Before passing these revelations with the attendant burst of candour in the Belgian Press, it may be well to transcribe the following remark in an interview from a returned Congo official which appeared in the Antwerp Nieuw Gazet (April ioth, 1900). He says:
“When first commissioned to establish a fort, I was given some native soldiers and a prodigious stock of ammunition. My chief gave me the following instructions: ‘Crush every obstacle!’ I obeyed, and cut through my district by fire and sword. I had left Antwerp thinking I was simply to gather rubber. Great was my stupefaction when the truth dawned on me.”
This, with the letter of Lieutenant Tilken, as quoted before, gives some insight into the position of the agent.
Indeed, there is something to be said for these unfortunate men, for it is a more awful thing to be driven to crime than to endure it. Consider the sequence of events! The man sees an advertisement offering a commercial situation in the tropics. He applies to a bureau. He is told that the salary is some seventy-five pounds a year, with a bonus on results. He knows nothing of the country or conditions. He accepts. He is then asked if he has any money. He has not. One hundred pounds is advanced to him for expenses and outfit, and he is pledged to work it off. He goes out and finds the terrible nature of the task before him. He must condone crime to get his results. Suppose he resigns? “Certainly,” say the authorities; “but you must remain there until you have worked off your debt!” He cannot possibly get down the river, for the steamers are all under Government control. What can he do then? There is one thing which he very frequently does, and that is to blow out his brains. The statistics of suicide are higher than in any service in the world. But suppose he takes the line: “Very well, I will stay if you make me do so, but I will expose these misdeeds to Europe.” What then? The routine is a simple one. An official charge is preferred against him of ill-treating the natives. Ill-treating of some sort is always going forward, and there is no difficulty with the help of the sentries in proving that something for which the agent is responsible does not tally with the written law, however much it might be the recognised custom. He is taken to Boma, tried and condemned. Thus it comes about that the prison of Boma may at the same time contain the best men and the worst — the men whose ideas were too humane for the authorities as well as those whose crimes could not be overlooked even by a Congolese administration. Take warning, you who seek service in this dark country, for suicide, the Boma prison, or such deeds as will poison your memory forever are the only choice which will lie before you.
Here is the sort of official circular-which descends in its thousands upon the agent. This particular one was from the Commissioner in the Wille district:
“I give you carte blanche to procure 4,000 kilos of rubber a month. You have two months in which to work your people. Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in resisting the demands of the State, employ force of arms.”
And this State was formed for the “moral and material advantage of the native.”
While dealing with trials of Boma I will give some short account of the Caudron case, which occurred in 1904. This case was remarkable as establishing judicially what was always clear enough: the complicity between the State and the criminal. Caudron was a man against whom 120 cold-blooded murders were charged. He was, in fact, a zealous and efficient agent of the Anversoise Society, that same company whose red-edged securities rose to such a height when Manager Lothaire taught the natives what a minister in the Belgian House described as the Christian law of work. He did his best for the company, and he did his best forhimself, for he had a three per cent, commission upon the rubber. Why he should be chosen among all his fellow-murderers is hard to explain, but it was so, and he found himself at Boma with a sentence of twenty years. On appealing, this was reduced to fifteen years, which experience has shown to mean in practice two or three. The interesting point of his trial, however, is that his appeal, and the consequent decrease of sentence which justified that appeal, were based upon the claim that the Government was cognisant of the murderous raids, and that the Government soldiers were used to effect them. The points brought out by the trial were:
1. The existence of a system of organized oppression, plunder* and massacre, in order to increase the output of india-rubber for the benefit of a “company,” which is only a covering name for the Government itself.
2. That the local authorities of the Government are cognisant, and participatory in this system.
3. That local officials of the Government engage in these rubber raids, and that Government troops are regularly employed there on.
4. That the Judicature is powerless to place the real responsibility on the proper shoulders.
5. That, consequently, these atrocities will continue until the system itself is extirpated.
Caudron’s counsel called for the production of official documents to show how the chain of responsibility went, but the President of the Appeal Court refused it, knowing as clearly as we do, that it could only conduct to the Throne itself.
