LIBRARY OF CONGRESS M ] 
 
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 Copy 1 
 
 BRIEF OF HENRY I. KOWALSKY, 
 
 OF THE NEW YORK BAR. 
 
 MARCH, 1905. 
 
BRIEF OF HENRY I. KOWALSKY, OF 
 
 n 
 
 THE NEW YORK BAR, ATTORNEY AND 
 COUNSELLOR TO LEOPOLD IL, KING OF 
 THE BELGIANS AND SOVEREIGN OF 
 THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF THE 
 CONGO, IN MATTERS TOUCHING HIS 
 RIGHTS AND POSSESSIONS ABROAD, IN 
 REPLY TO MEMORIAL PRESENTED TO 
 THE PRESIDENT ' OF THE UNITED 
 STATES OF AMERICA CONCERNING 
 AFFAIRS IN THE CONGO STATE BY 
 THE CONGO REFORM ASSOCIATION, 
 SUPPORTED BY THE BRITISH AND FOR- 
 EIGN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY AND THE 
 ABORIGINES' PROTECTION SOCIETY. 
 
 MARCH, 1905. 
 

ANSWER TO MEMORIAL. 
 
 rl 
 
 * Mr. President: 
 
 I As the legal representative of the Belgian 
 
 ^. Government in matters touching their rights and possessions 
 
 TV^broad, I beg leave to respectfully submit the following in answer 
 
 ^ to the Memorial heretofore presented concerning affairs in the 
 
 Congo State, by the Congo Reform Association, supported by the 
 
 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the Aborigines' 
 
 Protection Society: 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I have intentionally delayed presenting my views in this mat- 
 ter, well knowing that at the time it was brought to your notice, 
 you, as the representative of a great political party, were then 
 before the nation for its consideration. I was also aware that 
 Congress was very soon thereafter convened and has been occupy- 
 ing the Executive attention ever since. 
 
 Now that Congress is closed and the Inaugural ceremonies are 
 over and the congested conditions which have consumed your every 
 moment are in a degree relaxed, I feel that even now I am in a 
 way trespassing upon your valuable time. My partial excuse 
 is found in the knowledge that you are untiring in your energy in 
 seeking the right that I venture my humble opinion, based upon 
 the history of the past and the hopes of the future of my clients, 
 whose righteous cause and the justice of their attitude rather in- 
 clines them to come before you to be heard than to demur to what 
 might be the jurisdiction of the Forum, and as it is not intended 
 to impose upon you the legal side of the contest, we know that 
 with the equities submitted, your sound judgment will meet with 
 due consideration, and, we trust, justification. 
 
 My clients are weak in arms but are strong in tlieir battle 
 for human progress, and, knowing that the personnel of this gov- 
 ernment is in favor of the weak when right, as against the strong 
 when wrong, this nation under its present Executive has never 
 feared to administer a rebuke where it is deserved, nor bestowed 
 praise where it belongs. The Congo Free State has at no time 
 in the past called upon any other nation to aid it in suppressing 
 
the native warrior, and now that he is suppressed, it does not desire 
 to divide its revenues with its envious and covetous neighbors. 
 There are nations that are much given to holding and conducting 
 colonial governments, some acquired peaceably, some as the result 
 of contest and conquest, and other methods. It has been said, 
 and the statement has not been contradicted with any force, that 
 it is an old method that some nations have of first sending their 
 missionaries into a country, then their merchants, and finally their 
 army. We have had a few missionaries from this nation, a few 
 merchants, but we hope to progress without any of their army. 
 In fact, the nations of the world would not stand by and see a 
 nation whose righteous conduct has proclaimed it worthy of gov- 
 erning, interfered with or even unjustly criticised. 
 
 The Congo government has a high and mighty purpose, born 
 in the brain and heart of its sovereign. With its legend and motto 
 "Work and Labor," carried into practical effect, tremendous re- 
 sults in the interest of this people and the higher civilization are 
 being daily realized. 
 
 The Sovereign of the Congo Free State is not an ordinary 
 monarch, and, though the Belgic possessions are small, their king 
 is a man of intellectual distinction and thoroughly modern in his 
 ideas. Like his father, the first King of the Belgians, he has done 
 more for humanity in a shorter space of time and more effect- 
 ively than any other monarch existing. He took up the sentiment 
 that his father expressed when he became king of the Belgians, 
 to-wit: "Human destiny does not offer a more useful task than 
 that to be called to found the independence of a nation and to con- 
 solidate its liberties.*' Leopold II.'s task is an hundredfold greater 
 than that of his sires, who amalgamated a nation of two different 
 peoples speaking a different and divergent language, one the Wal- 
 loons and the other the Flemish, which he left as a heritage to his 
 son in a united and happy, as well as prosperous condition, and 
 when I view the attacks of the critics and the carpers upon the 
 government of the Congo and its sovereign, they seem to me like 
 a small child casting a pebble into the great ocean with its childish 
 thought that it may dam up the whole sea. 
 
It may be interesting to know, Mr. President, that if the 
 present King of the Belgians had been born of his father's first 
 wife, the beautiful Princess Charlotte, the only daughter of George 
 IV of England, Leopold to-day would be the reigning King of 
 England, but she died simultaneously with the birth of her child, 
 and the widower, who was then the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, whose 
 greatness in the fore part of the nineteenth century was recognized 
 by the powers of the world, and who was tendered the crown of 
 Greece, which he refused, was then made King of the Belgians 
 and accepted the mighty and illustrious position because he felt an 
 especial sympathy withi the people he was to govern. 
 
 The mother of King Leopold II was the Princess Louise, 
 the eldest daughter of King Louis Phillipe of France, whose reign, 
 if it had not been interfered with, would have made the present 
 King of Belgium the King of France, so that it may be said that 
 the sovereign of the Congo is great of heritage, greater by reason 
 of his big heart and brain and broad conception of the rights of 
 humanity. So it follows that if he had not progressed in doing 
 that which he has done, the uplifting of thirty millions of people, 
 the most heroic act of the age, he would have been a disappointing 
 character in history. He has fulfilled much beyond what the 
 fondest ambition of man could conceive of. Such a sovereigpn, 
 such a monarch, stands out of the reach and beyond the assault 
 of the vicious traducers and the snarling, angry wolves who, 
 cloaked in the name of humanity and veiled under the guise of re- 
 ligion, are rather serving Satan and Mammon, who spend their 
 lives finding fault and making mischief and end ignominious fail- 
 ures, while the honest man, who has a general purpose that con- 
 serves the right of his fellow man and aids the world to a higher 
 and better condition goes on to be illumined here and hereafter. 
 
 The Memorial referred to is, to say the least, a most remark- 
 able document. It seeks to induce the President of the United 
 States, upon mere hearsay testimony and shadowy allusions, to 
 interfere in the internal affairs of a State whose autonomy has been 
 recognized by the civilized nations of the globe. 
 
6 
 
 The atrocities committed in Russia, the sufferings of the 
 Armenian Christians, the Macedonian uprisings, the general situ- 
 ation in the Balkans, and, in fact, all the crimes that have been 
 committed, both in this country and elsewhere are for the nonce 
 forgotten, and all that is left for the Memorialists to sigh and 
 grieve over are the facts that Leopold and his subordinates have 
 compelled Congolese negroes to obey the biblical injunction of 
 earning their bread, and by wise laws have attempted to preserve 
 for posterity the natural resources of the Congo Basin. 
 
 Industry has ever been the watchword of civilization, and this 
 applies with particular force to savage and barbarous peoples. By 
 keeping this truism in mind, one will be able to understand the 
 colossal work of bringing into subjection and order thirty millions 
 of savage Congolese natives. These natives were steeped in the 
 horrors of cannibalism and afflicted with the idea that prowess was 
 best displayed by maiming their prisoners of war, much as the 
 Indians of our plains used to do when they exhibited the scalps 
 of their victims as their proudest trophies. Among such a people 
 industry is regarded with contempt, and to overcome these racial 
 prejudices it is necessary not only to rule with a firm hand, but 
 also so to conduct the affairs of government as not to, without sub- 
 stantial reasons, offend against native prejudices and tribal 
 customs. 
 
 RISE OF THE FREE STATE. 
 
 Perhaps nothing will give more satisfaction to the real friends 
 of negro civilization than the ringing words of your Lincoln's 
 anniversary address, delivered before the Ne\V York Republican 
 Club on the 13th of February, 1905. Lincoln, it may be said, be- 
 fore any man who ever lived, stood for the open door of oppor- 
 tunity to the downtrodden and oppressed. He gave to the cause 
 not lip but heart service, and his memory will be honored and 
 revered as long as men rise above selfishness and greed and regard 
 with consideration the sufferings of mankind. The kernel of the 
 whole situation is contained in your remarks, and the solution of 
 the African problem will be reached when the negro is impressed 
 with the truth of your statements that 
 
"Laziness and shiftlessness ; these, and above all, vice and criminality 
 of every kind, are evils more potent of harm to the black race than all acts 
 of oppression of white men put together. * * * If the standards of 
 private morality and industrial efficiency can be raised high enough among 
 the black race, then its future on this continent is secure." 
 
