MARK TWAIN ON KING LEOPOLD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 17 July 1907, Page 4

MARK TWAIN ON KING LEOPOLD.

1-TKIOrs SATIRE "Some then l may bo who will object to the hi'iilthv lint brutal frankness of the language 'used. Tlie cult of kid gloves ami rosewalcr is not the cult of Mark Twain."

With this sentence Mr E. I). Morel prefaces "Kiuj! Leopold's Soliloquy.'' an exceedingly forceful iniiictineiil of King Leopold'of ischium, as the sovereign of the Congo Free State, written hy the great American humorist. Mark Twain imagines that King Leopolil is rending the reports of missionaries mid consuls on tha awful Congo atrocities, and so.iloqiiising as he reads. The following are some of the relloctions lie puts into the King's mouth: •■Oh. well, let them blackguard me if they like; it is a deep satisfaction to nie'to remember that 1 was a shade too smart for that nation that thinks itself .-o smart. Yes, I certainly did bunco a Yankee as those people phrase it. l'irate Hag? Let them cad it so -perlups it is. All the same, they were the first to salute it.

"They ted it all: how I am wiping a nation of friendless creatures out of existence by every form of murder, for niv private pocket's sake, and how every shilling I get costs a rape, a mutilation, or a life. Hut thev never say. although they know it, tliat'l have labored in the cause of re.igiou at Hie same time and |alt the time, and have sent missionaries i there (of n ■convenient stripe,' as they phrase it), to teach them the error of their ways.

"They'hunt through all biography for inv match, working Attila. Torqnemada, (ienghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, and the rest" of that crowd for all they arc worth, and evilly exulting when they cannot find it. Then they examine the historical earthquakes and cyclones am! blizzards and cataclysms and voUanic eruptions. Verdict: None of them 'in If with me. At last they really do hit it (as they think), and they close their labors with conceding—reluctantly—that I have one match in history, but only one—the Flood. This is intemperate. "The bizarre things they can imagine, with me for au inspiration! One Englishman offers to give me the odds of three to one, and bet me anything I like, up to 20,000 guineas, that for 2,000.000 years I am going to be the most conspicuous foreigner in hell. The man is so beside himself with anger that he does not perceive that the idea is foolish."