One might ask how the details of this trial came to Europe when it is so seldom that anything leaks out from the Courts of Boma. The reason was that there lived in Boma a British coloured subject named Shanir, who was at the pains to attend the court day by day in order to preserve some record of the procedure. This he dispatched to Europe. The sequel is interesting. The man’s trade, which was a very large one, was boycotted, he lost his all, brooded over his misfortunes, and finally took his own life — another martyr in the cause of the Congo.
CHAPTER VI
VOICES FROM THE DARRKNESS
I WILL now return to the witnesses of the shocking treatment of the natives. Rev. Joseph Clark was an American missionary living at Ikoko in the Crown Domain, which is King Leopold’s own special private preserve. These letters cover the space between 1893 and 1899.
This is Ikoko as he found it in 1893:
“Irebo contains say 2,000 people. Ikoko has at least 4,000 and there are other towns within easy reach, several as large as Irebo, and two probably as large as Ikoko. The people are fine-looking, bold and active.”
In 1903 there were 600 people surviving.
In 1894 Ikoko in the Crown Domain began to feel the effects of “moral and material regeneration.” On May 30th of that year Mr. Clark writes:
“Owing to trouble with the State the Irebo people fled and left their homes. Yesterday the State soldiers shot a sick man who had not attempted to run away, and others have been killed by the State (native) soldiers, who, in the absence of a white man, do as they please.”
In November, 1894:
“At Ikoko quite a number of people have been killed by the soldiers, and most of the others are living in the bush.”
In the same month he complained officially to Commissaire Fievez:
“If you do not come soon and stop the present trouble the towns will be empty. ... I entreat you to help us to have peace on the Lake. ... It seems so hard to see the dead bodies in the creek and on the beach, and to know why they are killed. . . . People are living in the bush like wild beasts without shelter or proper food, and afraid to make fires. Many died in this way. One woman ran away with three children — they all died in the forest, and the woman herself came back a wreck and died before long — ruined by exposure and starvation. We knew her well. My hope in 1894 was to get the facts put before King Leopold, as I was sure he knew nothing of the awful conditions of the collection of the so- called ‘rubber tax.’ “
On November 28th he writes:
“The State soldiers brought in seven hands, and reported having shot the people in the act of running away to the French side, etc.”
“We found all that the soldiers had reported was untrue, and that the statements made by the natives to me were true. We saw only six bodies; a seventh had evidently fallen into the water, and we learned in a day or two that an eighth body had floated into the landing- place above us — a woman that had either been thrown or had fallen
into the water after being shot.”
On December 5th, he says:
“A year ago we passed or visited between here and Ikoko the following villages:
Probable population
Lobwaka 250
Boboko 250
Bosungu 100
Kenzie 150
Bokaka 200
Mosenge 150
Ituta 80
Ngero 2,000
Total 3,180
“ A week ago I went up, and only at Ngero were there any people: there we found ten. Ikoko did not contain over twelve people other than those employed by Frank. Beyond Ikoko the case is the same.”
April 12th, 1895, he writes:
“I am sorry that rubber palavers continue. Every week we hear of some fighting, and there are frequent ‘rows,’ even in our village, with the armed and unruly soldiers. . . . During the past twelve months it has cost more lives than native wars and superstition would have sacrificed in three to five years. The people make this comparison among themselves. ... It seems incredible and awful to think of these savage men armed with rifles and let loose to hunt and kill people, because they do not get rubber to sell at a mere nothing to the State, and it is blood-curdling to see them returning with hands of the slain and to find the hands of young children, amongst bigger ones, evidencing their 1 bravery.’
