Art. III. THE CONGO QUESTION.

1. Rapport au Roi-souverain. Bulletin Officiel de l'État Independant du Congo. Brussels: Falk, 31 October, 1905. 2. Report of King Leopold's Commission of Enquiry. Congo Reform Association. November 1905.

3. King Leopold's Rule in Africa. By E. D. Morel. London: Heinemann, 1904.

4. The British Case in French Congo. By E. D. Morel. London: Heinemann, 1903.

5. Civilisation in Congoland: a story of International Wrongdoing. By H. R. Fox Bourne. With prefatory note by Sir C. W. Dilke. London: King, 1903.

6. The Map of Africa by Treaty. By Sir E. Hertslet, K.C.B. Two vols. London: Harrison, 1894.

7. The West Africa Mail. Edited by E. D. Morel. 19031905. [Especially Rev. John H. Weeks' letters.]

8. Le Congo Léopoldien. By Pierre Mille. Paris, 1905. And other works and papers.

IN 1875 the results of Lieutenant Cameron's great journey across Africa became known. They revealed to that very small section of the world then taking any interest in Africa the existence, in the southern part of the Congo Basin, of a fertile, highly mineralised territory, outside the limits of Portuguese claims, inhabited somewhat thickly by tribes of Bantu negroes, a little removed from conditions of absolute savagery, and by no means illdisposed towards the white man; in fact, the material for a Central African empire awaiting the enterprise of a European or an Asiatic power. The present King of the Belgians was at once interested in the matter. The gossip of European chanceries already attributed to him, as to his father, great shrewdness in the investment of the funds of his house; he was said to have made one fortune for himself and another for his infant son by courageous purchase of Suez Canal shares at a time when British statesmen of the usual shortsighted type had declared the canal to be an impossibility or a foredoomed failure. Leopold II was vaguely attracted towards a Central African enterprise as offering opportunities for profitable investment of capital, romantic

additions to our knowledge, and possibly the space for a colonial experiment on the part of Belgium.

Many hard things have been said about the second King of the Belgians as regards his family affairs or his assumed rôle of philanthropist. But his bitterest critic has not denied that he is first and foremost the King of the Belgians, and that he has worked throughout his life untiringly and determinedly on behalf of Belgian interests; that, under his long rule, Belgian population and commerce have attained an extraordinarily great development; in fact, that he has raised Belgium as a political entity from the sixth to the second rank. Consequently, in his own country he enjoys almost unlimited popularity.

Now Belgium, according to its constitution, may not, under its international guarantee, hold any oversea possessions. This is a fact so often asserted that we may suppose it to be more or less true, though no one seems to have taken the trouble to verify the existence of this restrictive clause. It is a clause certainly as obsolete as the guarantee of Belgian national existence, in which Great Britain joined with France and other Powers.

But this difficulty is said to have been one of the reasons why King Leopold proceeded by tortuous courses towards the creation of a great African empire for Belgium. He tried simultaneously (rumour said) to purchase the Philippines from Spain, but failed. He turned towards Central Africa, therefore, with renewed energy when Stanley's wonderful journey down the Congo (1875-1877) revealed at a flash the last great secret of African geography.

Between 1875 and 1879 the King's work in directing the scientific exploration of Central Africa from Brussels was avowedly international. But he soon began to realise that the last quarter of the nineteenth century was not a favourable time for a truly international work in Africa. England's eye was already cast on East Africa and Nyasaland; France was beginning to contemplate an African empire which might atone for the lost foothold on the Rhine; Portugal's hopes and ancient claims were reviving; Germany was taking a keen interest in the waste places of the earth. So the 'Association Internationale Africaine' gradually split up into national and sometimes

mutually hostile branches. Great Britain, through its Royal Geographical Society, despatched Joseph Thomson to Tanganyika and Nyasa, and afterwards to lay the foundations of British East Africa by discovering the direct route to the Victoria Nyanza; France sent De Brazza to explore the Ogowe and create French Congo; Germany made a patient investigation of South Congoland; Portugal enlarged her own knowledge of Angola, Benguela, and Zambezia; and the King of the Belgians established a more or less Belgian enterprise in the 'Comité d'Études du Haut Congo.' This committee,

which was entirely directed by the King of the Belgians, was formed after Stanley had returned from the Congo, had rested, and had finally given himself over to Belgian employment. He had been laughed at for his pains when he offered the Congo Basin to England at his conferences with her merchants at Liverpool and Manchester. Cameron had met with similar rebuffs in 1875.

