CANNIBAL CHRISTENDOM.

CIVILISATION IN CONGO-LAND.

The Congo Independent State was placed under the sovereignty of Leopold II., King of the Belgians, on the basis of a personal union with Belgium, and by a will that King has bequeathed to Belgium all his sovereign rights in the State. King Leopold II. is the head of a number of trading organisations, and it has been said that he looks to the Congo Independent State for a considerable personal income. How the State is managed by the Belgian Government, or, rather, by the Governor-General, who represents King Leopold and administers the territory of the State under the King's orders, may be gathered from the following summary, as published in a recent issue of the "Review of Reviews":—
Mr. Fox Bourne's book, "Civilisation in Congoland," is
Sickening Reading.
Its proper title is "The Cannibal State on the Congo." Its contents are enough to make one despair of humanity. Sir H. Gilzean Reid and Mr. Demetrius Boulger would have us believe that King Leopold has converted the Congo valley into a terrestrial Paradise. Mr. Morel and Mr. Fox Bourne maintain that he has converted it into a Hell; and, after making all allowances, it is difficult to resist the conviction that they have proved their case. Amid the conflict of testimony certain facts stand out quite clearly. The fact is that the Congo State was brought into being expressly for the avowed objects of (1) opening up Central Africa to free trade for all European nations; and (2) for civilising and improving the condition of the natives. The second fact, about which there is no dispute, is that the Congo State has established a system of exclusive monopolies, which have brought enormous profits to capitalists. It is further alleged, but this is not undisputed, that these profits have been made, for the most part, by a system of
 Organised Cannibalism,
the like of which exists nowhere else in the world. It is hardly necessary to advance testimony in support of the force of these facts. It will suffice to quote, not the sanctimonious protestations of King Leopold, but the emphatic declaration of Prince Bismarck, when, in 1885, he brought the Berlin (Congo) Conference to a close by summing up the resolutions of the Powers there represented in the following explicit terms:—"The resolutions that we are on the point of sanctioning," he said, "secure to the commerce of all nations free access to the centre of the African Continent. The guarantees which will be provided for freedom of trade in the Congo Basin are of a nature to offer to the commerce and the industry of all nations the conditions most favourable to their development and security. By another series of regulations you have shown your solicitude for the moral and material well-being of the native population, and there is ground for hoping that these principles, adopted in wise moderation, will bear fruit and help to introduce to them the benefits of civilisation." (Parliamentary Papers, Africa, No. 4, "1885, pp. 65-66.) Seven years later, in 1892, Major Parminter, an Englishman who had been one of the pioneers of the Congo, reported as follows as to the way in which the unanimous resolutions of the Berlin Conference had been carried out in Africa :— "The application of the new decrees of the Government, signifies this—that the State considers as its private property the whole of the Congo Basin, excepting the sites of the natives' villages and gardens. It decrees that all the products of this immense region are its private property, and it monopolises the trade in them. As regards the primitive proprietors—the native tribes—they are dispossessed by a simple circular; permission is graciously granted to them to collect such products, but only on condition that they bring them for sale to the State for whatever the latter may be pleased to give them. As regards alien traders, they are prohibited in all this territory from trading with the natives."—"Civilisation in Congoland," p. 134. Again, he writes :—"Commerce, which, by the decision of the Berlin Conference, was to enjoy complete liberty, finds itself in the following position : It pays import duties varying from 6 to 30 per cent. on all articles imported. It pays export duties on ivory from 10 to 25 per cent., according to whence the ivory comes. It pays threepence a pound-weight export duty on rubber. It pays all manner of heavy taxes on carriers, on labourers, on clerks. on lands, on buildings, on enclosures, on steamers, boats, canoes, and on the fire wood used for steamers, etc. Even then it is only permitted to do business to a small extent. It is prohibited from trading in the goods in which its chief competitor—the State itself—trades; and it has to pay to this very same competitor the heavy duties aforementioned." The way in which the
Expressed Will of Europe was Set at Defiance
was by the invention of the theory that everything worth having in the Congo State was the private property of the State. Monopolies were then granted to joint stock companies which earned their dividends by the free use of the chicotte and the cannibal. The chicotte is the instrument of torture used to persuade the miserable native that it is to his interest to work for the white man. The cannibal is the agent employed to punish the unfortunate native when he revolts against the chicotte. First as to the chicotte:— "The 'chicotte' of raw hippo hide, especially a new one, trimmed like a cork screw, with edges like knife-blades, and as hard as wood," Glave explained, in terms all the more notable because his own views as to corporal punishment can not be regarded as over-lenient, "is a terrible weapon, and a few blows bring blood; not more than twenty-five blows should be given unless the offence is very serious. Though we persuade ourselves that the African's skin is very tough, it needs an extraordinary constitution to withstand the terrible punishment of one hundred blows; generally the victim is in a state of insensibility after twenty-five or thirty blows. At the first blow he yells abominably, then he quiets down, and is a more groaning, quivering body till the operation is over, when the culprit stumbles away, often with gashes which will endure a lifetime. It is bad enough the flogging of men, but far worse is this punishment when inflicted on women and children. Small boys of ten or twelve, with excitable, hot-tempered masters, are often most harshly treated."—(Mr. E. J. Glave, an Englishman, in "Century Magazine," vol. 55, pp. 701-3.). The reason why the chicotte was used was to compel the natives of labour for the benefit of the Belgian exploiteurs. The chicotte, however, is only brought into requisition after the natives have been broken in. The process of breaking them in is more summary, and involves the employment of the soldier. Before explaining the modus operandi, it may be well to state how the Belgians obtain the force necessary to enable them to eat up whole populations. For in the Congo State in 1902 the total number of white men of all nationalities was only 2,346. Of these, 1,465 were Belgians. who held almost all the important military and civil positions. As the native population of Congoland numbers some twenty or, thirty millions, it is curious to discover how such a handful of whites can
Reduce the Black Millions to Virtual Slavery.
