying in all the world for a people who have ceased to hope
and have never learned to pray, have their eyes turned towards the United
States.
A missionary writing from Baringa in the Congo said: “An old chief came
up to where we were standing. ‘Oh, white man,’ he pleaded, ‘do have our
work changed. We do not want to shirk it, but there is no longer any
rubber in our district and my people are being killed for nothing. What
am I to do?’ I suggested that the inspector appointed by the king would
no doubt come to Baringa and he could appeal to him. He asked how long it
would be before the inspector would come. I said perhaps two months; upon
which he cried out, ‘Two months! It will be too late then. We shall all
be killed before that time.’ And after we had left him we could hear him
crying after us, ‘We shall all be killed! We shall all be killed!’”