 Dreamers and academic publicists may prate of humanity, 
 but the wise man and practical ruler understands that a strong rein 
 is necessary to hold in check the propensities of a savage people. 
 
 Though the history of the Congo is but of yesterday, it pre- 
 sents a striking example of Belgian enterprise and devotion to prin- 
 ciple. The conquests of Spain and of England have indeed 
 astounded the world, but when Leopold has passed to the great 
 beyond and the story is told of his life-work, it shall be said of him, 
 as it has been said of few monarchs, that he entered upon the work 
 of conquest not for glory, not for self-aggrandizement, but for 
 the benefit of the benighted savages who peopled the Congo and in 
 order to rescue them from the dreadful tyranny of Arab slave- 
 traders and the atrocities consequent upon their tribal wars and 
 fetich worship. 
 
 STANLEY ENTERS THE CONGO BASIN. 
 
 When the great Stanley entered the Congo Basin, in 1872, it 
 was through the philanthropy of the press. When he returned 
 and laid the foundation of the Congo Free State, it was through 
 the beneficence of Leopold II., whose private purse was used with- 
 out stint in behalf of the enterprise, and who pledged himself 
 that whatever others might do, he stood for the principle that the 
 light of religion and civilization should shine resplendent even in 
 the darkest confines of the African forest. And now, to-day, when 
 the busy hum of industry is heard even beyond Stanley Pool, when 
 the emblem of salvation has been erected and is fast being under- 
 stood by the natives, when the hopes of the monarch who has 
 labored and toiled, even during the heat of the day, are about to be 
 consummated, and when his cup of happiness is filled to the brim, 
 there are found disciples of the carpenter of Nazareth, whose 
 mission on earth was good will, and whose chief admonition 
 was to speak no ill of one's brother, eager in the work of dashing 
 
8 
 
 the cup from his lips and heaping obloquy and contumely upon 
 his venerable and venerated head. Venerated, I say, not because 
 of his kingship, not because of any royalty which attaches to him, 
 but because he has suffered and overcome, because he has gone to 
 the farthest end of the earth and risked his private fortune in an 
 enterprise which is a jewel in the crown of Christian endeavor, 
 and further, that he has done this with humility and in order that 
 it might be said of him when his life-work was done and he was 
 free alike from calumny and praise, "Well done, thou good and 
 faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will 
 make thee lord over many." 
 
 LEOPOLD'S AID TO STANLEY. 
 
 Wlien the cry went out from Stanley that there were thirty 
 millions of negroes burning to be rescued from the Nile Arabs, 
 Leopold alone came to the relief of this intrepid explorer and 
 enabled him to crown with glory a life whose noblest achievement 
 was the work he did in behalf of African development. How 
 comes it, then, that the work of the friends of Africa is followed 
 by denunciation and calumny? To this question there can be but 
 one answer, "Thrift." Cupidity has taken possession of many 
 souls and wherever cupidity abounds, there will be found its faith- 
 ful and devoted servitors. This phenomenon appears to be inbred 
 in the nature of man. Perhaps it is the work of the serpent. 
 Whatever the cause, it is a factor which must be taken notice of, 
 and I shall proceed in my poor way to demolish this house of cards 
 erected by the enemies of the Congo State, whose gospel is that 
 of the soil rather than that of the soul. 
 CHARGES: 
 
 The chief charges against the Congo government are : 
 
 1st. That it has been cruel and inhuman in its treatment 
 of the natives. 
 
 2d. That it has declared all unoccupied lands to be a part of 
 the public domain, and 
 
 3d. That it has imposed up<&n the natives the obligation to 
 work. 
 
 That it is a great deal easier to criticise than to construct has 
 long been recognized as a self-evident proposition. This truism, 
 
however, seems to have been lost sight of by our amiable oppo- 
 nents, and for that reason I desire to commend to them a careful 
 reading of the words of J. M. Gibson, who says : 
 
 "The critical faculty has its value in correcting errors, reforming abuses, 
 and demolishing superstitions. But the constructive faculty is much nobler 
 in itself, and immeasurably more value in its results, for the obvious reason 
 that it is a much nobler and better thing to build up than to pull down. It 
 requires skill and labor to erect a building, but any idle tramp can burn it 
 down. Only God can form and paint a flower, but any foolish child can 
 pull it to pieces." 
 
 It may be said of Leopold that he is essentially a constructive 
 statesman and not an academic dreamer. That while his enemies 
 have been indulging in diatribes against his administration of the 
 governmental affairs of the Congo he has had an eye single to the 
 building up of a great state. Firmly convinced of the rectitude 
 of his intentions, he has pursued his policy for good unswervingly, 
 and he may rest assured that long after the names of his detractors 
 have been lost in oblivion and their works forgotten, he will be re- 
 membered as the great benefactor of the African race. 
 
 PENAL LAWS. 
 
 The penal laws of the Congo State are justly and zealously 
 maintained. The white man, by reason of his superior education, 
 is generally impressed more emphatically with the necessity of 
 the law of obedience than it is possible to impress this law upon 
 the native, but there is no opportunity that is not seized upon by 
 the officials and the educators to bring the native to an under- 
 standing of the necessity of being law-abiding. A well organized 
 police protects the country in every direction. Magistrates and 
 judges are performing their duties under prescribed law. The 
 prisons and the punishments meted out to offenders are upon the 
 highest plane of human justice, and yet the political critic, when 
 referring to the incidents which occur in the Congo, holds up to 
 public view the individual act of every native; in fact, there is a 
 constant and continuous espionage going on by the Liverpool 
 Association to find, under any pretext, something that they believe 
 may arrest the attention of the outside world and create a sensa- 
 
10 
 
 tion and thereby bring about the condemnation of the Congo gov- 
 ernment by reason of the act of some individual malefactor. In 
 other words, the wrongdoing or crime of the individual is at- 
 tributed to the government, or it is charged to have been done 
 under the government's direction, or through or by the instrumen- 
 tality of some government official, and in order to give publicity 
 and to exploit whatever may happen in the natural course of 
 events in the Congo, this political association of Liverpool carries 
 on at a great expense a newspaper, under the editorial direction 
 of the special censor and critic, Morel. The paper is entitled 
 "The West African Mail." It would be more explanatory and less 
 delusive to the public if the word "Black" were printed between 
 the third and fourth words of its title. 
 
 BECK CASE. 
 
 We may well wonder what this Liverpool Association and its 
 sensitive members would have said, or how they would have cried 
 aloud in unholy terms against the Congo, if the Alfred Beck 
 episode had taken place in the Congo. And yet it is a notorious 
 fact that Beck, this tortured of men, innocent as a child, yet to 
 be born of the crime with which he was charged, served four years 
 at hard labor in a government prison in England ; and, after serv- 
 ing his term, was again arrested and convicted and again sen- 
 tenced to imprisonment, all in sight of the Liverpool Association 
 for the correction of wrongs in other people's government, all in 
 a land of advanced civilization, far beyond the Congo in its gra- 
 tuitous advice and willingness to correct its neighbors' alleged 
 wrong-doings. With all the boasted civilization that permeates 
 England, it is that country's shame that it has existed and does 
 still exist without a Court of Appeals in criminal cases. Let the 
 English people turn their eyes to the much-criticised Congo and 
 there they will find an advance in the interest of a higher class of 
 justice, an advanced judicial system there existing, one worthy of 
 the emulation of the British government. Justice in the Congo 
 Free State is dealt even-handed and alike to all, and is in concert 
 with the most advanced nations and in common with every other 
 
II 
 
 form of human justice. Of course, it is neither infallible nor free 
 from imperfections. It is the same system which has been applied 
 to white men for centuries, and is now being exercised in the in- 
 terest of suppressing crime among the natives. The government 
 of the Congo has given exceptional pledges of firmness and im- 
 partiality, and these pledges have been well maintained. And so, 
 to revert to the Beck case, if Beck had been tried even in the 
 wilds of the jungle or on the banks of the Congo, or, in fact, in 
 any part of its territory, he could have proved his innocence to 
 fair-minded judges, who would have heard him on appeal, and he 
 would not have suffered the destruction of his manhood by incar- 
 ceration in a penal institution almost within sight of the Liverpool 
 Reform Association. If Florence Maybrick had likewise been 
 put to trial in the Congo, she would not have suffered fifteen years' 
 imprisonment for a crime that most of her countrymen believe she 
 was not guilty of. 
 
