“A pasteboard autocrat; a despot out of date;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: