Clemens, Samuel Langhome
King Leopold's soliloguy
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KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
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"IT IS I"
"Leopold II is the absolute
Master of the whole of the in-
ternal and external activity of
the Independent State of the
Congo. The organization '^of
justice, the army, the industrial
and commercial regimes are established freely by himself
He would say, and with greater accuracy than did Louis XIV.
' The State, it is I.'" Prof. F. Cattier, Brussels University
" Let us repeat after so many others what has become
a platitude, the success of the African work is the work
a sole directing will, without being hampered by the hesital
tion of timorous politicians, carried out under his sole respo:
sibility, — intelligent, thought-
ful, conscious of the perils
and the advantages, dis-
counting with an admirable
prescience the great results of
a;near future." M. Alfred Pos-
kine in " Bilans Congolais."
ne
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" A memorial for the perpetuation ot my name." —
KING LEOPOLD'S
SOLILOQUY
A DEFENSE OF HIS CONGO RULE
BY
MARK TWAIN
THE P. R. WARREN CO.
BOSTON, MASS.
1905
Copyright, 1905
By Samuel L. Clemens
2>T
King Leopold's Soliloquy
{^ThrotiS down pamphlets which he has been
reading. Excitedly combs his flowing spread of
whiskers with his fingers; pounds the table with
his fists; lets off brisk volleys of unsanctified Ian-
guage at brief intervals, repentantly drooping
his head, between volleys, and kissing the Louis
XI crucifix hanging from his neck, accompany-
ing the kisses with mumbled apologies; presently
rises, flushed and perspiring, and walks the
floor, gesticulating'l
! ! ! ! If I had them by
the throat! [Hastily kisses the crucifix, and
mumbles] In these twenty years I have spent
millions to keep the press of the two hemi-
spheres quiet, and still these leaks keep on oc-
curring. I have spent other millions on religion
and art, and what do I get for it? Nothing.
Not a compliment. These generosities are
studiedly ignored, in print. In print I get noth-
ing but slanders — and slanders again — and still
slanders, and slanders on top of slanders 1 Grant
them true, what of it? They are slanders all the
same, when uttered against a king.
Miscreants — they are telling everything/
Oh, everything: how I went pilgriming among
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
the Powers in tears, with my mouth full of Bible
and my pelt oozing piety at every pore, and im-
plored them to place the vast and rich and pop-
ulous Congo Free State in trust in my hands as
their agent, so that I might root out slavery and
stop the slave raids, and lift up those twenty-five
millions of gentle and harmless blacks out of
darkness into light, the light of our blessed Re-
deemer, the light that streams from his holy
Word, the light that makes glorious our noble
civilization — lift them up and dry their tears
and fill their bruised hearts with joy and grati-
tude — lift them up and make them comprehend
that they were no longer outcasts and forsaken,
but our very brothers in Christ; how America
and thirteen great European states wept in sym-
pathy with me, and were persuaded; how their
representatives met in convention in Berlin and
made me Head Foreman and Superintendent of
the Congo State, and drafted out my powers and
limitations, carefully guarding the persons and
liberties and properties of the natives against
hurt and harm; forbidding whisky traffic and
gun traffic; providing courts of justice; making
commerce free and fetterless to the merchants
and traders of all nations, and welcoming and
safe-guarding all missionaries of all creeds and
denominations. They have told how I planned
and prepared my establishment and selected my
horde of officials — "pals" and "pimps" of mine,
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
"unspeakable Belgians" every one — and hoisted
my flag, and "took in" a President of the United
States, and got him to be the first to recognize it
and salute it. Oh, well, let them blackguard me
if they like; it is a deep satisfaction to me to
remember that I was a shade too smart for
that nation that thinks itself so
smart. Yes, I certainly did bunco
a Yankee — as those people
phrase it. Pirate flag?
Let them call it so —
perhaps it is. All the
same, they were the
first to salute it.
These meddlesome
American mission-
aries ! these frank Brit-
ish consuls ! these blab-
bing Belgian-born traitor officials ! — those tire-
some parrots are always talking, always telling.
They have told how for twenty years I have
ruled the Congo State not as a trustee of the
Powers, an agent, a subordinate, a fore-
man, but as a sovereign — sovereign over a
fruitful domain four times as large as the
German Empire — sovereign absolute, irres-
ponsible, above all law; trampling the
Berlin-made Congo charter under foot; bar-
ring out all foreign traders but myself; re-
stricting commerce to myself, through conces-
"They were the first to
salute it."
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
sionaires who are my creatures and confederates;
seizing and holding the State as my personal
property, the whole of its vast revenues as my
private "swag" — mine, solely mine — claiming
and holding its millions of people as my private
property, my serfs, my slaves; their labor mine,
with or without wage; the food they raise not
their property but mine; the rubber, the ivory
and all the other riches of the land mine — mine
solely — and gathered for me by the men, the
women and the little children under compulsion
of lash and bullet, fire, starvation, mutilation and
the halter.
These pests! — it is as I say, they have kept
back nothing! They have revealed these and
yet other details which shame should have kept
them silent about, since they were exposures of a
king, a sacred personage and immune from re-
proach, by right of his selection and appoint-
ment to his great office by God himself; a king
whose acts cannot be criticized without blas-
phemy, since God has observed them from the
beginning and has manifested no dissatisfaction
with them, nor shown disapproval of them, nor
hampered nor interrupted them in any way. By
this sign I recognize his approval of what I have
done; his cordial and glad approval, I am sure
I may say. Blest, crowned, beatified with this
great reward, this golden reward, this unspeak-
ably precious reward, why should I care for
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KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
men's cursings and revllings of me? [fFith a
sudden outburst of feeling^ May they roast a
million seons in — [Catches his breath and effu-
sively kisses the crucifix; sorrowfully murmurs,
"I shall get myself damned yet, with these indis-
cretions of speech. "~\
Yes, they go on telling everything, these chat-
terers ! They tell how I levy incredibly burden-
some taxes upon the natives — taxes which are a
pure theft; taxes which they must satisfy by
gathering rubber under hard and constantly
harder conditions, and by raising and furnishing
food supplies gratis — and it all comes out that,
when they fall short of their tasks through hun-
ger, sickness, despair, and ceaseless and exhaust-
ing labor without rest, and forsake their homes
and flee to the woods to escape punishment, my
black soldiers, drawn from unfriendly tribes,
and instigated and directed by my Belgians, hunt
them down and butcher them and burn their
villages — reserving some of the girls. They
tell it all: how I am wiping a nation of friend-
less creatures out of existence by every form of
murder, for my private pocket's sake."^ut they
never say, although they know it, that I have
labored in the cause of religion at the same time
and all the time, and have sent missionaries there
(of a "convenient stripe," as they phrase it), to
teach them the error of their ways and bring
them to Him who is all mercy and love, and who
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
is the sleepless guardian and friend of all who
suffer. They tell only what is against me, they
will not tell what is in my favor.
