LIFE ON THE CONGO

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2098, 5 June 1907, Page 1

LIFE ON THE CONGO

“A NIGHTAIARE OF BRUTAL

DESPOTISAI.”

The Rev- Charles Padfield, of tlie Congo Balolo Alission, who has returned from the Upper Congo, lias made the following interesting statement to a representative of Reuter’s

Agency:— “I have been three and a half years on the Congo, mainly in what are known as tho Abir and Lulanga territories, which were visited two years ago by tlie Congo Commission of Enquiry.

The Congo Administration lias now taken tlie territories of the Abir Company under direct control, and if you must know wliat in a practical sense this means, I will answer that question in tlie language of a native chief to me: “If you call a leopard something else, is he something else?”

“Ordinary commercial methods are unknown, and tlie native ‘sentry,’ or regular soldier of tlio ‘Fore e Publiquo’ takes tlie place of the trader in,more favored parts of Africa. Some of my- colleagues found villages living under the shadow the ‘sentry’ rifle. .Their reports were forwarded, I believe, to the Foreign Office. Owing to various causes I .have been unable to travel to any extent lately; but heavy fighting ill the Upper Lopori and Upper Alaringa has been admittedly taking place for several moutlis past , . ' .

“I do not like to think of what is going on there. Just before I left a whole crop of rumors reached Bari ngu. Of course, 1 am not in a position to guarantee their accuracy, but from what wo have scon ourselves at Baringa before the advent of the- Commission, thero is but too much reason to believe in their substantial truth. Fighting and massacre, prisoners shot, misery and out-_ rage—that is tho burden of the story.’ A pathetic message reached me by devious ways from a long distance inland as 1 was proparing to leave, “Why do not the missionaries come up into, our country to save us from being killed for rubber?’

“When sheer robbery is the basis ol everything, what can the outlook

be? ‘Atrocities’ are only one aspect ol tho question. The system itself is simply diabolical, resting, as it does, upon forcible appropriation of everything.

“Oil my return, home I made a point oi' visiting Dunla, in the Gorman Camoroons, and New Calabar, in the Niger Protectorate, to see for myself how the administration works in thoso colonies, and more than over did I realise, as 1 saw and noted the extraordinary . and profound difference between dbe principles of rule in those places, that everything on tlio Congf) is a nightmaro of brutal despotism and cruelty.” The interview with Mr. Padficld was submitted by Reuter to a highlyplaced official in Brussels, who gave the statements a total denial.