The following was written on May 3rd, 1895:
“The war on account of rubber. The State demands that the natives shall make rubber and sell same to its agents at a very low price. The natives do not like it. It is hard work and very poor pay, and takes them away from their homes into the forest, where they feel very unsafe, as there are always feuds among them. . . . The rubber from this district has cost hundreds of lives, and the scenes I have witnessed while unable to help the oppressed have been almost enough to make me wish I were dead. The soldiers, are themselves savages, some even cannibals, trained to use rifles and in many cases they are sent away without supervision, and they do as they please. When they come to any town no man’s property or wife is safe, and when they are at war they are like devils.
“Imagine them returning from fighting some 1rebels’; see, on the bow of the canoe is a pole and a bundle of something on it. . . . These are the hands {right hands) of sixteen warriors they have slain. 1 Warriors/’ Don’t you see among them the hands of little children and girls {young girls or boys)? I have seen them. I have seen where even the trophy has been cut of while yet the poor heart beat strongly enough to shoot the blood from the cut arteries to a distance of fully four feet.”
“A young baby was brought here one time; its mother was taken prisoner, and before her eyes they threw the infant in the water to drown it. The soldiers coolly told me and my wife that their white man did not want them to bring infants to their place. They dragged the women off and left the infant beside us, but we sent the child to its mother, and said we would report the matter to the chief of the post. We did so, but the men were not punished. The principal offender was told before me he would get fifty lashes, but I heard the same mouth send a message to say he would not be flogged.”
Compare with this the following extracts from King Leopold’s Officiel Bulletin, referring to this very tract of country:
“The exploitation of the rubber vines of this district was undertaken barely three years ago by M. Fievez. The results he obtained have been unequalled. The district produced in 1895 more than 650 tons of rubber, bought (sic) for 2(European price), and sold at Antwerp for 55. per kilo (2 lbs.).”
A later bulletin adds:
“With this development of general order is combined an inevitable amelioration in the native’s condition of existence wherever he conies into contact with the European element. . . .
“ Such is, in fact, one of the ends of the general policy of the State, to promote the regeneration of the race by instilling into him a higher idea of the necessity of labour.”
Truly, I know nothing in history to match’’such documents as these — pirates and bandits have never descended to that last odious abyss of hypocrisy. It stands alone, colossal in its horror, colossal, too, in its effrontery.
A few more anecdotes from the worthy Mr. Clark. This is an extract from a letter to the Chief of the District, Mueller:
“There is a matter I want to report to you regarding the Nkake sentries. You remember some time ago they took eleven canoes and shot some Ikoko people. As a proof they went to you with some hands, of which three were the hands of little children. We heard from one of their paddlers that one child was not dead when its hand was cut off, but did not believe the story. Three days after we were told the child was still alive in the bush. I sent four of my men to see, and they brought back a little girl whose right hand had been cut off, and she left to die from the wound. The child had no other wound. As I was going to see Dr. Reusens about my own sickness I took the child to him, and he has cut the arm and made it right and I think she will live. But I think such awful cruelty should be punished.”
Mr. Clark still clung to the hope that King Leopold did not know of the results of his own system. On March 25th, 1896, he writes:
“ This rubber traffic is steeped in blood, and if the natives were to rise and sweep every white person on the upper Congo into eternity there would still be left a fearful balance to their credit. Is it not possible for some American of influence to see the King of the Belgians, and let him know what is being done in his name? The Lake is reserved for the King — no traders allowed — and to collect rubber for him hundreds of men, women and children have been shot.”
At last the natives, goaded beyond endurance, rose against their oppressors. Who can help rejoicing that they seem to have had some success?
Extracts from letter-book commencing January 29th, 1897:
“The native uprising. This was brought about at last by sentries robbing and badly treating an important chief. In my presence he laid his complaint before M. Mueller, reporting the seizure of his wives and goods and the personal violence he had suffered at the hands of M. Mueller’s soldiers stationed in his town. I saw M. Mueller kick him off his veranda. Within forty-eight hours there were no ‘sentries’ or their followers left in that chief’s town — they were killed and mutilated — and soon after M. Mueller, with another white officer and many soldiers, were killed, and the revolt began.”