They tell how England required of me a
Commission of Inquiry into Congo atrocities,
and how, to quiet that meddling country, with its
disagreeable Congo Reform Association, made
up of earls and bishops and John Morleys and
university grandees and other dudes, more inter-
ested in other people's business than in their own,
I appointed it. Did it stop their mouths? No,
they merely pointed out that it was a commis-
sion composed wholly of my "Congo butchers,"
"the very men whose acts were to be inquired
into." They said it was equivalent to appoint-
ing a commission of wolves to inquire into dep-
redations committed upon a sheepfold. Noth-
ing can satisfy a cursed Englishman!*
And are the fault-finders frank, with my pri-
•Recent information is to the effect that the resident mission-
aries found the commission as a whole apparently interested to
promote reforms. One of its members was a leading Congo official,
another an official of the government in Belgium, the third a Swiss
jurist. The commission's report will reach the public only through
the king, and will be whatever he consents to make it; it is not
yet forthcoming, though six months have passed since the investigation
was made. There is, however, abundant evidence that horrible abuses
were found and conceded, the testimony of missionaries, which had
been scouted by the king's defenders, being amply vindicated. One
who was present at one hearing of the commission writes: "Men of
stone would be moved by the stories that are being unfolded as the
commission probes into the awful history of rubber collection." Cer-
tain reforms were ordered in the one section visited, but the latest
word is that after the commission's departure, conditions soon be-
came worse than before its coming. Very well, then, the king has in-
vestigated himself. One stage is achieved. The next one in order
is the investigation of conditions in the Congo State by the Powers
responsible for the creation of the Congo State. The United States
is one of these. Such an investigation is advocated by Lyman
Abbott, Henry Van Dyke, David Starr Jordan and other prominent
citizens in a petition to Congress. — M. T.
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"They tell only what is against me." — Page 8.
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
vate character? They could not be more so if
I were a plebeian, a peasant, a mechanic. They
remind the world that from the earliest days my
house has been chapel and brothel combined,
and both industries working full time; that I
practised cruelties upon my queen and my
daughters, and supplemented them with daily
shame and humiliations; that, when my queen
lay in the happy refuge of her coffin, and a
daughter implored me on her knees to let her
look for the last time upon her mother's face, I
refused; and that, three years ago, not being
satisfied with the stolen spoils of a whole alien
nation, I robbed my own child of her property
and appeared by proxy in court, a spectacle to
the civilized world, to defend the act and com-
plete the crime. It is as I have said : they are un-
fair, unjust; they will resurrect and give new
currency to such things as those, or to any other
things that count against me, but they will not
mention any act of mine that is in my favor. I
have spent more money on art than any other
monarch of my time, and they know it. Do
they speak of it, do they tell about it? No,
they do not. They prefer to work up what they
call "ghastly statistics" into offensive kindergar-
ten object lessons, whose purpose is to make sen-
timental people shudder, and prejudice them
against me. They remark that "if the innocent
blood shed in the Congo State by King Leopold
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
were put in buckets and the buckets placed side
by side, the line would stretch 2,000 miles; if
the skeletons of his ten millions of starved and
butchered dead could rise up and march In single
file, it would take them seven months and four
days to pass a given point; if compacted together
in a body, they would occupy more ground than
St. Louis covers, World's Fair and all; If they
should all clap their bony hands at once, the
grisly crash would be heard at a distance of — "
Damnation, it makes me tired! And they do
similar miracles with the money I have distilled
from that blood and put into my pocket. They
pile it into Egyptian pyramids; they carpet Sa-
haras with it; they spread it across the sky, and
the shadow it casts makes twilight in the earth.
And the tears I have caused, the hearts I have
broken — oh, nothing can persuade them to let
them alone 1
{^Meditative pause'\ Well ... no matter, I
did beat the Yankees, anyway ! there's comfort in
that. [Reads with mocking smile, the Presi-
dent's Order of Recognition of April 22, 18841
" . . . the government of the United States announces
its sympathy with and approval of the humane and benev-
olent purposes of (my Congo scheme), and will order the
officers of the United States, both on land and sea, to rec-
ognize its flag as the flag of a friendly government."
Possibly the Yankees would like to take that
back, now, but they will find that my agents are
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KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
not over there in America for nothing. But
there is no danger; neither nations nor govern-
ments can afford to confess a blunder. [fFith
a contented smile, begins to read from "Report
by Rev. W . M. Morrison, American mission-
ary in the Congo Free State"}
"I furnish herewith some of the many atrocious incidents
which have come under my own personal observation; they
reveal the organixed system of plunder and outrage which has
been perpetrated and is now being carried on in that unfortu-
nate country by King Leopold of Belgium. I say King
Leopold, because he and he alone is now responsible, since
he is the absolute sovereign. He styles himself such. When
our government in 1884 laid the foundation of the Congo
Free State, by recognizing its flag, little did it know that this
concern, parading under the guise of philantliropy, was really
King Leopold of Belgium, one of the shrewdest, most heart-
less and most conscienceless rulers that ever sat on a throne.
This is apart from his known corrupt morals, which have
made his name and his family a byword in two continents.
Our government would most certainly not have recognized
that flag had it known that' it was really King Leopold indi-
vidually who" was asking for recognition ; had it known that
it was setting up in the heart of Africa an absolute monarchy;
had it known that, having put down African slavery in our
own country at great cost of blood and money, it was estab-
lishing a worse form of slavery right in Africa."
[fFith evil joy] Yes, I certainly was a shade
too clever for the Yankees. It hurts ; it gravels
them. They can't get over it! Puts a shame
upon them in another way, too, and a graver
II
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
way; for they never can rid their records of the
reproachful fact that their vain Republic, self-
appointed Champion and Promoter of the Liber-
ties of the World, is the only democracy in his-
tory that has lent its power and influence to the
establishing of an absolute monarchy!
{^Contemplating, with an unfriendly eye, a
stately pile of pamphlets^ Blister the meddle-
some missionaries I They write tons of these
things. They seem to be always around, always
spying, always eye-witness-
ing the happenings; and
everything they see they
commit to paper. They
are always prowling from
place to place; the natives
consider them their only
friends; they go to them
with their sorrows; they
show them their scars and
their wounds, inflicted by
my soldier police; they hold up the stumps of
their arms and lament because their hands have
been chopped off, as punishment for not bring-
ing in enough rubber, and as proof to be laid be-
fore my officers that the required punishment
was well and truly carried out. One of these
missionaries saw eighty-one of these hands dry-
ing over a fire for transmission to my officials —
and of course he must go and set it down and
'They go to them
with their sorrows"
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
print it. They travel and travel, they spy and
spy! And nothing is too trivial for them to
print. [ Takes up a pamphlet. Reads a passage
from Report of a "Journey made in July, August
and September, jgoj, by Rev. A. E. Scri-
vener, a British missionary"'}
** .... Soon we began talking, and without any en-
couragement on my part the natives began the tales I had
become so accustomed to. They were living in peace and
quietness when the white men came in from the lake with all
sorts of requests to do this and that, and they thought it
meant slavery. So they attempted to keep the white men
out of their country but without avail. The rifles were too
much for them. So they submitted and made up their minds
to do the best they could under the altered circumstances.
