THE CRIMES OF THE CONGO.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIV, Issue 10315, 30 November 1909, Page 4

THE CRIMES OF THE CONGO.

[By Electric Telegraph— Copyright.]

(Per Press Association.) Received November 30, at 8.25 a.m. •London, November 29. The Times' special correspondent at Brussels quotes-MM.. M'Kattier, Vandervelde,; and other Belgian leaders in the long agitation. against the old -Congo.' system, as>_ declaring that the Leopoldian regime is really dead. They claim that the reforms- introduced by M. Renkin, Minister for the Colonies, are on the- whole reasonable, satisfactory/ and, above all, practical. ' They say, a.lso; that already there has been a vast improvement in the. spirit of the whole Congo administration. [M. Vandervelde, one of the foremost Belgian lawyers, and a member of the Belgian House of Representatives, volunteered to go out to Leopoldville to defend two missionaries charged with "calumnious denunciation" of the Kasai Rubber Company, of* which the Belgian Government holds half the stock, and his advocacy was successful. He has for years been the leading critic of Belgian misrule. ' In England Dr Arthur Conan Doyle is the latest advocate of the persecuted people of the Congo. He has published r a book called ' 'The Crime of th'e Congo," which is sold for sixpence, giving him no pecuniary benefits. Sir A. Conan Doyle states that he tells "the whole story from the beginnings—from the formation of the Congo Free State down to the last missionary's "letter, and the latest consular report." "It is a very 'terrible story —a horrible story. It made me quite ill to write it. I could not sleep at night for thinking of the vile things perpetrated there." He judges it worse than Turkish misrule in Bulgaria in the 'seventies and .n Armenia in the 'nineties, because "Belgium's criminal misrule on the Congo" has "been cold-blooded and actuated by the lowest and most sordid motive of gain."]/ .