 U. S. PENAL STATISTICS. 
 
 Mr. President, you are a lawyer of attainments and a states- 
 man who has reached the highest place in the gift of his country, 
 and it would be but a waste of your valuable time to even attempt 
 to argue that our own government, like other well-meaning gov- 
 ernments, is constantly exerting the best moral influence possible 
 over its people in order to avoid crime and wrong-doing. We 
 have surrounded ourselves with the very best condition of higher 
 education, thousands of churches and Sunday schools, great and 
 gracious ministers of the gospel, the surrounding of the family 
 with a pure home life, constantly legislating in our National De- 
 partment, in our respective State Legislatures and in the Municipal 
 boards of control, such laws as shall minister to the welfare of 
 the people, all with the hope of keeping our citizens upright and 
 industrious, and yet, with all these great instruments at our hand, 
 we are compelled, nevertheless, to maintain in the respective state 
 prisons of the United States nearly 100,000 felons. The man 
 who would say, or the association that would declare that the 
 government was responsible for each individual act of the criminal 
 
12 
 
 would be denounced as an idiot, yet when you analyze all the 
 charges of the Liverpool Association, when you hear its members 
 exclaim against the Congo, they make every individual act of the 
 criminal the act of the government, or they attribute to the gov- 
 ernment responsibility therefor. 
 
 NEGRO CRIMINALS. 
 
 A fact that is important in connection with the unjust crit- 
 icism of this new State can in a way be deduced from the fact that 
 here in the United States the negro is about one-sixth of the entire 
 population, and it is strange to say that, though the negroes have 
 had civilizing influences about them ever since this government 
 came into existence, nearly twenty-five per cent, of the prisoners 
 in penal institutions are black men. If the penal institutions of 
 this country have been kept so busy with the American negro, what 
 ought to be expected of the negro of the Congo? And yet there 
 is no such proportion of criminal life in the Congo as the records 
 disclose either in England or America. 
 
 LONDON VICE. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the virtue of the native women com- 
 pares favorably with many of the older nations. The Liverpool 
 Association and its desire (if honest) to reform humanity might 
 avoid criticism and be the recipient of great praise and gratitude 
 if it opened its eyes to the unfortunate and needy white sufferers 
 and coreligionists, as well as fellow countrymen, who are under 
 its immediate eye, and lend them a helping hand and rescue them 
 from their immoral and physical condition. There is nothing 
 more abhorent to an American visiting London than to find that 
 vice is rampant in the very heart of the city of London, Picadilly, 
 Trafalgar Square, the Strand — yes, under the very chimes of St. 
 Paul and but a few squares from Buckingham Palace, circling 
 back to the House of Parliament — there nightly, as one night fol- 
 lows the other, are thousands and thousands of young English 
 women, unbridled in their shame, plying their nefarious and im- 
 moral trade. This is not of to-day, but has existed for years and 
 
13 
 
 years, and will continue, unless a more intense humanity can 
 be infused into the Liverpool Association, whose true object is 
 political confiscation of the rights of others, expressed by a hypo- 
 critical and pretended interest in the sufferings of the Congo negro 
 rather than an interest in their own country women. The profit 
 of rubber and ivory seems to be the thinly- veiled ambition of those 
 who are the head and front, as well as the heart and soul, of the 
 Liverpool Reform Association. This Association recalls the na- 
 ture of the ostrich, who, when it hides its head in the sand 
 feels that it is not seen because it does not see. Individuals, as 
 well as communities, would indeed be blind if they did not see the 
 real purpose of the Liverpool organization and understand its 
 motives. The pretense of this organization that it has no ambition 
 beyond that of humanity recalls the character of those persons 
 who always hide their ambitions beneath an affected humility, 
 filling their speeches with quotations from the Bible and with 
 mythical effusions, even accompanied by tears, in proclaiming that 
 whatever they do on behalf of the State is as an obedient colleague 
 in the service of the people. The ambitious in all ages, whose de- 
 sire has been to acquire the end sought for by this Liverpool As- 
 sociation, have always had their pamphleteers and their reptiles 
 who slander and sting their adversaries and assimilate their pro- 
 jects. It is an old saying that the man who proposes to confiscate 
 liberty, vaunts and declares himself ready to combat despotism. 
 
 ACTS OF CRUELTY. 
 
 As to the charges of cruelty, which include the charges of 
 maimed limbs and other atrocities, committed by regular and 
 irregular troops, these are based mainly upon the testimony of 
 such publicists as Mr. E. D. Morel, whose devotion to the interests 
 of the Liverpool Association has carried him away to such an 
 extent that he did not hesitate to attempt to debauch Mr. Bene- 
 detti, an agent of the Congo Free State, paying him money and 
 offering him more if he would only furnish information, true or 
 false, which would reflect upon the government of the Congo. 
 This transaction is vouched for, and the whole pitiable story is set 
 
14 
 
 forth in an article published in the Independence Beige of Decem- 
 ber 1st, 1904. It must further be remembered that Mr. Morel 
 was apparently assisted in this nefarious business by Mr. John 
 Holt, merchant, of Liverpool, Vice-President of the Liverpool 
 Chamber of Commerce and a founding member of the Congo 
 Reform Association. To readers of history, and especially to 
 those who remember the African slave trade and its attendant 
 horrors, it will appear significant that the most bitter and im- 
 placable enemy of the Congo government, namely, the pseudo 
 publicist, Mr. E. D. Morel, should have the support and sympathy 
 of the Vice-President of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. 
 History appears to be repeating itself. It was the Liverpool mer- 
 chants who rallied to the danger cry of the African slave traders, 
 when Wilberforce and his associates began their attack upon this 
 institution. From Liverpool went forth the specially constructed 
 prison ships freighted with shackles with which to bind the cap- 
 tive African, and Bibles with which to convert him. It was in 
 Liverpool that the last stand for African slave trade was made, 
 and strange to say, Liverpool is the home and furnishes the inspira- 
 tion to the societies whose avowed purpose is opposition to and 
 condemnation of King Leopold's reign over the Congo Free State, 
 a reign that has resulted in the manumission of millions of negroes 
 and their physical and moral betterment. 
 
 MOREL'S ATTACKS. 
 
 Mr. Morel's literary style is almost as execrable as his facts. 
 What he lacks in information he makes up in denunciation. From 
 the title page to finis carping criticism and unlimited condemnation 
 abound. Mr. Morel's style is a recrudescence of the style of the 
 political pamphleteer, who flourished during the reign of Anne 
 and the first George. Happily for us, this sort of work is no 
 longer regarded as literature, and seldom does it appear except to 
 bolster up some special interest. It has been said, and with ap- 
 parent truth, that if special interests were opposed to the law of 
 gravitation, literary pirates would be found fulminating against the 
 theory, and this perhaps accounts for the misguided pen of Mr. 
 
15 
 
 Morel. England for centuries, both by her public men and gov- 
 ernmental acts, has time and time again proclaimed to an admiring 
 world the glad tidings that she alone was fitted by divine provi- 
 dence to carry on the work of colonization. The success of the 
 Belgians in the Congo Basin is a confutation of that idea and 
 the English merchant, ever jealous of inroads made upon his 
 business and traditionally possessed of the idea that to him belongs 
 the earth and the fullness thereof, views with alarm the supremacy 
 of Belgian interests in the Congo and would be well pleased if the 
 powers signatory to the Berlin Conference, or failing in that, the 
 government of the United States, would take such action as would 
 result in disturbances in the Congo, thereby justifying active 
 interference in the affairs of that State and eventually permitting 
 England to rehabilitate and act upon the idea that she alone of all 
 the governments of the earth is the natural protector of the down- 
 trodden and the oppressed. I venture to say no unbiased person 
 can rise from a reading of Morel's book without being convinced 
 that he holds a brief for some interest inimical to the government 
 of the Congo as at present instituted and that his personal and 
 undignified reflections upon King Leopold are founded upon com- 
 mercialism and are born of a desire to further the commercial 
 interests of the country in which the societies signatory to this 
 memorial have their habitat. Without ever having set foot in 
 the country he is describing and whose institutions he is attack- 
 ing, with slovenly disregard for the sources of information which 
 are open to him in common with all other writers, he presents as a 
 basis for his attack and as a foundation for his grossly exaggerated 
 condemnation, the warmed-over statements of a few disgruntled 
 missionaries and the charges of men who have been refused con- 
 cessions for privileges no self-respecting government would grant. 
 In indulging in his strictures on the Congo government, Mr. Morel 
 might have remembered what every tyro in governmental affairs 
 is conscious of, that one of the greatest difficulties a government 
 has in administrating the affairs of a colony inhabited by bar- 
 barous natives is to restrain the native chiefs and other natives 
 in authority from preying upon their fellows, and whatever atro- 
 
i6 
 
 cities have been committed under the flag of the Congo Free State 
 have been due to these barbarous propensities and have never 
 received the countenance or sanction of either King Leopold or 
 the government of which he is the honored sovereign. While 
 the critics in behalf of the enemies lof good government in the 
 Congo may excite the feelings of those who always take a long 
 range view of inhumanities and who, indifferent to the vice and 
 misery which surround them at home, are keenly alive to the 
 shortcomings of the people of other nations, they can have no 
 other effect upon the judicious than to make them grieve. We 
 say "Farewell" to Mr. Morel with the statement that to all those 
 who have intelligently investigated the conditions in the Conga 
 Basin his work reads like the tale of a paid carper full of sound 
 and fury signifying nothing. 
 