First came the command to build houses for the soldiers, and
this was done without a murmur. Then they had to feed
the soldiers and all the men and women — hangers on — who
accompanied them. Then they were told to bring in rubber.
This was quite a new thing for them to do. There was
rubber in the forest several days away from their home, but
that it was worth anything was news to them. A small
reward was offered and a rush was made for the rubber.
* What strange white men, to give us cloth and beads for
the sap of a wild vine.* They rejoiced in what they thought
their good fortune. But soon the reward was reduced imtil
at last they were told to bring in the rubber for nothing.
To this they tried to demur ; but to their great surprise several
were shot by the soldiers, and the rest were told, with many
curses and blows, to go at once or more would be killed.
Terrified, they began to prepare their food for the fortnight's
absence from the village which the collection of rubber en-
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KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
tailed. The soldiers discovered them sitting about. 'What,
not gone yet ?' Bang ! bang ! bang ! and down fell one and
another, dead, in the midst of wives and companions.
There is a terrible wail and an attempt made to prepare the
dead for burial, but this is not allowed. All must go at once
to the forest. Without food? Yes, without food. And
off the poor wretches had to go without even their tinder
boxes to make fires. Many died in the forests of hunger
and exposure, and still more from the rifles of the ferocious
soldiers in charge of the post. In spite of all their efforts the
amount fell off and more and more were killed. I was
shown around the place, and the sites of former big chiefs'
settlements were pointed out. A careful estimate made the
population of, say, seven years ago, to be 2,000 people in
and about the post, within a radius of, say, a quarter of a
mile. All told, they would not muster 200 now, and there
is so much sadness and gloom about them that they are fast
decreasing."
'* We stayed there all day on Monday and had many talks
with the people. On the Sunday some of the boys had told
me of some bones which they had seen, so on the Monday
I asked to be shown these bones. Lying about on the grass,
within a few yards of the house I was occupying, were
numbers of human skulls, bones, in some cases complete
skeletons. I counted thirty-six skulls, and saw many sets o*
bones from which the skulls were missing. I called one o^
the men and asked the meaning of it. 'When the rubber
palaver began,' said he, 'the soldiers shot so many we
grew tired of burying, and very often we were not
allowed to bury ; and so just dragged the bodies out into the
grass and left them. There are hundreds all around if you
would like to see them.' But I had seen more than enough,
and was sickened by the stories that came from men and
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KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
"Some bones which
they had seen"
tor thankfulness.
women alike of
the awful time
they had passed through.
The Bulgarian atrocities
might be considered as
mildness itself when compared
with what was done here. How
the people submitted I don't know,
and even now I wonder as I think of
their patience. That some of them
managed to run away is some cause
I stayed there two days and the one
thing that impressed itself upon me was the collection of
rubber. I saw long files of men come in, as at Bongo, with
their little baskets under their arms ; saw them paid their milk
tin flail of salt, and the two yards of calico flung to the head-
men ; saw their trembling timidity, and in &ct a great deal
that all went to prove the state of terrorism that exists and
the virtual slavery in which the people are held."
That is their way; they spy and spy, and run
into print with every foolish trifle. And that
British consul, Mr. Casement, is just like them.
He gets hold of a diary which had been kept by
IS
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
one of my government officers, and, although it
is a private diary and intended for no eye but its
owner's, Mr. Casement is so lacking in delicacy
and refinement as to print passages from it.
[Reads a passage from the diary'\
" Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges
are given him. He must bring back all not used, and for every
one used he must bring back a right hand. M. P. told me
that sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting;
they then cut off a hand from a living man. As to the
extent to which this is carried on, he informed me that in
six months the State on the Mambogo River had used 6,000
cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or
mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the people have
told me repeatedly that the soldiers kill the children with the
butt of their guns."
When the subtle consul thinks silence will be
more effective than words, he employs it. Here
he leaves it to be recognized that a thousand
killings and mutilations a month is a large out-
put for so small a region as the Mambogo River
concession, silently indicating the dimensions of
it by accompanying his report with a map of the
prodigious Congo State, in which there is not
room for so small an object as that river. That
silence is intended to say, "If it is a thousand a
month in this little corner, imagine the output of
the whole vast State 1" A gentleman would not
descend to these furtivenesses.
Now as to the mutilations. You can't head
16
^
//////. ■ -^fn!:<;V '//'
'//j//'fninfni^. :mm,\\\i\\i
FOOT ANO HANO OF C^ILQ OiSMEMBERED Sv SOLDIERS, 8R0UG-T
TO MrSSIOKARlES BY DAZfO FAThEB. FROM PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT
BARINGA, CONGO STATE, MAY 13, 1904. SEE MEMORIAL TO
CONGRESS, JAN., 190S
♦* Imagine the output of the whole vast State! " Page i6.
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
off a Congo critic and make him stay headed-
off; he dodges, and straightway comes back, at
you from another direction. They are full of
slippery arts. When the mutilations (severing
hands, unsexing men, etc. ) began to stir Europe,
we hit upon the idea of excusing them with a
retort which we judged would knock them dizzy
on that subject for good and all, and leave them
nothing more to say; to wit, we boldly laid the
custom on the natives, and said we did not invent
it, but only followed it. Did it knock them
dizzy? did it shut their mouths? Not for an
hour. They dodged, and came straight back at
us with the remark that "if a Christian king can
perceive a saving moral difference between in-
venting bloody barbarities, and imitating them
from savages, for charity's sake let him get what
comfort he can out of his confession!"
It is most amazing, the way that that consul
acts — that spy, that busy-body, [Takes up
pamphlet "Treatment of Women and Children
in the Congo State; what Mr. Casement Saw
in IQOS"^ Hardly two years ago! Intrud-
ing that date upon the public was a piece of
cold malice. It was intended to weaken the
force of my press syndicate's assurances to the
public that my severities in the Congo ceased,
and ceased utterly, years and years ago. This
man is fond of trifles — revels in them, gloats
over them, pets them, fondles them, sets them
17
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
all down. One doesn't need to drowse through
his monotonous report to see that; the mere sub-
headings of its chapters prove it. [Reads^
"Two hundred and forty persons, men, women and children ^
compelled to supply government with one ton of carefully
prepared foodstuffs per week, receiving in remuneration, all
told, the princely sum of i 5s. lod! "
Very well, it was liberal. It was not much
short of a penny a week for each nigger. It
suits this consul to belittle it, yet he knows very
well that I could have had both the food and the
labor for nothing. I can prove it by a thousand
instances. \Keads\
" Expedition against a village behindhand in its (com-
pulsory) supplies; result, slaughter of sixteen persons; among
them three women and a boy of five years. Ten carried
off, to be prisoners till ransomed ; among them a child, who
died during the march."
But he is careful not to explain that we are
obliged to resort to ransom to collect debts,
where the people have nothing to pay with.
Families that escape to the woods sell some of
their members into slavery and thus provide the
ransom. He knows that I would stop this if I
could find a less objectionable way to collect
their debts. . . . Mm — here is some more of
the consul's delicacy ! He reports a conversation
he had with some natives :
Q. "How do you know it was the wi>ite men them-
18
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
selves who ordered these cruel things to be done to you?
