Page:The league of nations and primitive peoples (IA leagueofnationsp00oliviala).pdf/13

 between European Powers, although it did not create a permanent international guardianship for primitive peoples, yet rendered such a creation a much more obvious and attainable ideal.

And a most important approach was in fact made towards this ideal, for in regard to the exploitation of the Congo Basin an International Conference was assembled, at which the principle of international guardianship was powerfully advocated and to some extent established in practice. When Bismarck, at this (Berlin) Conference (1885)—in which he had refused to allow the Pope to be represented—proposed to declare that the sole purpose of its proceedings was to establish freedom of trade and navigation in the Congo Basin, the British Plenipotentiary deprecated this limitation, urging that commercial interests should not be regarded as the exclusive subject of the deliberations. The United States Minister warmly supported this attitude. And so the unpretentious realism of the Prussian confession of purpose was generously expanded by the pronouncement: "All the Powers exercising rights of sovereignty in the said territories undertake to watch over the preservation of the native races and the amelioration of the moral and material conditions of their existence, and to co-operate in the suppression of slavery, and above all of the slave-trade. They will protect and encourage all religious, scientific, or charitable institutions established for these objects or tending to educate the natives in the advantages of civilization."

Perhaps more importantly still, the Act also pro-