 MR. FOX BOURNE'S ANSWER. 
 
 Another critic who has consecrated his literary talents to the 
 enemies of Leopold is Mr. Fox Bourne. Truth compels us to 
 say, however, that he is a mere zealot, the leading spirit of one of 
 the memorialists, the Aborigines' Protection Society, and one who 
 has belabored, in and out of season, every nation which has fur- 
 thered the hope of doing something towards encouraging peace 
 and the arts of civilization among savage peoples. The same 
 charges which Mr. Fox Bourne and his society make against the 
 Congo government they have made with equal venom against the 
 British in the Transvaal and Rhodesia, charging that government 
 with pursuing a policy of exploitation against the natives and 
 administering the affairs of these countries with an eye signal to 
 its own profit and in utter disregard of the rules of morality and 
 the canons which civilized nations should observe in their treatment 
 of the weak and helpless people of the earth. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that within the limits of this article 
 I should be able to answer all the charges, both true and false, 
 which have been leveled against the Congo government. The 
 breed of its detractors is largely British. Volumes have been 
 
written upon the subject, have found a resting place upon the 
 stalls of the book-sellers, and, after a short lease of life, have fol- 
 lowed the works of many of their Grub Street predecessors and 
 have been utilized in the not very literary, but extremely utilitarian 
 business of making trunks. 
 
 CAPT. GUY BURROWS' LIBEL. 
 
 It may be said, however, in passing, that one of the shining 
 lights of Congo detraction is a certain Captain Guy Burrows, 
 sometime captain in his Britannic Majesty's service and erst- 
 while employee of the Congo government engaged in service in 
 the Congo Basin. After a short term in the Congo, Captain Bur- 
 rows, for reasons which we may, in charity, assume to have been 
 honorable, tired of the service and returned to Europe, and, after 
 a little sparring with the European representatives of the Congo 
 government with a view of re-engaging himself in its service at 
 advanced compensation, having in mind the lamentations of Job, 
 but disregarding the philosophy thereof, proceeded to deliver 
 himself of a book. Thrift, however, was the guiding star of 
 Captain Burrows' literary bark, and, after looking over the proof 
 sheets and finding them well loaded with calumny, falsehood and 
 detraction, he conceived the brilliant, if not very author-like idea 
 of blackmailing the Congo government, and sent post-haste the 
 proof sheets of his magnum opus, calling attention to some choice 
 bits of libelous matter contained therein, to the European repre- 
 sentatives of the Congo government, accompanying it with the 
 proposition to sell to them the European rights of publication. 
 The answer of the Congo government was a suit for libel, brought 
 by Captain de Keyser, long stationed in the Congo Basin, who was 
 grossly libelled in the screed of Burrows. The whole matter was 
 aired in the English courts, and the Captain and his English 
 publishers, Messrs. R. A. Everett & Company, left the court in 
 dismay and lamentation, self-convicted libelers, and the publica- 
 tion of the work was perpetually enjoined, which injunction is 
 still in full force and effect. 
 
i8 
 
 WORK OF HENRY WELLINGTON WACK. 
 
 This work subsequently found its way into print and has been 
 the inspiration of many of the Hbels and calumnies hurled at the 
 head of King Leopold and the Free State government. "The 
 Curse of Central Africa," Captain Burrows' book, has performed 
 yeomanry service in the work of Congo detraction. Poison may 
 still lurk in its pages, but I venture to say that it, and many other 
 works of the same ilk, received their quietus upon the publication 
 recently of a work entitled "The Story of the Congo Free State/' 
 by Henry Wellington Wack, of the New York Bar, Fellow of the 
 Royal Geographical Society. Whatever excuse there may have 
 been heretofore for ignorance on this subject, it no longer exists. 
 Mr. Wack, a disinterested and scholarly gentleman, has given us 
 the truth. He has not extenuated or set down aught in malice. 
 A plain, unvarnished tale is his, and it must carry conviction. 
 I commend a reading of this work to all those who desire to learn 
 the true history of the Congo Free State and the struggles and 
 aspirations of its founders. 
 
 ALLEGED ATROCITIES. 
 
 Anyone acquainted with the bibliography of Congo detrac- 
 tion must have been impressed with the utter dearth of specifica- 
 tion. They speak of the natives being robbed of their lands, of 
 enforced labor without compensation, of irregular, and for that 
 matter, regular troops, perpetrating atrocities, of maimed children 
 and scourged and outraged women; but, when called upon to 
 place their finger upon any particular sore spot, they fall back on 
 generalities or regale the public with accounts of outrages com- 
 mitted in the campaign against the Arabs in 1892-3. Congo 
 Lutete, ally of the Arab slave raiders, was defeated by Baron 
 Dhanis, whereupon Congo made his submission to the Congo 
 government and was employed, along with the native forces he 
 raised, against his former allies, the Arabs. In the engagement 
 which followed, cannibalism was undoubtedly practised, but not 
 among the State troops. 
 
19 
 
 CHARGES IN MEMORIAL. 
 
 But to return to the charges contained in the Memorial. The 
 primary objects sought to be obtained by the Berlin Conference 
 were, the inauguration of free trade within the Congo Basin, the 
 preservation of the native populations, and the improvement of 
 their moral and material condition. That these conditions have 
 been faithfully complied with is attested by the testimony of such 
 disinterested witnesses as Major James Harrison, the famous 
 Central African traveler, who has journeyed through many por- 
 tions of the dark continent where no other traveler has ever laid 
 his foot, who has added many important and valuable observations 
 and items of information to our store of knowledge of the black 
 man's country, and has been personally associated for more than 
 a generation with Equatorial Africa, and the travelers who have 
 literally given Africa to the world. 
 
 MRS. FRENCH-SHELDON. 
 
 Mrs. French- Sheldon, the famous traveler, having made an 
 independent investigation of Congolese conditions in the Free State, 
 recently returned to Europe, and, in an interview published in 
 the Journal of Commerce of January 4th, 1905, announced to the 
 world that the charges made against King Leopold and the Congo 
 government were absolutely without foundation. To use her 
 own words, "The evidence is absolutely conclusive that the labors 
 of the Congo Free State have added to the material prosperity, the 
 happiness, and the development of the natives, whilst the opening 
 up of the country and the introduction of order and system in place 
 of chaos will forever redound to the credit of King Leopold and 
 those with whom he is associated." 
 
 FREE TRADE. 
 
 Free trade exists within the confines of the territory of the 
 Congo State, if one has a correct understanding of the term. 
 Free trade, as everyone knows, implies the right of interchange 
 of commodities between the people of different countries and has 
 no reference to strictly internal commerce. There is no country 
 
20 
 
 in the world, with whose institutions I am famiUar, which does 
 not impose conditions upon the right to carry on internal traffic. 
 These conditions generally take the form of a Hcense tax, and in 
 some countries individuals are absolutely excluded, as is the case, as 
 I understand it, in France, whose government possesses a monop- 
 oly of the tobacco business, and in South Carolina, where the State 
 Dispensary has taken the place of the saloon. In the very nature 
 of things, there can be no such thing as free trade in land. Access 
 to land in every country boasting of even the rudiments of civili- 
 zation is of necessity restricted to the proprietors of the soil, and 
 in most countries, including our own, the legal theory is indulged 
 that the original and ultimate ownership reside in the govern- 
 ment. The granting by a government of the exclusive right to 
 the use of a tract of land implies, in a sense, a monopoly, for the 
 granting to one person implies the exclusion of every one else. 
 This sort of monopoly, which flourishes wherever civilization ex- 
 ists, and which, in the opinion of leading economists, is the very 
 foundation of our institutions, and lies at the base of whatever 
 good our civilization has accomplished, is not the monopoly for- 
 bidden by the act of the Berlin Conference. 
 
 NATION DEFINED. 
 