These things must have been done without the white man's
knowledge by the black soldiers."
A. <♦ The white men told their soldiers : * You only kill
women; you cannot kill men. You must prove that you
kill men.' So then the soldiers when they killed us" (here
he stopped and hesitated and then pointing to ... he said:)
**then they . . . and took them to the white men, who
said : * It is true, you have killed men.'' "
Q. **You say this is true ? Were many of you so treated
after being shot ? ' *
All [shouting out] : "Nkoto ! Nkoto !" ("Very many !
Very many !")
There was no doubt that these people were not inventing.
Their vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement, were
not simulated."
Of course the critic had to divulge that; he
has no self-respect. All his kind reproach me,
although they know quite well that I took no
pleasure in punishing the men in that particular
way, but only did it as a warning to other delin-
quents. Ordinary punishments are no good with
ignorant savages; they make no impression.
[Reads more sub-heads]
**Deva8ted region; population reduced from 40,000 to
8,000."
He does not take the trouble to say how it
happened. He is fertile in concealments. He
hopes his readers and his Congo reformers,
of the Lord-Aberdeen-Norbury-John-Morley-Sir
19
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
Gilbert-Parker stripe, will think they were all
killed. They were not. The great majority of
them escaped. They fled to the bush with their
families because of the rubber raids, and it was
there they died of hunger. Could we help that?
One of my sorrowing critics observes: "Other
Christian rulers tax their people, but furnish
schools, courts of law, roads, light, water and
protection to life and limb in return; King Leo-
pold taxes his stolen nation, but provides nothing
in return but hunger, terror, grief, shame, cap-
tivity, mutilation and massacre." That is their
style ! I furnish "nothing" ! I send the gospel
to the survivors; these censure-mongers know
it, but they would rather have their tongues cut
out than mention it. I have several times re-
quired my raiders to give the dying an oppor-
tunity to kiss the sacred emblem; and if they
obeyed me I have without doubt been the humble
•means of saving many souls. None of my tra-
ducers have had the fairness to mention this; but
let it pass ; there is One who has not overlooked
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
it, and that Is my solace, that is my consolation.
[Puts down the Report, takes up a pamphlet,
glances along the middle of /"/]
This is where the "death-trap" comes in.
Meddlesome missionary spying around — Rev.
W. H. Sheppard. Talks with a black raider of
mine after a raid; cozens him into giving away
some particulars. The raider remarks:
** I demanded 30 slaves from this side of the stream and 30
from the other side; 2 points of ivory, 2,500 balls of rubber,
1 3 goats, I o fowls and 6 dogs, some com chumy, etc.
' How did the fight come up ? ' I asked.
* I sent for all their chiefs, sub-chiefs, men and women, to
come on a certain day, saying that I was going to finish all
the palaver. When they entered these small gates (the walls
being made of fences brought from other villages, the high
native ones) I demanded all my pay or I would kill them ;
so they refused to pay me, and I ordered the fence to be
closed so they couldn't run away ; then we killed them here
inside the fence. The panels of the fence fell down and
some escaped.'
* How many did you kill ?' I asked.
* We killed plenty, will you see some of them ? *
That was just what I wanted.
He said : • I think we have killed between eighty and ninety,
and those in the other villages I don't know, I did not go
oat but sent my people.'
He and I walked out on the plain just near the camp.
There were three dead bodies with the flesh carved off from
the waist down.
* Why are they carved so, only leaving the bones ? ' I asked.
« My people ate them,' he answered promptly. He then
21
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
explained, ♦ The men who have young children do not eat
people, but all the rest ate them.' On the left was a big
man, shot in the back and without a head. (All these
corpses were nude.)
* Where is the man's head ? ' I asked.
* Oh, they made a bowl of the forehead to rub up tobacco
and diamba in.'
We continued to walk and examine until late in the after-
noon, and counted forty-one bodies. The rest had been
eaten up by the people.
On returning to the camp, we crossed a young woman,
shot in the back of the head, one hand was cut away. I
asked why, and Mulunba N'Cusa explained that they always
cut off the right hand to give to the State on their return.
* Can you not show me some of the hands ? ' I asked.
So he conducted us to a framework of sticks, under which
was burning a slow fire, and there they were, the right hands
— I counted them, eighty-one in all.
There were not less than sixty women (Bena Pianga)
prisoners. I saw them.
We all say that we have as fully as possible investigated
the whole outrage, and find it was a plan previously made to
get all the stuff" possible and to catch and kill the poor people
in the ' death-trap.' "
Another detail, as we see! — cannibalism.
They report cases of it with a most offensive fre-
quency. My traducers do not forget to remark
that, inasmuch as I am absolute and with a
word can prevent in the Congo anything I
choose to prevent, then whatsoever is done there
by my permission is my act, my personal act;
that / do it; that the hand of my agent is as truly
IIULUNB* OlEF Of CAI.M3AL THIBE IIE*K LUEBO, CONGO STATE
FIGURE REPBODUCEO FBOU PVOTOGBAFH
**MuIunba N'Cusa explained." — Page 22.
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
my hand as if it were attached to my own arm;
and so they picture me in my robes of state, with
my crown on my head, munching human flesh,
saying grace, mumbling thanks to Him from
whom all good things come. Dear, dear, when
the soft-hearts get hold of a thing like that mis-
sionary's contribution they quite lose their tran-
quility over it They speak out profanely and
reproach Heaven for allowing such a fiend to
live. Meaning me. They think it irregular.
They go shuddering around, brooding over the
reduction of that Congo population from 25,
000,000 to 15,000,000 in the twenty years of
my administration; then they burst out and call
me "the King with Ten Million Murders on his
Soul." They call me a "record." The most of
them do not stop with charging merely the 10,-
000,000 against me. No, they reflect that but
for me the population, by natural increase, would
now be 30,000,000, so they charge another 5,-
000,000 against me and make my total death-
harvest 15,000,000. They remark that the man
who killed the goose that laid the golden egg was
responsible for the eggs she would subsequently
have laid if she had been let alone. Oh, yes,
they call me a "record." They remark that
twice in a generation, in India, the Great Famine
destroys 2,000,000 out of a population of
320,000,000, and the whole world holds up its
hands in pity and horror ; then they fall to won-
23
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
dering where the world would find room for its
emotions if I had a chance to trade places with
the Great Famine for twenty years! The idea
fires their fancy, and they go on and imagine the
Famine coming in state at the end of the twenty
years and prostrating itself before me, saying:
"Teach me. Lord, I perceive that I am but an
apprentice." And next they imagine Death
coming, with his scythe and hour-glass, and beg-
ging me to marry his daughter and reorganize
his plant and run the business. For the whole
world, you see! By this time their diseased
minds are under full steam, and they get down
their books and expand their labors, with me for
text. They hunt through all biography for my
match, working Attila, Torquemada, Ghengis
Khan, Ivan the Terrible, and the rest of that
crowd for all they are worth, and evilly exulting
when they cannot find it. Then they examine
the historical earthquakes and cyclones and bliz-
zards and cataclysms and volcanic eruptions:
verdict, none of them "in it" with me. At last
they do really 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.
