Page:Morel-The Black Mans Burden.djvu/157

 itself. He felt impelled to inform his Government that France was permitting piracy and murder as an institution under the tri-colour; and that "liberty, equality and fraternity" in the French Congo, spelt liberty to rob and massacre, equality with the systematised scoundrelism reigning on the other side of the great African river, fraternity in crime with Leopold's slave-drivers.

From that moment French diplomacy placed every obstacle in the way of an International Conference into the affairs of the Congo Free State, and Franco-Belgian diplomacy worked all over the world against the efforts of the reformers, while the increasing tension between London and Berlin over the Morocco affair gave the Foreign Office a further excuse for doing nothing. Diplomatic intrigue, capitalist finance, the general anarchy of European relationships, combined to perpetuate for many years the agony and the extermination, in a literal sense, of millions of human beings in both Congos. From that moment, too, French Ministers, vigorously pressed by the Boards of the Concessionaire companies and by Belgian diplomacy, determined to hush up the scandal.

What prodigious happenings hang upon apparently slender issues. Had De Brazza lived to return to France the whole history of the ensuing seven years might well have been wholly different. French national policy is unutterably selfish and finance-ridden to a supreme degree. But no country in the world contains more individuals capable of casting aside every personal consideration in the pursuit of abstract justice. As it was, a few courageous men did arise who strove manfully to clear their country from the stain inflicted upon it. But De Brazza would have made an appeal direct to the hearts of the French people, which it is difficult to believe would not have proved irresistible. And who knows but that the coming together of the great Powers in a cause of human justice and mercy would not have proved a solvent to the bitter suspicions which divided them, and saved humanity the terrible experiences of the past five years. That was the thought which inspired some of us in the sustained efforts we made before and after De Brazza's untimely end, to bring such a conference about. The ways of