THE CONGO ATROCITIES.

Colonist, Volume XLIX, Issue 12014, 15 August 1907, Page 4

THE CONGO ATROCITIES.

Marli Twain has written a book bearing on the Congo atrooities. It is entitled "King Leopold's Soliloquy," which should make his Majesty of Belgium feel; some of the loathing he has earned from his fellow-men. —-Mark Twain is unsparing in his denunciations of the part the United States played in acquiescing in King Leopold's supreme rule of the Congo. "Pirate flag! Let them call it so," he makes the King say of the Americans in his soliloquy. "Perhaps it is. All the same, they were the first to salute it. They tell it all how I am wiping a nation of friendless creatures, out of existence by every form of murder for my private pocket's sake, and brw eyerygshilling I get costs a rape, a mutilation, or a life. Yes, certainly I was a shade to clever for the Yankees. It hurts; it gravels them. They can't get over it. Their vain Republic is the only democracy in history that has lent its power and influence to the establishing of an absolute monarchy." But when the humorist is moved ton his greatest indignation by the recital of some particularly abominable crime he sneaks for himself. "We see this

awful King," he says," this pitiless and blood-drenched King, this money crazy King towering towards the sky in a world-solitude of sordid crime, unfellowed and apart from the human race, sole butcner for personal gain findable in all his caste, ancient or modern, Pagan or Christian, proper and legitimate target for the scorn of the lowest and thebighost, and the execrations of all who hold in cold esteem the oppressor and the coward; and — well, it is a mystery, but we do not wish to look; for he is a King, and it hurts us, it troubles us, by ancient and inherited instinct it shames us to see a King degraded to this aspect, and we shrink from hearing the particulars of how it happened. We shudder and turn away when welcome upon them in print.'