THE CONGO QUESTION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 12145, 12 November 1908, Page 4

THE CONGO QUESTION.

It will rstartle a good many worthy but uninquiring persons to learn upon the authority of a well informed writer in the "Contemporary Review," that the proposed transfer of the Congo Territory from the King of the Belgians to the Belgian .'Government', involves thopurchase and sale of -the land and natural wealth of 15,500,000 Africans, inhabiting an area of 9C0,000 square miles of tropical country. Leopold 11., who is understood to Tiave amassed a large fortune by the exploitation of the vast forests of rubber/under a system of what is really slave labour, is to receive 2,000,000 sterling, besides certain reserves; and if the transaction should bo sanctioned by the Powers which were represented at the Berlin and Brussels conferences, it would have the effect, observed Mr Morel, the wriitef of the article above referred to, of debarring tho r atives fronl the land of which they arc the rightful owners, and of perpetuating their liability to that forced labour, in fleeing from which they, have for years past exposed themselves to be '•hunted in tho forests..by soldiers, and brought in bound by the neck like criminals. ' Qn behalf of Great Britain, Sir Edward Grey insists upon the native population obtaining the lands of which they are the legitimate occupants, together w3th freedom to trade in them; but the Belgian Parliament appears to be obstinately bent upon keeping the negroes as they are, and the principle att stake is declared by Mr Morel to admit of no compromise, because "the battle of the Congo is the battle of all negro Africa; that is to say, of what jnuste ever remain the black man's country. A turning point m the modern history of the dark continent has been reached. The issue is fairly and squarely before the world. It must, it will, it shall be, decided in favour of justice and against the cosmopolitan crowd of slavers incarnated at present-in the person of'the Belgian King; even if the struggle takes twice as long as it has taken to clear the '-'Congo Frea SUte" off the map of

Africa