Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/122



We have now to record the operations of a System which Conan Doyle has described as the "greatest crime in all history"; Sir Sidney Olivier as "an inversion of the old Slave-Trade"; the British Primate as a matter "far transcending all questions of contemporary politics"; and a British Foreign Secretary as "bondage under the most barbarous and inhuman conditions, maintained for mercenary motives of the most selfish character." These are quotations taken from a mass of similar utterances. It would be an easy matter to fill an entire volume with similar denunciations by men of many countries and of all classes and professions, which resounded in Legislative Chambers, from platform, pulpit, and throughout the world's Press for over a decade. And it is undeniable that all the misdeeds of Europeans in Africa since the abolition of the over-sea slave trade, pale into insignificance when compared with the tragedy of the Congo. Indeed, no comparison is possible as regards scale, motive, and duration of time alike.

There is much that is removed from the merely covetous in the ambitions of statesmen to extend their country's dominion over alien peoples and territory, and in the imperialistic impulses of nations from which statesmen derive the necessary support for their actions. A restricted section of the community may, and does, benefit pecuniarily, but lucre is not usually the originating influence.

The clash between civilised and uncivilised man for possession of the soil may lead to injustice and cruelty which a wider vision would recognise as short-sighted and unnecessary, and a wise statesmanship avoid. But the driving forces are those of instinctive and uncontrollable racial movements.

No such considerations apply in the case of the Congo. There, the motive from first to last was despicably sordid. Whatever may have been King Leopold's original purpose in seeking to acquire a vast African demesne, the acquisition of wealth and of power through its systematised pillage soon became his fixed design. The capitalists he gathered round him and who shared his spoils never had any other. The extension of this System to the French Congo was the result of a combination of circumstances. Venality in French political circles made its extension possible. Once introduced, a vested interest was created which proved too strong fer every successive Minister who spent a precarious and short-lived tenure at the Colonial Ministry, and which gradually obtained entire mastery over administrative policy. This can be doubted only by those who are unaware of the part which la haute finance plays in French internal politics,