The Congo

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4, 25 January 1906, Page 2

The Congo

The Belgian authorities have ' put up their hands ' and have got some ' dirty lefts ' and ' straight-jobbing rights ' on the corpus of the association that has gliven itself the sham designation of the Congo ' Reform '

Society. As stated in our last issue, these ' Reformers ' have been for some time carrying, on a campaign of calumny about Belgian ' atrocities ' in the Congo, in the interests of Liverpool shippers and missionary traders. ' The answer of the Belgian authorities to Brutish critics is,' says a Liverpool contemporary, at the close/ of a summary of the document, 'to say that their hostility springs from commercial interests, religious prejudice, and causes of that kind. They have, they affirm, suppressed cannibalism, mutilation, human sacrifices, and the slave trade. They have suppressed another trade, not less deadly— lhe liquor traffic. And they retort : Why not respond to the cry of Odonka, the Gold Coast chief, who, in a letter which has appeared in the " Daily News," says that the people are being poisoned by elephant gin imported by thousands of cases every month ? ' The late Sir Henry M. Stanley made no secret of the low opinion which he entertained of the veracity of the ' Reformers,' and during the past year the great explorer's wife convicted them, in the columns of the ' Glasgow Observer ' ol May 15, on two counts of peculiarly .brazen-faced pre\ arication. It related to two interviews with her husband, on Congo matters. At both of these she was present, and of one of them (the vital one) a newspaper record was published. What with the other damaging facts related or hinted at in our last issue, it seems that truth and Congo ' reform ' have about the same affinity as oil and vinegar.