But they are always that, when they think of
me. They can no more keep quiet when my
name is mentioned than can a glass of water con-
trol its feelings with a seidlitz powder in its
»4
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
bowels. The bizarre things they can imagine,
with me for an 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. Foolish and
unbusinesslike: you see, there could be no win-
ner; both of us would be losers, on account of
the loss of interest on the stakes; at four or five
per cent, compounded, this would amount to —
I do not know how much, exactly, but, by the
time the term was up and the bet payable, a per-
son could buy hell itself with the accumulation.
Another madman wants to construct a memo-
rial for the perpetuation of my name, out of my
15,000,000 skulls and skeletons, and is full of
vindictive enthusiasm over his strange project.
He has it all ciphered out and drawn to scale.
Out of the skulls he will build a combined monu-
ment and mausoleum to me which shall exactly
duplicate the Great Pyramid of Cheops, whose
base covers thirteen acres, and whose apex is
451 feet above ground. He desires to stuff me
and stand me up in the sky on that apex, robed
and crowned, with my "pirate flag" in one hand
and a butcher-knife and pendant handcuffs in the
other. He will build the pyramid in the centre
of a depopulated tract, a brooding solitude cov-
25
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
ered with weeds and the mouldering ruins of
burned villages, where the spirits of the starved
and murdered dead will voice their laments for-
ever in the whispers of the wandering winds.
Radiating from the pyramid, like the spokes of a
wheel, there are to be forty grand avenues qf
approach, each thirty-five miles long, and each
fenced on both sides by skulless skeletons stand-
ing a yard and a half apart and festooned to-
gether in line by short chains stretching from
wrist to wrist and attached to tried and true old
handcuffs stamped with my private trade-mark,
a crucifix and butcher-knife crossed, with motto,
"By this sign we prosper;" each osseous fence to
consist of 200,000 skeletons on a side, which is
400,000 to each avenue. It is remarked with
satisfaction that it aggregates three or four
thousand miles (single-ranked) of skeletons, —
15,000,000 all told — and would stretch across
America from New York to San Francisco. It
is remarked further, in the hopeful tone of a
railroad company forecasting showy extensions
of its mileage, that my output is 500,000 corpses
a year when my plant is running full time, and
that therefore if I am spared ten years longer
there will be fresh skulls enough to add 175 feet
to the pyramid, making it by a long way the
loftiest architectural construction on the earth,
and fresh skeletons enough to continue the trans-
continental file (on piles) a thousand miles into
26
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
the Pacific. The cost of gathering the materials
from my "widely scattered and innumerable
f)rivate graveyards," and transporting them, and
- building the monument and the radiating grand
avenues, is duly ciphered out, running into an
, aggregate of millions of guineas, and then —
why then, ( ! ! ! !) this idiot
asks me to furnish the money! \_Sudden and ef-
fusive application of the crucifix^ He reminds
me that my yearly income from the Congo is
' millions of guineas, and that "o«/y" 5,000,000
would be required for his enterprise. Every day
wild attempts are made upon my purse ; they do
not affect me, they cost me not a thought. But
'■ this one — this one troubles me, makes me nerv-
ous ; for there is no telling what an unhinged
^ creature like this may think of next. . • . //
' he should think of Carnegie — but I must banish
that thought out of my mind ! it worries my
days; it troubles my sleep. That way hes mad-
ness. [Jfter a pause] There is no other way
— I have got to buy Carnegie.
[Harassed and muttering, walks the floor a
while, then takes to the Consul's - chapter-
headings again. Reads]
" Government starved a woman's children to death and
killed her sons."
** Butchery of wromen and children."
"The native has been converted into a being without
ambition because without hope J''*
27
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
"Women chained by the neck by rubber sentries."
* 'Women refuse to bear children because, with a baby
to carry, ihey cannot well run away and hide from the
soldiers."
"Statement of a child. * I, my mother, my grandmother
and my sister, we ran away into the bush. A great number
of our people were killed by
the soldiers. . . .
After that they saw a
little bit of my
mother's head, and
the soldiers ran
quickly to where
we were and caught
my grandmother,
my mother, my
sister and another little
one younger than us.
Each wanted my
mother for a wife,
and argued about it,
so they finally decided
to kill her. They shot her through the stomach with a
gun and she fell, and when I saw that I cried very much,
because they killed my grandmother and mother and I was
left alone. I saw it all done ! ' "
It has a sort of pitiful sound, although they
are only blacks. It carries me back, and back into
the past, to when my children were little, and
would fly — to the bush, so to speak — when they
saw me coming. . . . [Resumes the reading
of chapter-headings of the Consul's report']
28
"Women chained by the neck"
"My yearly income from the Congo is millions of guineas."
— Page 2/.
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
"They put a knife through a child's stomach."
" They cut off the hands and brought them to C. D.
(white officer) and spread them out in a row for him to
see."
"Captured children left in the bush to die, by the
soldiers."
*' Friends came to ransom a captured girl ; but sentry
refused, saying the white man wanted her because she was
young."
«* Extract from a native girl's testimony. ' On our way
the soldiers saw a little child,
and when they went to kill it
the child laughed, so the soldier
took the butt of his gun and
struck the child with it and then
cut off its head. One day they
killed my half-sister and cut off
her head, hands and feet, be-
cause she had bangles on. Then
they caught another sister, and „o» rHOTOG.Ar». .koko. co«go state.
sold her to the W. W. people, ..o u r ■ u..u a .
• r r » Jjomehow — 1 wish it had not
and now she is a slave there. ' ' ' laughed."
The little child laughed ! [A long pause.
Alusingl That innocent creature. Somehow
— I wish it had not laughed. {^Readsl
* * Mutilated children . ' '
" Govenmaent encouragement of inter-tribal slave-traffic.
The monstrous fines levied upon villages tardy in their sup-
plies of foodstuffs compel the natives to sell their fellows —
and children — to other tribes in order to meet the fine."
** A father and mother forced to sell their little boy."
" Widow forced to sell her little girl."
29
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
llrritated'\ Hang the monotonous grum-
bler, what would he have me do ! Let a widow
off merely because she Is a widow? He knows
quite well that there is nothing much left, now,
but widows. I have nothing against widows, as
a class, but business is business, and I've got to
live, haven't I, even if it does cause incon-
venience to somebody here and there? [Readsl
" Men intimidated by the torture of their wives and
daughters. (To make the men furnish rubber and supplies
and so get their captured women released from chains and
detention.) The sentry explained to me that he caught the
women and brought them in (chained together neck to neck)
by direction of his employer."
'* An agent explained that he was forced to catch women
in preference to men, as then the men brought in supplies
quicker ; but he did not explain how the children deprived
of their parents obtained their own food supplies."
"A file of 15 (captured) women."
"Allowing women and children to die of starvation in
prison."
