The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 1906 CONGO AND OTHER ATROCITIES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3, 18 January 1906, Page 17

The New Zealand TABLET

THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 1906 CONGO AND OTHER ATROCITIES

To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace. Leo. XIII, to the N.Z. Tablet

fOU may ' break ' a general or impeach a Minister. But it is ' dour work ' to impeach a nation. And this— judging by newspaper reports before vs — seems to be the task set for himself by one JMr. Smith or Brown or Jones ' of London,' who is touring New Zealand with a magic lantern and a gory story. The impeached natlion is Belgium. The impeachment covers its administration of the Congo Free State. And the impeachcr is a moneyraising missionary agent who thrills audiences in small halls with a grand assortment of atrodities at so much per thrilL

It is, perhaps, undeniable that 'serious oppression andl even grave cruelty were upon natives by unworthy or brutal officials in the raw young days of the Congo Free State. A document before us, signed by long-established white residents, charges as much to the period from 18>7i9 to 1884, when the great English explorer, Sir Henry M. Stanley, founded the new negro State and directed its early fortunes, under the auspices of the King of the Belgians. Later days may also have witnessed much isolated Violence and wrong, especially among the hinterlands of the young Bantu State. It is largely a matter of men — and of opportunities., There is, th<anks to Christian teaching and civilisation, a vast deal of cultivated good in human nature. But there is also, in a sectioh of it, a world •of unregen- . crate brute passion and impulse; that shows itself not merely aniidst the throes of 'a" French- or Russian revolution, but may even turn"' a harmless festive celebration' into the frantic pandemoftium that has given to the English language the" new word "« mafficking;' There is

more than & slender foundation for the saying of a noted writer that, were it not for the tremendous power of modern law, we should witness in our day a recrudescence of the red barbarities of the Coliseum. When the ' low white,' with power in his hands and the moral restraints of rejigian thrown aside, gets loose among unwarhkte native races, beyond the reach of the King's writ, humanity may prepare to shed her tears. Witness the brutalities practised in recent years upon the hapless, aborigines of Western Australia, and more lately still (as the official investigator testified early in 11)05) upon slant-eyed Eastern serfs 'in the Nourse Deep, Witwatersrand, and other mines in the Transvaal, if such things come to pass in south latitude twenty-five, in white men's countries, with the British flag Hying over them, may they not also happen under the equator, in a black man's land that is rising painfully towards Chflistian civilisation over its old dead or dying savage self of twenty years agone ?

There is nothing inherently improbable in all this. But an impeachment of an 'individual or of a nation must have something more solid to stand upon than the mere absence of inherent improbabilities. It must stand, if at all, on tact and evidence duty attested— on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And here it is that we have a grievance against tho man with the magic lantern and the bagful of atrocities. He manipulates his facts as well as his lantern. And the manipulation covers what he says as well as what he withholds. . His case against Belgium is marked by gross exaggeration, by frequent misstatement, and by the wholesale suppression ol facts that are vital to a proper understanding of the history o£ the ' Congo atrocities. 1 He may hold that the end he has in view juslufies the use of such means. We do not. We therefore proceed to fill in some details that, if supplied by him, might possibly have diminished the thrills and the threepenny pieces, but would have given a fairer presentment of the facts of the anti-Congo agitation. The 1 atrocity ' campaign was begun and carried out chiefly by what is known as the Congo Reform Society. One of its founders was Mr. Holt, \ ice-President of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. It was (as Mr. Fox Bourne admits) backed and in part financed by Liverpool merchants and shippers ; and the ' Glasgow Observer ' of December 23, 1904, describes it— accurately, we think— as a conspiracy to secure the profitable trade of the thirty million souls that form the population of the Congo. Liverpool merchants and shippers waxed fat and prosperous upon the negro slave. From Liverpool merchants and shippers came the last, longest, and most factious opposition to the abolition of traffic in human flesh. It is, no doubt, a touching sight to see their sons' and grandsons weeping over the sorrows of the kith and kin of the Congolese who were steeped to the eyebrows in the nameless horrors of ' the middle passage ' on board Liverpool slave-ships. But we think of sundry things as we see the big tears falling through the jewelled fingers. We ask ourselves, for instance : Was it a mere coincidence that the Congo Reform Society was launched at a time when trade; — and especially the shipping trade— was flat .and stale and unprofitable ? Was it likewise a mere coincidence that the moneyed men of Liverpool started their ' Reform ' only when they had before their eyes the financial success of a similar agitation for ' the women and children ' and ' dear humanity's sake ' in the Transvaal ? We are a virtuous people and, alack ! we know it. But we are given to get our virtue in fits. The Rand millionaires brought on one of the spasms. And in due course virtue had its own reward— in mines that return twenty millions sterling per annum, and Chinese slaves galore to work them for the price of an old song. But perhaps it was sheer softness of heart that moved the Liverpool merchants and shippers to invest their inherited slave-trade shekels in the,interests of the negro under another flag 3 Mayhap. But it sets one wondering, all the more, that they had no shekels for such an investment when white children were dying like flics in insanitary concentration camps in South Africa ; or when black men and women in Queensland and in Jamaica (British West Indies) were made the victims of admitted atrocities that were worse, we ween, than the doubtful or more than doubtful ones that our itinerant entertainer lays to the chargei of the Congo administration.

