The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, JULY 8, 1907. THE CURSE OF AFRICA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 162, 9 July 1907, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, JULY 8, 1907. THE CURSE OF AFRICA.

for the cmune that tacks assistance, for the wrong that steeds rciitionce, for the future in the distance. Ami the good that toe cut do.

No one who has taken, the trouble to familiarise himself with the copious literature of the subject will "be surprised at the indignation that Belgian rule on the Congo has aroused in England and throughout the pivilised world. The Eev. E. J. Campbell, the -well-known pastor of the City Temple, in appealing to the conscience of humanity against King Leopold, is following a peculiarly apt precedent, and certainly since Dr. Parker made his famous onslaught on "Abdul the Damned," no sovereign in the world has bo fully earned the execration end horror of his fellow creatures as the King of the Belgians. Within the last eighteen months there has been a lull in the world-wide agitation against the Belgian government of the Congo; for Leopold himself had appointed a commission to investigate the charges against his officials, and it was felt that, in justice to Belgium, events should wait' upon the report oi that commission. Now that the report has been published it is admitted, even by those who were prejudiced in Leopold's favour, that the case against him is even blacker than before. Sir Harry . Johnston, the famous British, explorer and administrator, who has always had a good word for the work of foreigners in Africa, has said that the Belgian report is a sufficient i justification . ior.., the charges brought against Leopold and his methods of .government by Burroughs and -Morel, Fox Bourne, Grogan, Casement, and » score of travellers and missionaries who have seen the Congo and its horrors with their own eyes. Yet in the face of this absolutely damning evidence Leopold persists in defying the public opinion oi the world with an effrontery that, as Sir H. Johnston says, seems "indurated against truth, against shame, against the terror of an immortality of bad renown."

What, then, has Leopold of Belgium done to merit the furious denunciationa. that have been levelled against him from every quarter of the civilised world? Briefly, he has stolen the Congo Free State—a country as large as Europe, if we omit Russia and Spain; he has seized its products and revenues; and to gain wealth for himself, he has connived at or tolerated the most barbarous cruelties, the most unspeakable iniquities that have ever been inflicted by a professedly civilised race upon the savages subjected to their rule- Leopold has no personal i»ia.fm upon a foot of the Congo country. He was appointed by the European Powers as Protector of the Congo Free State; and his self-imposed duties were to put down the slave trade and to introduce the blessings of civilisation into Central Africa. In all his public speeches from 1884 to 1891, Leopold declared repeatedly that he had absolutely no personal interest involved in this great work; and that neither he nor his country were impelled by any thought of profit. On this understanding, and on conditions that all nations alike would be permitted to share in the Congo trade, Leopold was set up to administer the Congo, as guardian of the rights of the natives. Within the last sixteen years he has not only tried to monopolise the whole country for his own profit; he has not only annexed an area of 800,000 square miles as a private estate; he has not only barred out all possible rivals from competing in the Congo trade; but he has enforced his demands on the natives by what the eloquent pastor of the City Temple has rightly termed a "diabolical system of bloody persecution." To compel the natives to bring in rubber and ivory to the official agencies, King Leopold's Belgian administrators have armed and drilled hordes of cannibals, and turned them loose on the country till the whole Congo Free State is fast being converted into a "howling wilderness," where torture,, outrage and murder revel unchecked, and anarchy reigns supreme.

Generalities of this kind axe apt to sound like rhetorical exaggerations. But it is difficult to give any adequate idea of the cruelties systematically practised under the eyes of Europeans on the Congo, because they are largely indescribable and unspeakable. "Red Rubber," the last work of Mr. E. D. Morel, ■who has laboured so long to open the, ■world's eyes to these iniquities, con-

tains far more than enough to justify all that we have said; while the official reports of Gaeeul Casement and of the Belgian Commission corroborate the

charges of MoreL Fox Bourne, and Birrroughs in every particular. To give a comparatively trivial instance: Xatives who failed to bring in the required supply of rubber were systematically mutilated; their hands were cut off and carried to the officials in charge as a sign that the soldiers had done their duty. When the Belgian Commission sat to take evidence, the members were positively sickened by the tales of horror —men murdered, women outraged, babies cut in pieces. Witnesses came in scores, one without a foot, another lacking a hand, bearing Wigs with many branches each standing for a dead man. Floggings, rape, murder, mutilation, cannibalism, the story went on, till one of the Commissioners protested that they were simply wading through a river of blood. One missionary brought evidence of 200 murders from five small villages in two days; and when the Commission asked if he had more evidence to lead, he replied that he could go on for months. The Chairman answered that they had heard enough; and not even Leopold's strenuous efforts to emasculate the report have availed to conceal these horrors from the eyes of the world.

The crowning wickedness of it all is that Leopold has drawn, and still continues to "draw, immense wealth from this land reeking with blood and haunted by horrors, in-every conceivable or unimagined form. The notorious A.BJ.R. company has a capital of £9280, on which it has paid in dividends £720,000 in 6 years. Leopold has received £335,000 for his share of the plunder in this one venture. In another "rubber trust" Leopold has shares worth. £1,244,200. From the "Private Domain of the Crown" his profits have been nearly £300,000 a year for the past ten years. And this is the man who undertook "the civilisation of the Congo" professing that the lustre of his philanthropy -was undinuned by any thought of sordid gain! The Powers of Europe have looked on for years inactive; bat -even if there is no international conscience to be stirred by pity or remorse they may be driven to intervene by the practical considerations that often appeal successfully where nobler motives fail. For the future of European settlement in Africa is a matter of serious concern to the Powers.; and the state of things produced by Belgian misrule is fast becoming intolerable. Sir Harry Johnston has ■warned thte Powers that "a. movement is already begun and is spreading fast which will unite .the negroes against the white races, a movement which .will prematurely stamp oufcthe beginnings of the new civilisation we are trying -to implant, and against which, except so far as the actual coast line is concerned, the resources of men and money which Europe can put into the field will be powerless." In view bf all this, the Powers, for. self-interest if not for shame, may yet be induced to' .act in combination for. the-purpose of bringing to an end the reign of darkness and horror that Leopold of Belgium has set up in Central Africa.