The trick is not very difficult. A white officer with a few armed men at his back summons the chiefs in a district to a palaver. Each chief is asked, in return for so many pocket-handkerchiefs, to furnish a certain number of slaves. If he agrees, the slaves of the black chief become the slaves of the white officer, who subjects them to military discipline, arms them with rifles, and uses them to punish any chief who is slow in supplying his quantum of slaves. Refusal to furnish the stipulated contingent is treated as an act of war. The villages of the recalcitrants are burnt down, their stores looted, their gardens destroyed, and the natives themselves shot down until they have had enough of it and submit to escape extermination. Their submission is accepted on condition that they supply double the contingent of slaves first asked for. The slaves thus handed over are first called Liberos, then put in irons until their bondage can be riveted with military discipline in the nearest camp. As every district officer receives £2 head money for every slave thus enrolled in the force publique, the State found little difficulty in organising
A Standing Army of Slaves,
nominally free, but absolutely at the disposal of the State, which now numbers 15,000 men. To a native African this force publique is the irresistible power which renders impossible any resistance to the Belgian vampire which is draining the life-blood of Congoland.
Having obtained this force publique, and supplemented it by enrolling thousands of cannibal tribes as an irregular native militia, the State and the mononpolist companies are ready for action. What takes place has been minutely described by many witnesses, among whom Mr. Sjoblam, a Swedish missionary, is one of the best. 'When the apparatus of coercion is ready for action, the natives are summoned to the headquarters and ordered to bring in a certain minimum quantity of india-rubber every Sunday. If they refuse, some of them are shot to encourage the others, and the rest are driven into the bush to collect the rubber. If they do not return, or if the tale of rubber baskets falls short, war is declared. Says Mr. Sjoblom:—
"The soldiers are sent in different directions. The people in the towns are attacked, and when they are running away into the forest, and try to hide themselves and save their lives, they are found out by the soldiers. Then their gardens of rice are destroyed, and their supplies taken. Their plantains are cut down while they are young and not in fruit, and often their huts are burnt, and, of course, everything of value is taken. Within my own knowledge, forty-five villages were altogether burnt down."—"Civilisation in Congoland" (p. 211).
Where the natives submit in despair, every male native is driven into the marshes every morning by savages armed with rifles, who are established as absolute despots in the town. If any native man stays behind, he is shot at sight. During the day the sentinel does as he pleases with the women and the property of the poor wretches who are toiling to collect the rubber. If at the week end the full quantity of rubber is not forthcoming, the defaulters are in some cases chicotted, in others they are killed, and their right hands are hacked off, smoke dried, and sent down with the rubber baskets to explain why the weekly output was short. "We counted," said Mr. Sjoblom, on one occasion, "eighteen right hands smoked, and, from the size of the hands, we could judge that they belonged to men, women, and children." On another occasion, 160 hands were brought in. Sometimes the hands were
Hewn from Living Bodies
At Lake Matumba, in 1895, says Mr. Sioblom, "the natives could not get far enough for their indiarubber. Two or three days after a fight a dead mother was found, with two of her children. The mother was shot, and the right hand was taken off. On one side was the elder child, also shot, and the right hand also taken off. On the other side was the younger child, with the right hand cut off; but the child, still living, was resting against the dead mother's breast. This dark picture was seen by four other missionaries. I myself saw the child. The natives had begun to cut off the left hand, but, seeing their mistake, they left it, and cut off the right hand instead." (Ib., p. 215). Mr. Moray, a former agent of the Societe Anversoise, thus describes another typical scene of the civilising methods of the Congo State:— "We were a party of thirty, under Van Eycken, who sent us into a village to as certain if the natives were collecting rubber, and, if not, to murder all, men, women, and children. We found the natives sitting peaceably. We asked what they were doing. They were unable to reply, thereupon we fell upon them, and killed them all without mercy. An hour later we were joined by Van Eycken, and told him what we had done. He answered, "It is well, but you have not done enough." Thereupon he ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades, also —after unmentionable mutilations—to hang the women and children on the palisades in the form of a cross." This horrible picture of civilisation in Congoland would not be complete without some reference to the
Veritable Cannibalism