Such is some of the evidence, a very small portion of the whole narrative furnished by Mr. Clark. Remember that it is extracted from a long series of letters written to various people during a succession of years. One could conceive a single statement being a concoction, but the most ingenious apologist for the Congo methods could not explain how such a document as this could be other than true.
So much for Mr. Clark, the American. The evidence of Mr. Scrivener, the Englishman, covering roughly the same place and date, will follow. But lest the view should seem too Anglo-Saxon, let me interpolate a paragraph from the travels of a Frenchman, M. Leon Berthier, whose diary was published by the Colonial Institute of Marseilles in 1902:
“Belgian post of Imesse well constructed. The Chef de Poste is absent. He has gone to punish the village of M’Batchi, guilty of being a little late in paying the rubber tax. ... A canoe full of Congo State soldiers returns from the pillage of M’Batchi. . . . Thirty killed, fifty wounded. . . . At three o’clock arrive at M’Batchi, the scene of the bloody punishment of the Chef de Poste at Imesse. Poor village! The debris of miserable huts. . . . One goes away humiliated and saddened from these scenes of desolation, filled with indescribable feelings.”
In showing the continuity of the Congo horror and the extent of its duration (an extent which is the shame of the great Powers who acquiesced in it by their silence), I have marshalled witnesses in their successive order. Messrs. Glave, Murphy and Sjoblom have covered the time from 1894 to 1897; Mr. Clark has carried it on to 1900; we have had the deeds of 1901-4 as revealed in the Boma Law Courts. I shall now give the experience of Rev. Mr. Scrivener, and Engli
sh missionary, who in July, August and September, 1903, traversed a section of the Crown Domain, that same region specially assigned to King Leopold in person, in which Mr. Clark had spent so many nightmare years. We shall see how far the independent testimony of the Englishman and the American, the one extracted from a diary, the other from a succession of letters, corroborate each other:
“At six in the morning woke up to find it still raining. It kept on till nine, and we managed to get off by eleven. All the cassava bread was finished the day previous, so a little rice was cooked, but it was a hungry crowd that left the little village. I tried to find out something about them. They said they were runaways from a district a little distance away, where rubber was being collected. They told us some horrible tales of murder and starvation, and when we heard all we wondered that men so maltreated should be able to live without retaliation. The boys and girls were naked, and I gave them each a strip of calico, much to their wonderment. . . .
“Four hours and a half brought us to a place called Sa. . . . On the way we passed two villages with more people than we had seen for days. There may have been 120. Close to the post was another small village. We decided to stay there the rest of the day. Three chiefs came in with all the adult members of their people, and altogether there were not 300. And this where, not more than six or seven years ago, there were at least 3,000! It made one’s heart heavy to listen to the tales of bloodshed and cruelty. And it all seemed so foolish. To kill the people off in the wholesale way in which it has been done in this Lake district, because they would not bring in a sufficient quantity of rubber to satisfy the white man — and now here is an empty country and a very much diminished output of rubber as the inevitable consequence. ...”
Finally Mr. Scrivcner emerged in the neighbourhood of a “big State station.” He was hospitably received, and had many chats with his host, who seems to have been a very decent sort of man, doing his best under very trying circumstances. His predecessor had worked incalculable havoc in the country, and the present occupant of the post was endeavouring to carry out the duties assigned to him (those duties consisting, as usual, of orders to get all the rubber possible out of the people) with as much humanity as the nature of the task permitted. In this he, no doubt, did what was possible as one whom the system had not yet degraded to its level — one of the rare few: and one cannot wonder that they should be rare, seeing the nature of the bonds, and the helplessness in which an official is placed who does not carry out the full desires of his superiors. But he had only succeeded in getting himself into trouble with the district commander in consequence. He showed Mr. Scrivener a letter from the latter upbraiding him for not using more vigorous means, telling him to talk less and shoot more, and reprimanding him for not killing more than one man in a district under his care where there was a little trouble.
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