There^are many things in the history and proceedings of the Congo Reform Society that need strenuous explanation. And- the man With the lantern owes, but has not given, it. The Congo Reformers were not as skilful engineers as were the nabobs of the Rand. In the first place, they had a harder nut to crack. For the independence of the little Dutch Republics was protected by, no international guarantee. The position of the

Congo Free (State was secured by the international compacts of 1885, 1894, and 1895. Moreover, the Reformers blundered splendidly. It was, for instance, scarcely tactful (to put the matter very mildly) for the Reform Society to offer tin writing to Mr. Bcnedetti, a former Congo official, bribes amounting to some fiVe thousand pounds to give evidence against the Congo Free State. The whole of the sordid story is before us as we write, and the publication of the documents by Mr. Bcnedetti was one of the most sensational exposures of the methods of l reform ' adopted by those philanthropic merchants and shippers and their commercial friends. That was in 11)04. In the same year one Captain Burrowes wrote a book of ' atrocities.' He offered to sell the manuscript to the Congo Government,' hoping that they would purchase it in order to prevent its publication. He was met with a blank refusal. Then he published the book. He was injudicious enough to name names. His indiscretion resulted in his being adjudged by the Court of King's Bench (London) to have maliciously libelled sundry officials of the Congo Free State. The missionaries were more discreet. So, we presume, are the men who travel about raising money on the Congo atrocities at so much per atrocity.

The Congo Reform Society also blundered through its secretary. In his unguarded hours he wrote a book. It was (sajs the ' Glasgow Observer ' in the course of a destructive article) ' packed with falsehoods and suppressions ot truth.' It was riddled by hostile criticism. On pages 49 and 225 of the book there appeared photo-process blocks of chained, and mutilated natives. 'La \ ente bur le Congo ' (October-November, 1904) declaied that these pictures were ' faked.' For reasons best known to himself, the secretary could never be (induced, despite repeated public challenges in the British press, to produce the negatives. The Society also blundered in the selection of its witnesses. One of these was the runaway convict Tilkens. But the bulk of their testimony was supplied by missionaries, who entered with their usual zest into what, until quite recently, the newspaper devoted to the Interests of the Congo Free State characterised as a ' campaign of calumny.' One of these was not ashamed to publish, in the ' Missionary Herald of the Baptist Missionary Society ' for February, 1903, the scandalous methods of calumny adopted by him against the Catholic Church in the Congo. We have read non-Catholic missionary reports a-plenty. We have perused the works of Dr. Needham Cust, Marshall, and others. We have got upon the track of missionary tales in a score of different countries, and thef results of our investigations have appeared from time to time in these pages and in the columns of the secular and the non-Catholic religious press. We have before us the terrible anthology of nonCatholic missionary inveracity that was compressed— chiefly from the official reports of missionary societies —into the ' 'National Review ' for December, 1897. And we are unable to come to any other conclusion than that which was reached by Rev. H. H. Henson, an Anglican divine : that uncorroborated missionaries' statements can scarcely be considered evidence at all. We might enlarge greatly upon this sad phase of a bad business. But let this suffice.

Something more remains. A commission of three foremost jurists— one a Belgian, one a Swiss, the other an Italian — were appointed some time ago by King Leopold to investigate the internal affairs of the Congo. Not one of the three Commissioners could be accused of the slightest leaning towards the Catholic body. On the contrary, their animus and lack of true judicial temper was shown in a deplorable way during the course of their inquiries. A large body of experienced Catholic missionaries were deslirous of giving evidence before the Commission. Not one of them, and not one Catholic missionary of any kind, was allowed to testify. Worse still, some of them were condemned unheard, and on the hearsay testimony of Protestant missionaries and other hostile witnesses. The united protest of the Catholic missionaries is. as to its substance before us. Protestant missionaries were encouraged to give evidence— even hearsay evidence— freely. As to the alleged mutilation of negroes : this barbarous native mode of punishment has, no doubt, often been inflicted by dusky Bantu chiefs in the Congo. But in their report, the members of the Congo Commissiion state that no case of such mutilation has been proved against any white man, or against any native acting under the orders of any white man. And thus the whole frippery of the lantern-man falls to the ground.

A fair-minded man could scarcely have failed to remind his readers of the Avonders of progress that the

Belgians can claim to have effected in so vast a territory in a mere quarter of a century. They have lifted the people out of savagery ; they have practically extinguished slave-traffic, cannibalism, human sacrifices, and tribal feuds ; and out of the most unpromising materials they have created order, taught thrift, and laid the foundations jof a jpromising civilisation. What a contrast to the fate that is so fast overtaking the black man in Australia and the red man in North America ! And what a contrast with the adjoining British territory of Lagos ! The Congo Free State is the only prohibition country in the world. The importation, manufacture, and sale 1 of alcohol is forbidden throughout its vast area. In the British territory of Lagos, according to Mr. C. Diamond, the duty collected on alcohol rose from £121,000 in 1896 to £185,000 in 1902-3. The rumbottle is helping to civilise the Lagos negro as it did the Australian black. By all means let us, for sweet humanity's sak<e, strike at cruelty and oppression and wrong wherever they show their demon heads. But falsehood, exaggeration, and suppression of truth serve no good cause. And there is neither patriotism nor charity 'in playing the part of Rabelais' witches and having eyes focussed only to see beyond our own garden fence. Let us keep our own housefront clean of mire, and then we can, without danger of rebuke, point to the dead leaves on the doorstep of our neighbor.