GERMAN ULTIMATUM

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 32, 6 August 1914, Page 7

GERMAN ULTIMATUM

BELGIAN CONGO AN IMPLIED THREAT SUSPECTED., (Received August 6, 8.65 a.m.)

. • LONDON, 4th August. Germany's ultimatum promised Belgium, if her wishes were granted, to maintain the independence of Belgium and her possessions. The Daily Mail sees in this an implied threat to seize the Congo in the ©vent of a refusal. i w y [Belgiam Congo, formerly called the Congo Free State, developed out of the Association Internationale formed by Leopold 11., King of the Belgians. It was recognised as a state by the European Powers in 1885. At first, under tke sovereignty of Leopold, as an individual, it was by him made over, with all his sovereign rights, to Belgium in 1890, and Belgium, after hesitation, annexed it in 1908. The colony comprises a small strip of territory north of the Congo Biver, from its mouth to Manyanga ; thence it is bounded on the north • by the Congo (with French Congo to the northwards) to the Mobangi, thence to the north-east watershed of the Congo basin, eastward to Lake Albert, and southwards to near Lake Bangweolo, westwards to the sources °of the Kassai Eiver, and thence by a zigzag to the Kwango, and thence to the Congo at Nokki, the south bank of the river from that point being Portuguese. The Colony thus borders on French Equatorial Africa, Anglo-Egyptian Soudan, the Uganda Protectorate, German East Africa, Northern Rhodesia, and /Portuguese West Africa. The west shore of Lake Tanganyika belongs to Belgian Congo. - % It is a purely tropical country, producing ivory, palm oil, palm kernels, and rndiarubber. It was the scene of much of the alleged cruelty of labour administration under Leopold's adminsitration.]