 A nation has been defined to be a body politic, a society of 
 men united for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and 
 advantage by the joint effort of their combined strength. Such 
 a society has its affairs and its interests. It is susceptible of obli- 
 gations and rights, thus becoming a moral person possessing an 
 understanding and will peculiar to itself. That the Independent 
 State of the Congo is a Government within the foregoing defini- 
 tion has passed beyond the domain of discussion, and as far at 
 least as this government is concerned, is a closed question. The 
 State existed by right and in fact long before the meeting of the 
 Berlin Conference. It was founded before 1883 by the King of 
 the Belgians by right among other forms of title of the priority of 
 his occupations in the Congo Basin. Under the name of the Inter- 
 national Association of the Congo, it was recognized as an inde- 
 
21 
 
 pendent sovereign and autonomous State by the government of 
 the United States, and any interference on our part with its in- 
 ternal policy might very well be regarded as an unfriendly act. 
 
 CONGO GOVERNMENT TREATIES. 
 
 The Congo government has the right to and does demand 
 that the treaties which were the result of the Berlin Conference 
 should be interpreted in the light of the foregoing declaration. 
 In common with, and following the practice of civilized nations, the 
 government in question has entered into treaties of amity, com- 
 merce and navigation with the other nations of the globe. These 
 treaties do not involve the surrender of any rights which the 
 Congo government has in common with all civilized states to the 
 absolute and exclusive control of its own internal affairs and to 
 adopt such laws and customs as in its judgment shall best conduce 
 to the happiness and welfare of its people. The monopolies al- 
 leged and exclusive privileges complained of by the commercially 
 interested critics of the Congo government are not peculiar to that 
 country, but flourish wherever civilization sheds its light. They 
 result from the fact that the nature of mankind requires that laws 
 should be established for the regulation of property and personal 
 rights. The necessity of these laws is exemplified by the action 
 of the British government with reference to its colonial posses- 
 sions, and also by the action of the government of the United 
 States in controlling its internal affairs, particularly with refer- 
 ence to its public domain and its control of the Indian tribes. 
 
 BRITISH INDIA. 
 
 The trading powers given by the English government to the 
 companies organized for the purpose of exploiting the resources 
 of British India were restricted to the grantees exclusively, and 
 were accompanied by the exercise of governmental powers out of 
 all proportion to the powers exercised by the Congo Free State. 
 
 LAND LAWS, ETC.. U. S. 
 
 The laws of the United States granting exclusive privileges to 
 the Alaska Commercial Company for the taking of fur-bearing 
 
22 
 
 animals upon the islands adjacent to the Alaskan Coast are a 
 striking illustration of the necessity for regulating the control of 
 public property in order to prevent its annihilation. The laws 
 of the United States relating to forest reservations, the timber 
 culture act, the granting of lands to the Pacific railroads for the 
 purpose of aiding in their construction, the land laws of the United 
 States and the general policy of the government with reference to 
 its property, all point strikingly to the fact that the government 
 of the Congo in imposing conditions upon the right to use its lands 
 and exploit its natural resources was acting in accordance with 
 principles which are at the very base of civilization, and doing 
 what was absolutely necessary to preserve for posterity the natural 
 resources of the country. 
 
 INTERNATIONAL LAW-DEFINITION OF. 
 
 Under international law, which has been defined as the rules 
 which determine the conduct of the general body of civilized 
 states in their dealings with one another, a nation is under no obli- 
 gation to fashion its internal policy so as to comport with the 
 desires or prejudices of any foreign state. Whether we use the 
 term international law or the law of nations, which is the modern 
 terminology, we are forced to the same conclusion. States are 
 separate entities, and, outside of the obligation to manage their 
 affairs so as not to offend against those principles the observance 
 of which, in their strict integrity, are essential to the peace and 
 harmony which should characterize the relations between states, 
 they owe no duty to foreign governments. When a nation pre- 
 serves in their integrity those rules of conduct regulating the in- 
 tercourse of states, and which civilized nations acknowledge to be 
 obligatory in their dealings with one another, and that collection 
 of usages which civilized states have agreed to observe in their 
 dealings with one another, they have performed all that they are 
 required to do under the canons of international law, and although 
 their internal polity may be open to criticism from an abstract or 
 moral point of view, this affords no justification for interference 
 nor does it give rise to the necessity of taking any action, either 
 
t^,^ 
 
 23 
 
 by an expression of executive sentiments or legislative resolution 
 in condemning that which mayhap does not meet with our approval. 
 I cannot do better in support of my contentions than to quote your 
 ewn words in your last annual message to Congress : 
 
 "We have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and under ordinary 
 circumstances we can do more for the general uplifting of humanity by 
 striving with heart and soul to put a stop to civic corruption, to brutal 
 lawlessness and violent race prejudices here at home, than by passing reso- 
 hitions about wrong-doing elsewhere. * * * There must be no effort 
 made to remove the mote from our brother's eye if we refuse to remove the 
 beam from our own." 
 
 PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S MESSAGE. 
 
 These are words that make for peace and goodwill among the 
 nations, and any departure therefrom must be fraught with evil 
 consequences, not only to ourself as a nation, but to all countries 
 with which we hope to maintain friendly intercourse and whose 
 good report we value. 
 
 NEGRO UPLIFTING. 
 
 The people of this country are not ignorant of the difficulties 
 connected with the uplifting of th-e negro. When we consider 
 that in this country millions of treasure and thousands of lives 
 were offered up in order to strike the shackles from four millions 
 of slaves, and that the heart-burnings which followed the de- 
 struction of an institution which many members of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race regarded as of divine origin have not been quenched, 
 it behooves us to be charitable in our estimation of the work per- 
 formed by the Congo State and its ruler, King Leopold. 
 
 LEOPOLD'S CHARACTER. 
 
 We recall that here, in our own land, this beloved nation of 
 ours was almost severed in twain — that millions of money were 
 expended and will still be expended — hundreds of thousands of 
 precious lives have gone to their deaths, our whole nation has 
 been bent in sorrow, and we can still hear the sobs of the aching 
 hearts of those who have lingered behind. All of which makes up 
 
24 
 
 in part the sum that it cost to free four milUon civiHzed, Chris- 
 tianized negro slaves in America. Though freed forty years ago, 
 the problem of their future is still a question that agitates this 
 country and exercises the mentality of our very best statesmen, 
 who are in deep meditation for a solution that will fully carry out 
 the hopes and ambitions of the great Lincoln, who has been and 
 always will be, revered by a loving and a grateful nation as the 
 Moses that led the black man from out of bondage. When all of 
 this is reflected upon, and the thoughtful and unprejudiced mind 
 looks at the Congo situation, and the work of its sovereign and his 
 subjects; when they contemplate that nearly two thousand years 
 of civilization has been crowded into twenty-five years, within 
 which time Leopold has unshackled over thirty millions of savage 
 negroes, they view with admiration this wise statesman and phil- 
 osopher king. Twenty-five years ago he adopted as the motto 
 of the State the sentiment that we are just coming to appreciate 
 as a method of bringing the American negro to a future, to wit, 
 the sentiment : "Work and labor." Work and labor mean the re- 
 tirement from a state of idleness and irresponsibility into that of 
 responsibility and industry, and that beneficent result has not been 
 obtained in the Congo without the cost of many precious lives, 
 white and black, and great hardship on the part of those who have 
 been active in bringing about this condition, as well as the ex- 
 penditure of millions of money out of the personal and private 
 purse of Leopold, who has given a life-time to this grand work 
 and who is still devoting the energy of his splendid three-score 
 years and ten to the continuance of the betterment of the govern- 
 ment of the Congo Free State. The time is not far distant, if 
 indeed it is not already present, when the world, white and black, 
 must attorn in gratitude and treat with great nobility and rever- 
 ence the life work of this philosophical, gracious and kindly sov- 
 ereign. 
 
 The American people and its governing power have been 
 face to face with a kindred subject, to wit, civilizing natives that 
 came to us as heritage through our late war with Spain. The 
 kaleidescope of time need not be presented to you, Mr. President, 
 
25 
 
 for you are now using the wisdom of your administration in de- 
 veloping, civilizing and bringing about religious conditions in the 
 Philippines, it would be an usurpation of your valuable time to 
 attempt to recall the great labor attending this great work and 
 that yet to be accomplished, and though every effort comes from 
 the heart and conscience of duty, still there are hundreds of carping 
 critics, who are calling the administration's motives into question, 
 and would, if they could, tear down all the grand work that has 
 been built up in the advancement of the wards of this nation. 
 
 FOREIGN RELATIONS. 
 
 While the conduct of the Congo Free State in its foreign 
 relations has always been marked by courtesy and goodwill, it is 
 nevertheless true that, had it been otherwise, it would present no 
 just cause for complaint, for nothing is better settled, as a matter 
 of international law, than that a nation may do things which are 
 discourteous, high-handed and unfair and yet be within its ad- 
 mitted rights and giving no formal ground for complaint. 
 