[Musing] Death from hunger. A linger-
ing, long misery that must be. Days and days,
and still days and days, the forces of the body
failing, dribbling away, little by little — yes, it
must be the hardest death of all. And to see
food carried by, every day, and you can have
none of it I Of course the little children cry for
it, and that wrings the mother's heart. . . . [A
sigh] Ah, well, it cannot be helped; circum-
stances make this discipline necessary. [Readsl
30
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
*♦ The crucifying of sixty women ! "
How Stupid, how tactless! Christendom's
goose flesh will rise with horror at the news.
"Profanation of the sacred emblem!" That is
what Christendom will shout. Yes, Christen-
dom will buzz. It can hear me charged with
half a million murders a year for twenty^ years
and keep its composure, but to profane the Sym-
bol is quite another matter. It will regard this
as serious. It will wake up and want to look
into my record. Buzz? Indeed it will; I seem
to hear the distant hum already. ... It was
wrong to crucify the women, clearly wrong, man-
ifestly wrong, I can see it now, myself, and am
sorry it happened, sincerely sorry. I believe it
would have answered just as well to skin them.
. . . IfVith a sighl But none of us thought
of that; one cannot think of everything; and
after all it is but human to err.
It will make a stir, it surely will, these cruci-
fixions. Persons will begin to ask again, as now
and then in times past, how I can hope to win
and keep the respect of the human race if I con-
tinue to give up my life to murder and pillage.
[Scornfully'l When have they heard me say
I wanted the respect of the human race? Do
they confuse me with the common herd? do they
forget that I am a king ? What king has valued
the respect of the human race? I mean deep
down in his private heart. If they would reflect,
31
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
they would know that it is impossible that
a king should value the respect of the
human race. He stands upon an eminence
an
d looks out over
" He stands upon an eminence."
'Made on just their own pattern."
the world and sees
multitudes of meek
human things wor-
shiping the persons,
and submitting to the
oppressions and exac-
tions, of a dozen
human things who are
in no way better or
finer than themselves —
made on just their own
pattern, in fact, and
out of the same quality of mud. When it talks,
it is a race of whales; but a king knows it for a
race of tadpoles. Its history gives it away. If
men were really men, how could a Czar be pos-
sible ? and how could I be possible ? But we are
possible; we are quite safe; and with God's help
we shall continue the business at the old stand.
It will be found that the race will put up with
us, in its docile immemorial way. It may pull
a wry face now and then, and make large talk,
but it will stay on its knees all the same.
Making large talk is one of its specialties. It
works itself up, and froths at the mouth, and just
when you think it is going to throw a brick, — it
heaves a poeml Lord, what a race it isl
3*
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
[Reads] A CZAR— 1905
**A pasteboard autocrat ; a despot out of date ;
A fading planet in the glare of day ;
A flickering candle in the bright sun's ray.
Burnt to the socket ; fruit left too late.
High on a blighted bough, ripe till it's rotten.
By God forsaken and by time forgotten.
Watching the crumbling edges of his lands,
A spineless god to whom dumb millions pray.
From Finland in the West to far Cathay,
Lord of a frost-boimd continent he stands.
Her seeming ruin his dim mind appalls.
And in the frozen stupor of his sleep
He hears dull thunders, pealing as she falls.
And mighty fragments dropping in the deep."*
It is fine, one is obliged to concede it; it is a
great picture, and impressive. The mongrel
handles his pen well. Still, with opportunity, I
would cruci — flay him. . . . "A spineless
god." It is the Czar to a dot — a god, and spine-
less; a royal invertebrate, poor lad; soft-hearted
and out of place. "A spineless god to ivhom
dumb millions pray." Remorselessly correct;
concise, too, and compact — the soul and spirit of
the human race compressed into half a sen-
tence. On their knees — 140,000,000. On
their knees to a little tin deity. Massed to-
gether, they would stretch away, and away, and
away, across the plains, fading and dimming and
failing in a measureless perspective — why, even
•B. H. Nadal, in New York Times.
22
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
the telescope's vision could not reach to the final
frontier of that continental spread of human ser-
vility. Now why should a king value the respect
of the human race? It is quite unreasonable to
expect it. A curious race, certainly! It finds
fault with me and with my occupations, and for-
gets that neither of us could exist an hour with-
out its sanction. It is our confederate and all-
powerful protector. It is our bulwark, our
friend, our fortress. For this it has our grati-
tude, our deep and honest gratitude — but not
our respect. Let it snivel and fret and grumble
if it likes; that is all right; we do not mind that.
[Turns over leaves of a scrapbook, pausing
now and then to read a clipping and make a
comment~\ The poets — how they do hunt that
poor Czar! French, Germans, English, Ameri-
cans — they all have a bark at him. The finest
and capablest of the pack, and the fiercest, are
Swilburne (English, I think), and a pair of
Americans, Thomas Bailey Eldridge and Colon-
el Richard Waterson Gilder, of the sentimental
periodical called Century Magazine and Louis-
ville Courier-Journal. They certainly have ut-
tered some very strong yelps. I can't seem to
find them — I must have mislaid them. . . .
If a poet's bite were as terrible as his bark, why
dear me — but it isn't. A wise king minds
neither of them; but the poet doesn't know it.
It's a case of little dog and lightning express.
34
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
When the Czar goes thundering by, the poet
skips out and rages alongside for a little dis-
tance, then returns to his kennel wagging his
head with satisfaction, and thinks he has inflicted
a memorable scare, whereas nothing has really
happened — the Czar didn't know he was around.
They never bark at me; I wonder why that is.
I suppose my Corruption-Department buys
them. That must be it, for certainly I ought to
Inspire a bark or two; I'm rather choice mate-
rial, I should say. Why — here is a yelp at me.
[Mumbling a poemi
**. . . What gives thee holy right to murder hope
And water ignorance with human blood ?
• • • • • •
From what high universe-dividing power
Draws* t thou thy wondrous, ripe brutality?
• • • • • •
O horrible . . . Thou God who seest these things
Help us to blot this terror from the earth."
. . . No, I see It Is "To the Czar," * after
all. But there are those who would say It fits
me — and rather snugly, too. "Ripe brutality."
They would say the Czar's isn't ripe yet, but that
mine is; and not merely ripe but rotten. Noth-
ing could keep them from saying that; they
would think It smart. "This terror." Let the
Czar keep that name; I am supplied. This long
time I have been "the monster"; that was their
•Louise Morgan Sill, in Harper's Weekly.
35
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
favorite — the monster of crime. But now I
have a new one. They have found a fossil
Dinosaur fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet
high, and set It up In the museum in New
York and labeled It "Leopold II." But It
Is no matter, one does not look for manners
In a republic. Um . . . that reminds me;
I have never been caricatured. Could It be
that the corsairs of the pencil could not
find an offensive symbol that was big enough
and ugly enough to do my reputation justice?
{^After reflection'] There Is no other way — I
will buy the Dinosaur. And suppress It. {^Rests
himself with some more chapter-headings.
Reads]
*' More mutilation of children." (Hands cut off.)
*• Testimony of American Missionaries."