which the Congo State is spreading all over the country which the King was to reclaim for civilisation and humanity. The camp-followers and friendlies, the irregular levies, who are armed and employed by the State to supplement the force publique, have introduced cannibalism into regions where it was before unknown; "Races who until lately do not seem to have been cannibals have learned to eat human flesh." Cannibalism in West Africa is no mere ceremonial. It is part of the recognised commissariat of the Congo forces. Dr. Hinde, in his book on "The Fall of the Congo Arabs," states that after the burning down of the town of Nyangwe, in 1893, "every one of the cannibals had at least one body to eat. All the meat was cooked and smoke-dried, and formed provisions for the whole of his force and for all the camp-followers for many days afterwards. In the night following a battle or the storming of a town, these human wolves disposed of all the dead, leaving nothing even for the jackals, and thus saved us, no doubt, from many an epidemic." "The Fall of the Congo Arabs" (pp 156-.7). After this description of
Christian Cannibalism by Proxy,
it is hardly necessary to fill in pitiful details of the cruel slavery enforced upon old women and women with children, beaten and ill-used by their savage guards under the eyes of white officers. What is the result? Mr. Grogan—by no means a sentimentalist, but an Englishman with small patience for Exeter Hall—travelled through Congoland in 1899. He writes:— "And I saw myself that a country apparently well populated and responsive to just treatment in Lugard's time, it now practically a howling wilderness; the scattered inhabitants, living almost without cultivation in the marshes, thickets, and reeds, madly fleeing even from their own shadows. Chaos, hopeless, abysmal chaos, from Mweru to the Nile; in the south, tales of cruelty of undoubted veracity, but which I could not repeat without actual investigation on the spot; on Tanganyika, absolute impotence, revolted Askaris ranging at their own sweet will; on Kivu, a hideous wave of cannibalism ranging unchecked through the land; while in the north, the very white men, who should be keeping peace where chaos now reigns supreme, are spending thousands in making of peace a chaos of their own. I have no hesitation in condemning the whole State as a vampire growth, intended to suck the country dry, and to provide a happy hunting-ground for a pack of unprincipled outcasts and untutored scoundrels. The few sound men in the country are powerless to stem the tide of oppression."— From "The Cape to Cairo" (p. 227). Add to this the picture drawn by the Frenchman, M. de Mandat-Grancey and the Belgian, Senator Picard: The Frenchman declares that—"the race which has survived three centuries of the slave trade will be destroyed by fifty years of philanthropy. During the past ten years our good friends, the Belgians, have destroyed infinitely more negroes than the Portuguese slave trade disposed of in two or three centuries. The country was much more peopled than it is now. The thousands of skeletons that border the old caravan route are those of the former inhabitants of the ruined villages."—"Au Congo" (pp. 7, 175). The evidence of Senator Picard is to the same effect:— "The inhabitants have fled. They have burnt their huts. The terrors caused by the memory of inhuman floggings, of massacres, of rapes and abductions, haunt their poor brains, and they go as fugitives to seek shelter in the recesses of the hospitable bush or across the frontiers."—"En Congolie" (pp. 95-97). Mr. Fox Bourne, in summing up his
Terrible Indictment,
declares that "the old forms of slavery have been succeeded or supplemented by new, more grinding and hateful to the victims, and for the satisfaction of white instead of black oppression." Mr. Morel's summing up is as follows :—"This accursed domaine prive, and all the evils it has brought with it, cannot last for ever. Like all such 'Negations of God,' it will perish. But what will remain behind for Europe, when the Congo State has passed away, to deal with? A vast region, peopled by fierce Bantu races, with an undying hatred of the white planted in their breasts: a great army of cannibal levies, drilled in the science of forest warfare, perfected in the usage of modern weapons of destruction— savages whose one lesson learned from contact with European 'civilisation,' has been improvement in the art of killing their neighbours—disciplined in the science of slaughter; eager to seize upon the first opportunity which presents itself of turning their weapons against their temporary masters."—"West African Problems" (p. 351). What must be done? Mr. Fox Bourne says: "It is for the other signatories to the Berlin and Brussels General Acts to decide whether they are willing that the
Systematic and Deliberate Perversion of Policy
they so strongly insisted upon in 1884 and again in 1889 shall be further developed and rendered permanent." Sir H. Gilzean Reid informs us that the highest legal authorities have been instructed to bring the question between the Congo State and its assailants to the test of "that highest of all tribunals—a British Court of Justice." We are very glad to hear it.

West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Thursday 16 April 1903, page 6