 STATEHOOD. 
 
 The essential features of statehood are dominion over persons 
 and property. The want of either of these requisites completely 
 destroys all idea of statehood. The dominion must of necessity 
 be absolute, and this is true no matter what form the government 
 assumes, whether autocratic, monarchical or democratic. The 
 supreme power must rest somewhere, and wherever lodged, 
 whether in the people, the sovereign or the government, it is in 
 its nature plenary and beyond the influence of any foreign state. 
 Absolute internal power and outward independence, except as 
 modified and controlled by the law of nations, are the marks which 
 distinguish independent states, and wherever these are controlled 
 or modified, the result is a surrender of sovereignty and a conse- 
 quent destruction of independence. 
 
 U. S. GOVERNMENT-ACTION BY. 
 
 Any official action on the part of the President of the United 
 States in the nature of an expression of sympathy with the work 
 
26 
 
 of the maligners of the Congo government, or any executive action 
 on his part, having in view the investigation of the internal affairs 
 of the Congo, would be a direct attack upon its integrity as a gov- 
 ernment, and, if effectual, would involve a complete or partial sur- 
 render of its governmental functions. 
 
 ROYAL GRANTS. 
 
 In dealing with the questions of royal grants and monopolies, 
 whether considered historically or comparatively, the absolute 
 adherence to well settled principles is a marked feature of the 
 policy of the government which I have the honor to represent. 
 There has been no departure from rules which the experience of 
 mankind has demonstrated are necessary for the conservation of 
 public property and the encouragement of private enterprise. 
 Crimes and offenses in this country, as everywhere else, are de- 
 fined, prosecuted and punished by the sovereign authority of the 
 state. In some respects the criminal laws of the country differ 
 from those of civilized nations and for this reason, which must 
 be apparent to everyone, that the circumstances surrounding the 
 administration of justice in the Congo Basin are peculiar and re- 
 pressive measures are necessary to restrain the savage tribes and 
 bring them into a condition of subjection and order. 
 
 MONOPOLIES. 
 
 As to the granting of monopolies, this has always been held 
 to relate to the internal policy of the government and grows out 
 of its right to exercise the police power which is inherent in every 
 state. The question as to public policy is a matter to be deter- 
 mined by the state itself, and if the right to exercise a monopoly 
 is conferred by public authority, that fact is conclusive upon the 
 question of public policy. In other words, every government de- 
 termines for itself, and without reference to the interests of 
 foreigners, just what franchises it shall bestow and who shall be 
 its beneficiaries. There can be no natural or legal right to engage 
 in a business which the public authority of a state has conferred 
 exclusively upon some one else. Even in a government such as 
 
27 
 
 ours, special privileges are in many cases conferred upon citizens. 
 In most, if in not all of the states, the right to a grant of corporate 
 privileges is restricted to such associations of individuals a ma- 
 jority of whose board of directors are citizens and in many cases 
 residents of the state granting the franchise. The Federal Gov- 
 ernment has always maintained, and this without question, the 
 absolute right to dispose of its lands to such persons, at such 
 times, in such modes, and by such titles as it has deemed most 
 advantageous. The power which a government has to dispose of 
 its lands includes the power to lease, as well as to sell, a govern- 
 ment having the same rights with reference to its lands and other 
 property as any individual, and the possession or occupancy of 
 land belonging to the government without a license constitutes a 
 trespass. xA.s everyone knovrs, the acquisition of title to lands 
 under the Timber Culture Act of the United States is conditional 
 upon the planting of a part of the claim with timber and keeping 
 it in a good state of cultivation for a term of years after the entry 
 of the land. Our government has always, in its treatment of the 
 Indian tribes, assumed that they were under a state of tutelage 
 and refused to recognize in them any right to transfer their lands. 
 A transfer of lands unaccompanied by governmental consent by 
 Indians maintaining their tribal relations is a void act and con- 
 trary to the expressed policy of this government. 
 
 EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES. 
 
 The granting to individuals or corporations of privileges not 
 of common right has never been held to create monopolies, for the 
 reason that unless a person has a right common with others in a 
 particular business or calling, his deprivation of it by the state 
 cannot give rise to any just cause of complaint. To render a 
 grant by th^ state of exclusive privileges unlawful as a monopoly, 
 the grant must apply to things which are of common right, not to 
 those which are in their nature a monopoly, and over which the 
 state having antecedent proprietorship by right of eminent domain 
 or otherwise, may confer exclusive control. There are, therefore. 
 
28 
 
 legislative grants of exclusive privilege which are upheld, even 
 though in effect they create monopolies, such as the exclusive per- 
 mit to operate a ferry, to erect a toll bridge, to erect wharves, and 
 generally, whenever, by accepting the grant of an exclusive fran- 
 chise rested in the state, the grantee becomes bound by an express 
 or implied undertaking to render service to the public. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF SIR HENRY STANLEY. 
 
 The Congo Free State, in answer to its critics, may invoke 
 in its behalf the testimony of Sir Henry Stanley, whose life was 
 given to African exploration, and the testimony of leading mis- 
 sionaries, travelers and publicists, who either moved by a spirit 
 of curiosity or inspired by a desire to add to the sum of human 
 happiness, have put aside all idea of physical comfort and have 
 traveled extensively in Central Africa. 
 
 Mr. Stanley, in the "Petit Bleu" of the 13th of November, 
 1903, in speaking of the difficulties of impressing the natives with 
 the ideas of civilization and calling attention to the fact that the 
 abuses with which the Congo State is taxed are individual of- 
 fenses, mistakes of inexperienced officers and local incidents such 
 as take place in all colonies, says : 
 
 I am certain that not one of the countries who are invited by the 
 newspapers to put itself in its (Belgium's) place would have been able to 
 do better. 
 
 The recitals of atrocities and bad administrations which have of late 
 been spread about are almost all, if not all, pure reports. 
 
 To-day, with its forests pierced and open, its routes, its stations, it is in 
 advance of all other African States. Take the French Congo, the German 
 East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, and compare them. The Congo 
 State prospers in a greater degree than any other part of the black continent. 
 
 When I was on the Congo and accused a tribe of cannibalism, it 
 replied : "We are not cannibals, but our neighbors are." The neighboring 
 tribe said : "It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet" ; and that 
 tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be 
 ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt 
 as to the existence of the practice. It was very seldom that I could discover 
 the guilty. How, then, in recruiting its troops, was the Congo to distin- 
 guish the black cannibals from those who were not cannibals? 
 
29 
 
 They discharge their mission under the most difficult conditions, and I 
 Relieve that I may assert that, from the Governor-General down to the 
 humblest official, there is not one guilty of cruelty. 
 
 I had on the Congo under my orders three hundred men, English, 
 Germans, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians. I found no difference between 
 them. All did their best according to their means. All were in the course 
 of duty the object of some charge. I examined the charges minutely and 
 always found them to be without foundation. That did not prevent these 
 stories reaching Banana, and from there, Europe. 
 
 England would not have managed the Congo better than King Leopold 
 has done if she had been mistress of it, as she might have become in 1877. 
 
 I crossed Africa from East to West and from West to East, and I never 
 saw any excesses committed. I do not think that from this point of view 
 there is a single sovereign living who has done so much for humanity as 
 Leopold II." 
 
 TESTIMONY OF SIR HARRY JOHNSTON. 
 
 Sir Harry Johnston furnishes decisive testimony in favor of 
 the Independent State in his book "The Uganda Protectorate." 
 He contrasts the differences between the governments of British 
 Central Africa and the Free State and concludes that the govern- 
 ment of this portion of African territory left little to be desired, 
 and in some respect was better organized than the adjoining dis- 
 tricts of the British Protectorate. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF MR. McGUIRE. 
 
 Like testimony has been given by Mr. McGuire, the English 
 missionary, who, after traveling the length and breadth of the 
 Congo Basin, says that he never heard of any atrocities com- 
 mitted by the agents of the Free State and that the little work 
 which is occasionally exacted of the natives by way of taxes is 
 as nothing compared with the immense benefits conferred upon 
 them by the State. 
 
 GENERAL TESTIMONY. 
 
 We could cite pages and pages of laudation of King Leopold's 
 reign over the Congo Basin, written by zealous, active, high-hearted 
 and aggressive men and women who have penetrated into the 
 darkest confines of the African forest in order to confer the bless- 
 
30 
 
 ings of civilization and religion upon the hapless people of that 
 country. Suffice it to say that, when such persons are agreed that 
 the Belgians have performed a great work along civilizing and up- 
 lifting lines, it ill becomes the executives of missionary societies 
 sitting in their luxurious offices in Boston and New York to hurl 
 their anathemas at the one Prince of modern times, who, setting 
 aside all desire for glory or emolument, has devoted his long life 
 to the building up of a civilization in the very heart of the dark 
 continent. It must be remembered in considering this evidence 
 that it comes from an absolutely disinterested source and from per- 
 sons who have been over the ground and who could not be mis- 
 led into forming misconceptions of the true situation. 
 