** Evidence of British Missionaries."
It Is all the same old thing — tedious repeti-
tions and duplications of shop-worn episodes;
mutilations, murders, massacres, and so on, and
so on, till one gets drowsy over It. Mr. Morel
Intrudes at this point, and contributes a comment
which he could just as well have kept to himself
— and throws in some Italics, of course; these
people can never get along without itahcs:
"It is one heartrending story of human misery from
beginning to end, and it is all recent.*^
Meaning 1904 and 1905. I do not see how a
36
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
person can act so. This Morel is a king's sub-
ject, and reverence for monarchy should have
restrained him from reflecting upon me with that
exposure. This Morel is a reformer; a Congo
reformer. That sizes him up. He publishes a
sheet in Liverpool called "The West African
Mail," which is supported by the voluntary con-
tributions of the sap-headed and the
soft-hearted; and every week it
steams and reeks and festers with
up-to-date "Congo atrocities" of
the sort detailed in this pile of
pamphlets here. I will suppress
it. I suppressed a Congo atrocity
book there, after it was actually
in print; it should not be
difficult for me to suppress a
newspaper.
[Studies some photographs of
mutilated negroes — throws them
down. Sighsl The kodak has
i_ 1 • , , nni "The only witness
been a sore calamity to us. The i wouldn't bribe-
most powerful enemy that has
confronted us, indeed. In the early years
we had no trouble in getting the press to
"expose" the tales of the mutilations as
slanders, lies, inventions of busy-body American
missionaries and exasperated foreigners who had
found the "open door" of the Berlin-Congo
charter closed against them when they inno-
37
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
cently went out there to trade; and by the press's
help we got the Christian nations everywhere to
turn an irritated and unbelieving ear to those
tales and say hard things about the tellers of
them. Yes, all things went harmoniously and
pleasantly in those good days, and I was looked
up to as the benefactor of a down-trodden and
friendless people. Then all of a sudden came
the crash! That is to say, the incorruptible
kodak — and all the harmony went to hell ! The
only witness I have encountered in my long ex-
perience that I couldn't bribe. Every Yankee
missionary and every interrupted trader sent
home and got one; and now — oh, well, the pic-
tures get sneaked around everywhere, in spite of
all we can do to ferret them out and suppress
them. Ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand
presses are saying the good word for me all the
time and placidly and convincingly denying the
mutilations. Then that trivial little kodak, that
a child can carry in its pocket, gets up, uttering
never a word, and knocks them dumb I
.... What is this fragment? [Reads^
"But enough of crying to tally off his crimes ! His list
is interminable, we jhould never get to the end of it. His
awful shadow lies across his Congo Free State, and under
it an unoffending nation of 15,000,000 is withering away
and swiftly succumbing to their miseries. It is a land of
graves ; it is The Land of Graves ; it is the Congo Free
38
sou r-o-c-j'
"The pictures get sneaked around everywhere." — Page j8.
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
Graveyard. It is a majestic thought : that is, this ghastliest
episode in all human history is the work of one man alone ;
one solitary man; just a single individual — Leopold, King of
the Belgians. He is personally and solely responsible for all
the myriad crimes that have blackened the history of the
Congo State. He is sole master there; he is absolute. He
could have prevented the crimes by his mere command ; he
could stop them today writh a virord. He withholds the
word. For his pocket's sake.
It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and lay-
ing waste a country for mere sordid money's sake, and solely
and only for that. Lust of conquest is royal; kings have always
exercised that stately vice ; we are used to it, by old habit
we condone it, perceiving a certain dignity in it ; but lust of
mones — lust of shillings — lust of nickels — lust of dirty coin,
not for the nation's enrichment but for the king^s alone — thi»
is new. It distinctly revolts us, we cannot seem to recon-
cile ourselves to it, we resent it, we despise it, we say it is
shabby, unkingly, out of character. Being democrats we
ought to jeer and jest, we ought to rejoice to see the purple
dragged in the dirt, but — well, account for it as we may, we
don't. We see this awful king, this pitiless and bl:od-
drenched king, this money-crazy king towering toward the
sky in a world-solitude of sordid crime, unfellowed and apart
from the human race, sole butcher for personal gain findable
in all his caste, ancient or modern, pagan or Christian,
proper and legitimate target for the scorn of the lowest and
the highest, and the execrations of all who hold in cold
esteem the oppressor and the coward; and — well, it is a
mystery, but we do not uisb to look ; for he is a Hng, and it
hurts us, it troubles us, by ancient and inherited instinct it
shames us to see a king degraded to thu aspect, and we shrink
39
KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY
from hearing the particulars of how it happened. We shud-
der and turn away when we come upon them in print."
Why, certainly — that is my protection. And
you will continue to do it. I know the human
race.
FROM PHOTOGRAPH, IKOKO, CONGO STATE.
' To THEM It must appear
very awful and
mysterious."
.Joseph Con-
rad.
40
AN ORIGINAL MISTAKE
" This work of ' civilization' is
an enormous and continual
butchery." " All the facts we
brought forward in this cham-
ber were denied at first most
'energetically ; but later, little
by little, they were proved by documents and by official texts. "
" The practice of cutting off hands is said to be contrary
to instructions ; but you are content to say that indulgence
must be shown and that this bad habit must be corrected
' little by little ' and you plead, moreover, that only the hands
of fallen enemies are cut off, and that if hands are cut off
• enemies ' not quite dead, and who, after recovery, have
had the bad taste to come to
the missionaries and show
them their stumps, it was
due to an original mistake in
thinking that they were
dead." From Debate in Bel-
gian Parliament, J^b't ^9^3-
SUPPLEMENTARY
OUGHT HNQ LEOPOLD TO BE HANGED?*
INTKBVIEW BY MR. W. T. STEAD WITH THE REV, JOHN H. HARRIS,
BARIMGA, CONGO STATE, IN THE ENGLISH REVIEW OF
REVIEWS FOR SEPTEMBER, I9O5.
For the somewhat startling suggestion in the heading ot
this interview, the missionary interviewed is in no way
responsible. The credit of it, or, if you like, the discredit,
belongs entirely to the editor of the Review, who, without
dogmatism, wishes to pose the question as a matter for serious
discussion. Since Charles I's head was cut off, opposite
Whitehall, nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, the sanc-
tity which doth hedge about a king has been held in slight
and scant regard by the Puritans and their descendants.
Hence there is nothing antecedently shocking or outrageous
in the discussion of the question whether the acts of any
Sovereign are such as to justify the calling in of the services
of the public executioner. It is not, of course, for a journal-
ist to pronounce judgment, but no fvmction of the public
writer is so imperative as that of calling attention to great
wrongs, and no duty is more imperious than that of insisting
that no rank or station should be allowed to shield from
justice the real criminal when he is once discovered.
The controversy between the Congo Reform Association
and the Emperor of the Congo has now arrived at a stage in
which it is necessary to take a further step towards the
*The above article which comes to hand as the foregoing is in press
is commended to the king and to readers of his Soliloquy.— M. T.
