KING LEOPOLD.

Otago Witness, Issue 2762, 20 February 1907, Page 72

KING LEOPOLD.

(By Joseph Hatton, in "Cigarette Papers.")

— In Sheep's Clothing. —

It is not possible, I believe, to libel a king; he is too far above an ordinary mortal for what is called legal redress. In the old days, if he were your own. king, of course, he could have your head and have done with it. All the more ought one to be sure of one's premises when attacking a monarch, even when you owe him no allegiance. One owes a certain amount of respect and consideration to a foreign monarch's subjects. I have received a good deal of polite attention from the Belgian people ; so has many another Englishman. There is no pleasanter little city than Brussels — hardly any other that is so full of historical interest for a Britisher. But I dont think I ever heard any good thing said about the King. Many reputable

' and patriotic Belgians shrugged their shoulders at him when the preliminaries of the Congo Free State began to be { talked about. Then all of a sudden the stories of his "vagaries," to use the mildest phrase, seem for the time being to have 1 been dropped, and those who knew him most intimately began to say that perhaps after all he was not as black as he had been painted. "On paper" his "expressed intentions" regarding Africa were admirable. He was, indeed, to be Providence to the Congo natives, a philanthropist, 1 putting his money, his work, his influence I into the region that British, American, 1 and French enterprise had revealed to a 1 wondering world. — Behind a Mask. — This nobly ambitious King had by shrewd investments in the Suez Canal shares made a considerable fortune. What did a King want with a large addition to his banking account, when he had everything in the world a man could desire? He had also come into money through the death of his son. He desired to put ' this and his Canal purse to some great worthy purpose. He said so publicly. Before Stanley discovered the Congo the philanthropically-minded King had begun what he professed to be the regeneration of Negro Africa by a kind of International Board. Missionary and charitable England hailed Leopold as the man destined to raise the natives of Equatorial Africa to a nation, free from Arab tyranny and European alcoholism. The Baroness Bur-dett-Coutts, Earl Grey, Cardinal Manning, Sir William Mackinnon, and Sir 1 Henry Verney gave him their approval and support. They derided any attempt on the part of Great Britain to import base commercial ambitions into the political settlement of Equatorial Africa. And so it came about that the King of the Belgians got this splendid country as a kind of free gift, to govern, however, under certain guarantees for the benefit of the natives and in the interest of civilisation. j — ' ' Sardonic Indifference. " — j It is not strange that, as time went on, under these circumstances it became almost impossible to believe that this Christian king, this philanthropist, this sublime monarch of generosity had betrayed his trust — not only betrayed it, but had plunged the natives into a deeper abyss of misery and slavery than that from which he was to raise them ; that the money he had invested in the country was at usury of blood and chains. Sir Harry Johnston, one of the last of the courageous and noble band of Central African pioneers, in a preface to Mr Morell's book, " Red Hubber," which I mentioned last week, says in reference to the recent report of "The KingSovereign's Commission" (which the King refuses to publish) that " the direct utterances of the King of the Belgians on the subject of his work on the Congo are deplorable in their sardonic indifference to the real condition of the natives of the great African dominion which Europe has entrusted to his charge." — Shameless. — The grim stories of cruelty, of maiming, and murder practised by certain of ihe King's officers to force up a continual supply of ivory and rubber to increase the king's revenue are fully established. They make the flesh creep. They are infamous beyond description. Against these horrors ' ' there is only jne conscience," says Sir Harry Johnston, with honest, outspoken indignation, "to appeal to, that of King Leopold, a conscience which seems indurated against evidence, against shame, against the terror of an immortality of bad renown." I knew Stanley well, and several of his officers. He was enthusiastic at the prospect of the Congo under King Leopold, but he died, poor fellow, greatly ' disillusioned. One of the first things : Leopold did was to get rid of the English officers and to harass and discredit the missionaries in whom Stanley had so ! much faith, and from whom he received t great practical assistance. Cecil Rhodes , was a hard man when policy 6eem«d to demand severity, but he was a great man, ) and had a big heart. Leopold invited him to an audience to discuss African ail'airs. The interview lasted an hour. Rlodes. came out of it pale ard worried, an unusual condition of embarrassment for him. An intimate friend in attendance, who had waited for him, looked at him inquiringly. " I have spent an hour with the devil !" said Rhodes, sinking into a chair. — 'How Long, 0 Lord! How Long?" — Of what passed between Rhodes and Leopold there is not that I know of any record ; but Leopold had evidently been brutally frank as to his policy of financing Central Africa. "I have spent an hour I with the devil !" No more terrific indictment can be imagined, and when the full 1 r.tory of Leopold's Congo Free State comes to be published in cold print, the world will stand aghast at it. There is hardly a tribe left that is not ground down into the most abject slavery, many maimed by way of punishment for not bringing in what the collectors regard as a sufficient supply of the rubber juice. Some have had a hand cut off, others have been shot ; it is common to make a native eat his contribution of rubber if insufficient in the official estimation. It is difficult to conceive that Europeans could sink to so low, sordid, and brutal a level of cruel tyranny ; but they were paid by commission — murder by commission ! Yet there are natives of both the Upper and Lower Congo who had, and a few may still have, the makings of a fine civilised race. Originally, when Stanley and Johnston were on. the congo, native industries existed that might easily have been developed into European importance — ironware, brassware, pottery, baskets. Some of their art work, their decorations of spear and "knife handles, their gourds, are most exquisitely designed. While I write I have several beautiful examples on my desk. Says Mr Morell, "If you want to see the high level of art to which some of the Congo races can rise, pay a visit to the entrance hall oi the

Constitutional Club, London,, -and look aft the collection of beautiful, ipeirs, battle-^ axes, and knives hanging on. the walls.'*! Under the Congo "Free" State (God sa.v». the mark) all this has vanished. "You? shall see these men now, in whom theirf very manhood seems 6tamped out, drag- v ging themselves back from the bush at thet day's end after a weary search through! partly submerged forest, knee-deep, waistdeep, in foetid swamp, for the accursed! juice of the rubber vine, which they must* find and tap in all seasons, in aJI weathers^ whether the sap is rising or falling, day after day the year round, "until death in. some form— by violence, exhaustion, exposure, or disease, or mere -weariness and! sorrow— closes the term of an everlasting— to them — mysterious visitation." And so> the story goes on, still more awful; thi* extract is but a preliminary to records thai? make one wonder if there are regions im which the fiends, have been let lcose as Ferdinand, in "The Tempest," imagined when he exclaimed, "Hell is empty, an<* all the devils are here!"