 MISSIONARIES. 
 
 A powerful blow is delivered agamst the pretender who sits 
 in his Boston office, claiming in the interest of the religious people 
 of America that he is justified in exclaiming against the Congo 
 and its cruelties as administered by the Belgic forces. This blow 
 comes from the British Baptist Missionary Society, which, in 
 January, 1903, sent to Brussels a deputation with an address which 
 was tendered to the King- Sovereign, wherein the deputation ex- 
 pressed its feelings of gratitude and tendered its commendation for 
 the kind, humane and ever-considerate and devoted attention that 
 had been accorded to its members. The address reads as follows : 
 
 "The Committee of the British Baptist Missionary Society, of London, 
 desire most respectfully to address Your Majesty as Sovereign of the 
 Congo Free State, and to express their grateful acknowledgments for 
 Your Majesty's gracious and helpful sympathy with all wisely considered 
 efforts put forth for the enlightenment and uplifting of Your Majesty's 
 native subjects living within the territories of the Congo Free State. 
 
 "In the prosecution of these labours, the Committee of the Baptist 
 Missionary Society desire gratefully to acknowledge the many signal and 
 helpful proofs they have received of Your Gracious Majesty's approval 
 and support; and very specially at this juncture they are pleased to express 
 to Your Majesty their respectful appreciation of the great boon granted 
 "to all religious, scientific and charitable institutions," by the reduction of 
 direct and personal taxes by 50 per cent, from, on, and after the first day 
 
31 
 
 of July last, as proclaimed by Your Majesty's command in the May and 
 June issues of the Bulletin officiel de I'Etat independant du Congo, which 
 the Committee regard as a further and significant proof of Your Majesty's 
 desire to promote the truest welfare of Your Majesty's Congo subjects, and 
 to help forward all institutions calculated to produce enduring and benefi- 
 cent results." 
 
 It may be said that it has been the experience of all govern- 
 ments, colonial and othenvise, that the good missionary who labors 
 with his flock, and among them, and produces results, is of great 
 benefit to the progress of a country, but the indolent, selfish, 
 vicious-minded missionan,' who abandons his vineyard and his 
 flock while he may here and there find a listener whose sympathies 
 may be momentarily aroused, when he is carefully scrutinized, he 
 is unmasked and fails in his purpose of deluding the most ordinary 
 of men. 
 
 This country has been made to taste of the insincerity of a 
 class of missionaries that were sent to the Philippines, and we cer- 
 tainly know the value of and are able to discriminate between the 
 good and bad of that calling. 
 
 The Congo Free State has been most generous to the mission- 
 aries of every religion and has invited them with open arms from 
 wherever they may come, into any and every part of Africa, and 
 has aided them with the State lands and the greatest consideration 
 in the matter of taxes. It would be interesting to observe the 
 great number of missionaries which exist in the Congo and the 
 varied denominations among them. 
 
 According to the information contained in a recent book by 
 Dr. Henr\- Guinness entitled *'Our Mission on the Congo," the 
 Doctor presents the striking information that there are 211 Pro- 
 testant missionaries in the Congo Basin, besides 283 native even- 
 gehsts and 327 native catechists. There are forty principal sta- 
 tions and 192 mission posts, and 6,021 communicants. The at- 
 tendance at Sunday schools numbers 5,641 natives, and at the day 
 schools 10,162. And, according to a statement recently published 
 by the Catholic authorities, the staff of the Catholic missions com- 
 prises 119 priests, 41 laybrethren and 84 sisters, makinc: a total of 
 
32 
 
 244- These missions comprise in all 18,973 Qiristians, including 
 5,5i5_children. The State is liberality itself in granting them the 
 enjoyment of the land necessary for cultivation besides subsidies 
 or reduction of taxes. 
 
 The instructions given to the agents of the Congo government 
 direct them to help the development and the prosperity of the mis- 
 sions by all means in their power, and even a cursory examination 
 of the periodicals issued by the evangelizing missions will show 
 considerable evidence that the missionaries of the various sects 
 are grateful for the practical help accorded to them by the Congo 
 government and its officials. 
 
 MR. BARBOUR. 
 
 It may be noted that, immediately after I had the honor of 
 presenting to you the reply of the "Federation pour la Defense des 
 Interets Beiges a TEtranger" to the Liverpool Memorial, a pub- 
 lication of the same was noted in the daily journals, I was chal- 
 lenged by the Foreign Secretary of the American Baptist Mis- 
 sionary Union, Mr. Barbour. It appeared somewhat strange to 
 me, why Mr. Barbour should take it upon himself to venture the 
 expense of hiring halls, paying for advertising matter, and enter- 
 ing into a debate between himself and me on the subject of "Ought 
 existing conditions in the Congo State to be made a subject of in- 
 ternational inquiry ?" I give his entire letter in the appendix to this 
 brief and wish to call attention to the fact that he said it seemed 
 very important to him that a correct understanding of the situation 
 should be reached, not only by ourselves, but by the general pub- 
 lic. Of course, I can readily understand how Mr. Barbour could 
 talk for himself, but his license to include the general public 
 seems slightly grotesque and rather a wholesale assumption of 
 duty on his part. 
 
 CARDINAL GIBBONS. 
 
 After reading the letter, I recall that that eminent and highly 
 respected divine Cardinal Gibbons, of Baltimore, had written an 
 
33 W 
 
 advice concisely and learnedly upon the subject, which he ad- 
 dressed to the Boston Peace Congress, but that, of course, af- 
 forded no particular opportunity^ for the personnel of the Asso- 
 ciation to exploit themselves, and the advice of His Eminence was 
 swept aside and resolutions were passed upon a subject which the 
 Foreign Society admits he was seeking for a clearer understand- 
 ing regarding the issues thereof. Notwithstanding his clouded 
 state of mind, Barbour and others indulged in passing resolutions 
 of stricture against the Congo State. 
 
 This letter was brought to my attention during the heat of 
 the campaign, and I confess I was much happier in discussing the 
 views of my party with my fellow citizens than I would have been 
 discussing the subject of the Congo Free State with a learned and 
 reverend gentleman whom I never had the pleasure of knowing or 
 hearing before, and I could not understand how any number of 
 people would desire to make up an audience to listen to Mr. Bar- 
 bour on one side, whose interest in this matter must at least be 
 considered doubtful, and myself on the other side, whose interest in 
 the matter is an open secret, being the retained counsel for the 
 Congo Free State to protect its interests as far as it lies within 
 my ability so to do, here and elsewhere, and, knowing that the dis- 
 cussion of generalities never leads to any conclusion, I sought to 
 have the learned gentleman indite a complaint, specifying some 
 specific acts and the persons committing the acts, and other things 
 important, so that a direct answer could be made, and I sent the 
 reverend gentleman the letter, which will be found in the ap- 
 pendix. 
 
 But in the meantime one of the associates of Mr. Barbour, 
 a Mr. Parker, through the newspapers, whipped himself into a 
 frenzied state, claiming that His Majesty King Leopold, through 
 his agents and hifed attorneys, was encroaching upon the draw- 
 ing rooms of our best citizens, as well as into the counting rooms 
 of the banking houses, and was in some way interfering with what 
 the Boston Society seemed to think was its rightful monopoly. 
 
 To the letter written by me, no answer was returned. 
 
34 
 
 It may be well to conclude this brief with a summary of what 
 is shown by actual figures to be the industrial condition of the 
 country : 
 
 In the year 1886 the special commerce of the 
 
 country showed Fes. 1,980,441.45 
 
 And the general commerce 7,667,969.41 
 
 In the year 1903 the special commerce amounted 
 
 to 54,597,835.21 
 
 And the general commerce 63,955,400.53 
 
 There is paid out by the government for the maintenance 
 of the army, navy, sanitary department, public works, missions 
 and educational establishments and the administrative service of 
 Africa and Europe, as well as the expense relating to transports in 
 Africa, agriculture, exploitation of the domain, savings banks, in- 
 terest on the loan on guaranteed stock, postal department, navi- 
 gation, justice and worship expenditures, amounting to about 
 thirty odd million francs. This money is, of course, distributed 
 among the people. Thousands of natives are used in building 
 roads of all kinds ; the natives are fast learning trades. The state 
 of agriculture is progressing rapidly — in fact the industries of the 
 country are multiplying with such rapidity that it is difficult to 
 keep pace with them. The Congo Free State is alive to work, and 
 its people are more prosperous and earning more money, and it 
 will continue so. And when the work of its sovereign is com- 
 pleted and he is no longer of this earth, all the fruits of his labors 
 are disposed of as set forth in his will, which will be found in the 
 appendix. 
 