45
SUPPLEMENTARY
redress of unspeakable wrongs and the punishment of no less
unspeakable criminals. The Rev. J. H. Harris, an English
missionary, has lived for the last seven years in that region
of Central Africa — the Upper Congo — w^hich King Leo-
pold has made over to one of his vampire groups of financial
associates (known as the A.B.LR. Society) on the strictly
business basis of a half share in the profits wrung from the
blood and misery of the natives. He has now returned to
England, and last month he called at Mowbray House to
tell me the latest from the Congo. Mr. Harris is a young
roan in a dangerous state of volcanic fury, and no wonder.
After living for seven years face to face with the devastations
of the vampire State, it is impossible to deny that he does
well to be angry. When he began, as is the wont of those
who have emerged from the depths, to detail horrifying
stories of murder, the outrage and torture of women, the
mutilation of children, and the whole infernal category of
horrors, served up with the background of cannibalism,
sometimes voluntary and sometimes, incredible though it
seems, enforced by the orders of the officers, I cut him short,
and said : —
" Dear Mr, Harris, as in Oriental despatches the India
Ofiice translator abbreviates the first page of the letter into
two words * after compliments,' or 'a.c.,' so let us abbre-
viate our conversation about the Congo by the two words
' after atrocities,' or ' a. a.' They are so invariable and so
monotonous, as Lord Percy remarked in the House the other
day, that it is unnecessary to insist upon them. There is no
longer any dispute in the mind of any reasonable person as to
what is going on in the Congo. It is the economical
exploitation of half a continent carried on by the use of
armed force wielded by officials the aim-all and be-all
of whose existence is to extort the maximum amount of
46
OUGHT KING LEOPOLD TO BE HANGED?
rubber in the shortest possible time in order to pay the
largest possible dividend to the holders of shares in the con-
cessions."
**Well," said Mr. Harris reluctantly, for he is so ac-
customed to speaking to persons who require to be told the
whole dismal tale from A to Z, **what is it you want to
know?"
"I want to know," I said, "whether you consider the
time is ripe for summoning King Leopold before the bar of
an international tribunal to answer for the crimes perpetrated
under his orders and in his interest in the Congo State."
Mr. Harris paused for a moment, and then said : —
'* That depends upon the action which the king takes upon
the report of the Commission, which is now in his hands."
*' Is that report published ? "
*'No," said Mr. Harris ; ** and it is a question whether
it will ever be published. Greatly to our surprise, the
Commission, which every one expected would be a mere
blind whose appointment was intended to throw dust in the
eyes of the public, turned out to be composed of highly re-
spectable persons who heard the evidence most impartially,
refused no bona fide testimony produced by trustworthy wit-
nesses, and were overwhelmed by the multitudinous horrors
brought before them, and who, we feel, must have arrived
at conclusions which necessitate an entire revolution in the
administration of the Congo."
*' Are you quite sure, Mr. Harris," I said, **that this is
so?"
"Yes," said Mr. Harris, "quite sure. The Commis-
sion impressed us all in the Congo very favorably. Some of
its members seemed to us admirable specimens of public-
spirited, independent statesmen. They realized that they
were acting in a judicial capacity; they knew that the eyes
47
SUPPLEMENTARY
of Europe were upon them, and, instead of making their in-
quiry a farce, they made it a reality, and their conclusions
must be, I feel sure, so damning to the State, that if King
Leopold were to take no action but to allow the whole
infernal business to proceed unchecked, any international tri-
bunal which had powers of a crimal court, would upon the
evidence of the Commission alone, send those responsible to
the gallows."
* 'Unfortunately," I said, "at present the Hague Tri-
bunal is not armed with the powers of an international assize
court, nor is it qualified to place oifenders, crowned or other-
wise, in the dock. But don't you think that in the evolu-
tion of society the constitution of such a criminal court is a
necessity ?"
" It would be a great convenience at present," said Mr.
Harris ; "nor would you need one atom of evidence be-
yond the report of the Commission to justify the hanging
of whoever is responsible for the existence and continuance
of such abominations."
" Has anybody seen the text of the report ? " I asked.
** As the Commission returned to Brussels in March, some
of the contents of that report are an open secret. A great
deal of the evidence has been published by the Congo Re-
form Association. In the Congo the Commissioners admitted
two things : first, that the evidence was overwhelming as to
the existence of the evils which had hitherto been denied, and
secondly, that they vindicated the character of the missiona-
ries. They discovered, as anyone will who goes out to that
country, that it is the missionaries, and the missionaries alone,
who constitute the permanent European element. The
Congo State officials come out ignorant of the language,
knowing nothing of the country, and with no other sense of
their duties beyond that of supporting the concession com-
48
OUGHT KING LEOPOLD TO BE HANGED?
panics in extorting rubber. They are like men who are
dumb and deaf and blind, nor do they wish to be otherwise.
In two or three years they vanish, giving place to other
migrants as ignorant as themselves, whereas the missionaries
remain on the spot year after year ; they are in personal
touch with the people, whose language they speak, whose
customs they respect, and whose lives they endeavor to
defend to the best of their ability."
** But, Mr. Harris," I remarked, ** was there not a cer-
tain Mr. Grenfell, a Baptist Missionary, who has been all
these years a convinced upholder of the Congo State ? ' '
**'Twas true," said Mr. Harris, "and pity *ris 'twas
true ; but 'tis no longer true. Mr. Grenfell has had his eyes
opened at last, and he has now taken his place among those
who are convinced. He could no longer resist the over-
whelming evidence that has been brought against the Congo
Adminis tration . " *
"Was the nature of the Commissioners' repon," I re-
sumed, "made known to the officials of the State before
they left the Congo ? ' '
**To the head officials — yes," said Mr. Harris.
"With what result?"
**In the case of the highest official in the Congo, the man
who corresponds in Africa to Lord Curzon in India, no
sooner was he placed in possession of the conclusions of the
Commission than the appalling significance of their indict-
ment convinced him that the game was up, and he went into
his room and cut his throat. I was amazed on returning to
Europe to find how little the significance of this suicide was
appreciated. A paragraph in the newspaper announced the
suicide of a Congo official. None of those who read that
* Mr. Grenfell's station is in the Lower Congo, a section remote
from the vast rubber areas of the interior.
49
SUPPLEMENTARY |
paragraph could realize the fact that that suicide had the sam
significance to the Congo that the suicide, let us say, o
Lord Milner would have had if it had taken place immed
iately on receiving the conclusions of a Royal Commissioi
sent out to report upon his administration in South Africa.".
**Well, if that be so, Mr. Harris," I said, "and the
Governor- General cuts his throat rather than face the ordeal
and disgrace of the exposure, I am almost beginning to hope
that we may see King Leopold in the dock at the Hague,
after all."
"I will comment upon that," Mr. Harris said, "by
quoting you Mrs. Sheldon's remark made before myself and
my colleagues, Messrs. Bond, Ellery, Ruskin, Walbaum and
Whiteside, on May 19th last year, when, in answer to our
question, 'Why should King Leopold be afraid of submitting
his case to the Hague tribunal ? ' Mrs. Sheldon answered,
*Men do not go to the gallows and put their heads in a noose
if they can avoid it.* "
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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO UBRARY
DT
C58
Clemens, Samuel Langhome
King Leopold's soliloquy