Stanley started for the Congo in 1879 at the head of a powerful expedition, mainly, if not entirely, paid for by King Leopold. In the course of five years he laid the foundation of the Congo Free State, which still bears his native name, 'Bula Matadi,'t as its local designation. Stanley, like the British Government, seems for long to have been under the impression that he was laying the foundations of a great homogeneous native state under British protection. The King of the Belgians was financing this operation out of 'pure philanthropy.' It was, of course, the most philanthropical thing you could do to poor benighted savages to place them under British protection. Contemporary opinion regarded the French as-well, French, that is to say, 'immoral'; the Portuguese were Roman Catholics,' they were suspected of a 'hankering after slavery,' and they 'strangled commerce' by high customs duties and oppressive restrictions. The Germans were not yet above the horizon, from the point of view of a colonising people, though, it is said, they

It is one of the ironies of contemporary history that British East Africa contains no monument or official recognition of its creator.

+ This nickname, frequently applied to former native celebrities in the old kingdom of Congo, means '(He) breaks stones.' Matadi = ‘stones,' and in the more corrupt dialects of the Central Congo is softened into Matare. We are, of course, only repeating contemporary opinions.

were watching Stanley and the King of the Belgians all the time, and waiting to pounce on the Congo the instant it was dropped.

So the work of the 'Comité d'Études du Haut Congo,' between 1879 and 1884, became, in the eyes of the world, a British enterprise, in which Stanley bore the flag of St George up the Congo from Banana Point to Stanley Pool, and from Stanley Pool to the Arab stations at Stanley Falls. His opponents, covert or undisguised, were De Brazza, on the part of the French, and the great Dutch trading-house on the Lower Congo, the subtle champion either of the Portuguese or of the shrouded German ambitions centred in Peschuel-Loesche and his companions. King Leopold engaged for the work of the 'Comité' Englishmen chiefly, a few notable Belgians, several celebrated Germans, like the great explorer von Wissmann, the clever naturalist, Peschuel-Loesche, and some Danes and Swedes. No hint was given till late in 1883 that Stanley was deluded, and that Leopold II was really working in the main for Belgian ends. Then it began to dawn on the British Government that the enterprise of the committee for studying the Upper Congo might be drifting in a direction opposed to British political interests in West Africa; and that a Congo empire for Belgium, Germany, or France might be in process of creation under Stanley's unconsciously directed energy. So a treaty was negotiated with our old rival Portugal, which recognised Portugal as the dominant power on the Lower Congo, in return for a vague partnership with that power in controlling the navigable Lower Congo and a free hand for Great Britain on the upper reaches of the river.

There is now little doubt that, had the famous treaty with Portugal, negotiated by Sir Charles Dilke, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, and Sir Robert Morier in 1884, been ratified and carried out, despite French indignation and German growls, little more would have been heard of the 'Comité d'Études' and the King of the Belgians on the Upper Congo; that the Congo Basin would have been added to the British Empire, together with Delagoa Bay and Nyasaland, before its time; with Dahome also, and an all-British West African coast between Sierra Leone and the Gaboon. It is true that, on the other hand, we might

have lost Egypt and Northern Nigeria, East Africa and Zanzibar. But the King of the Belgians was forced to unmask his plans in very desperation. While he wished to preserve his nascent African dominion from absorption by the British Government, he was anxious not to arouse the hostility of the British people. Rather he hoped, through Stanley, Sir William Mackinnon, and Mr James Hutton, to enlist their sympathies against their own Government, and so ward off any Anglo-Portuguese combination. At the same time he awakened German jealousy of British imperial expansion; he promised France a share in the Congo Basin, and, at any rate, the reversion of his own project; he conciliated the Dutch house on the Congo, and disarmed Portugal by acquiescing in her annexation of the southern bank of the Lower Congo, Cabinda, and a great hinterland for Angola. In short, he made use of the prevalent and natural jealousy and distrust of Great Britain to divert hostility from his own schemes of a Belgian empire in Central Africa. And he succeeded. The Berlin Conference was summoned; a little flattery secured the sympathy of the United States, the Americans believing that another and larger Liberia was in process of creation; and the Independent State of the Congo, briefly known as the Congo Free State, was born, and placed under the sovereignty of the King of the Belgians, with provision (as regards France, then the only Power to be feared) for a closer connexion with Belgium if it could be subsequently brought about.

This conference, as also those which succeeded it at Brussels, gave rise to a large display of the false sentiment with which Europe and white America are wont to cover their projects in the lands of black and yellow A millennium was to dawn in Central Africa under the régime of this black state, which would be a kind of federation of native chieftainships under the presidency of King Leopold. Aged statesmen shed tears at the beauty of their valedictory speeches and the visions they had conjured up of a regenerated Africa. Of one thing Europe in congress was quite certain-there was to be free trade, not only in the actual basin of the Congo, but even over considerable regions beyond. There were to be no import duties anywhere in this vast area, from Vol. 204.-No. 406.

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