 I ask, Mr. President, after perusing the documents set forth 
 in the appendix, whether you find it justifiable, by word or act, 
 to do aught save in commendation of him who, during his life's 
 laber, has carried many burdens. 
 
 In conclusion, permit me to say that Leopold II represents 
 in a greater degree, perhaps, than any man living, the spirit of 
 progress. It is given to few men in one short generation to re- 
 claim from barbarism thirty millions of people. That he has done 
 
35 
 
 this entitles him to the econiums of the world and he may rest 
 assured, notwithstanding the venom of his detractors, his fame 
 is secure in the hands of posterity. 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 HENRY I. KOWALSKY, 
 
 51 Wall Street, New York. 
 Attorney and Counsellor for 
 
 LEOPOLD IL, 
 King of Belgium and Sovereign of the 
 
 Independent State of the Congo. 
 
37 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 WILL OF LEOPOLD IL 
 
 We, Leopold IL, King of the Belgians, Sovereign of the Inde- 
 pendent State of the Congo : 
 
 Wishing to assure to Our well-beloved country the fruits of 
 the work which for many years we have pursued on the African 
 Continent, with the generous and devoted co-operation of many 
 Belgians : 
 
 Convinced of thus contributing to assure for Belgium, if she 
 wishes it, the outlets indispensable for her commerce and her indus- 
 try, and to open new paths for the activity of her children : 
 
 Declare by these presents, that We bequeath and transmit 
 after Our death to Belgium all our sovereign rights over the In- 
 dependent State of the Congo, as they are recognized by the 
 Declarations, Conventions, and Treaties concluded since 1884 
 between the foreign Powers on the one side, the International 
 Association of the Congo and the Independent State of the Congo 
 on the other, as well as all the benefits, rights and advantages at- 
 tached to that sovereignty. 
 
 Whilst waiting for the Belgian Legislature to pronounce its 
 acceptance of Our aforesaid disposition, the sovereignty will be 
 exercised collectively by the Council of the three administrations of 
 the Independent State of the Congo, and by the Governor-General. 
 
 LEOPOLD. 
 Done at Brussels the 2d of August, 1889. 
 
39 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 LEOPOLD n. TO HENRY L KOWALSKY. 
 
 Dear Colonel Kowalsky : 
 
 I beg to confirm to you that I have instructed you to defend 
 in the United States the case of the Congo Free State which is now 
 being attacked by a group of English merchants and missionaries, 
 at present represented in Washington by Mr. Morel. 
 
 You have, in the course of your stay here, been enabled to 
 convince yourself of the unfairness and falseness of these attacks, 
 and the Free State Government rely on your endeavors to en- 
 lighten statesmen and political men in the United States as to the 
 true motives of this disparaging campaign, to show them the in- 
 anity of the charges and to lay the truth before them, namely that 
 for the last twenty-five years the Congo State has been working 
 with a success that accounts for all this hatred and jealousy, 
 toward introducing into territories, formerly abandoned to barbar- 
 ism, civilization and progress and toward improving the material 
 and moral conditions of existence of the natives. 
 
 Under the stress of the indignation aroused in Belgium by the 
 English calumnies, an extensive association has been formed in 
 this country under the title of Federation pour la defense des 
 interets beiges a Testranger (Federation for defending Belgian 
 interests abroad) which consists of prominent men in the army, 
 and in commercial and industrial circles. 
 
 This association desired to submit to the enlightened mind 
 of the President of the United States their protests against the 
 audacious and untruthful statements contained in the Memorial 
 which Mr. Morel has delivered to Mr. Roosevelt. 
 
 At the request of said organization representing as it does 
 the elite of the Belgian Nation, I beg you to hand the President 
 the accompanying letter which faithfully sets out the higher prin- 
 ciples of the Congo State's internal policy. You will, in delivering 
 this communication to President Roosevelt, reiterate to him, on 
 my behalf, the feelings of high esteem I have for him and the 
 
40 
 
 unshaken confidence I place in his spirit of justice and impar- 
 tiality. 
 
 I have to express the desire that Mr. Roosevelt will kindly 
 take cognizance of this address in your presence, so that you may 
 be afforded an opportunity to give him any further information he 
 might wish to obtain from you. 
 
 The foundation and fairness of the case which you have been 
 good enough to undertake to defend will supply you with such 
 numerous and conclusive arguments as to confound the enemies 
 of the Congo Free State. 
 
 A mere examination of the Memorial issued by the Congo 
 Reform Association will show the bad faith of these people when 
 they affirm that the Commission of Enquiry recently appointed 
 by the Government of the Congo does not enjoy complete liberty 
 of investigation nor afford every guarantee of impartiality. This 
 affirmation is at once denied by a perusal of the instructions of 
 the Commission, which as will be seen by the accompanying text, 
 have given them full liberty and full autonomy. 
 
 This fact taken alone amongst many others is sufficient to 
 caution honest people against the biased assertions of our op- 
 ponents ; these are set at naught by the economic progress realized 
 by the Congo State as is demonstrated by numbers of facts and 
 illustrated by the album of photographic reproductions taken in 
 the Congo, a copy of which will interest President Roosevelt. 
 Believe me, dear Colonel Kowalsky, 
 Yours truly, 
 (Signed) LEOPOLD. 
 
 Brussels, October 4, 1904. 
 
41 
 
 DUFOURNE TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 
 
 Brussels, October 3, 1904. 
 
 Federation 
 
 pour la 
 
 Defense des Interets Beiges, 
 
 TEtranger. 
 
 To His Excellency, Theodore Roosevelt, 
 
 President of the United States. 
 Mr. President: 
 
 The Federation for the Defense of Belgian Interests Abroad 
 presents its compliments to the President of the United States 
 and begs leave to state : 
 
 That we are loth to impose upon the President of the United 
 States considerations which are foreign to the interests of his 
 government. But inasmuch as certain persons are conducting 
 within the United States a movement to involve the Government 
 of the United States in the consideration of their unfounded 
 charges and interested misrepresentations against the Government 
 of the Congo Free State, we feel it our duty to present a brief 
 statement of the objects of the Congo Government to the President 
 of a friendly power in order that the unjust methods being em- 
 ployed by the enemies of the Congo Free State may not mislead 
 the President to encourage Congressional action prejudicial to our 
 interests before we shall have been fully heard. 
 
 Our Association has been formed for the defence of Belgian 
 interests and possessions abroad. Our people esteem and admire 
 the people of the United States and have great respect for their 
 President. The Belgians desire that they shall not be slandered 
 and vilified in the midst of the American people. They feel it 
 their duty to assist the American people to a proper understand- 
 ing of the lofty purposes which actuate the Government of the 
 Congo Free State. In this connection the Belgians recall with 
 pleasure and with pride the fact that the Government of the United 
 States was the first great nation to recognize the flag of the Inter- 
 national Association of the Congo as that of an independent State. 
 By its treaties and by its adherence to the Berlin and Brussels 
 
Acts it promised liberty of trade in its part of the Congo Basin, 
 and it respectfully asserts that it has fulfilled that promise in spirit 
 and to the letter, insofar as the short term of its existence in a 
 savage country has enabled it to establish an organization which, 
 by its prosperity and progress, now excites the envy of those who 
 seek to disrupt it. 
 
 The principles which actuate the Congo Government are 
 tersely set out in an essay written by a highly qualified American 
 subject, which is herewith enclosed. May we humbly beg the 
 President of the United States to honor us by perusing this con- 
 cise exposition of the fundamental principles which underlie, and 
 which have given such progressive momentum to, the Govern- 
 ment of the Congo Free State? 
 
 The principles of the Congo Government are devoted to prog- 
 ress and civilization. The State's motto is "Work and Progress." 
 We have always felt that to intelligently follow that motto was 
 to firmly establish in the midst of conditions of savagery the 
 habit of industry and a respect for property as well as for life, 
 according to the universal law of nations. 
 
 Concerning the term "Freedom of Commerce," which Congo 
 enemies are interpreting to mean ungoverned license, we beg to 
 refer the President to the United States Laws and Penalties con- 
 cerning trespass upon and pillage of public lands and their prod- 
 uct. Perhaps no nation in the world has so precisely developed 
 the law of private and public property nor administered it with 
 finer understanding of the principles of equity and justice than the 
 United States. The Congo law relating to property is in con- 
 sonance with the law of the world's greatest nations. The great 
 success which has been attained by the Congo Government for 
 the betterment of its native inhabitants by the operation of this law 
 and the order which exists thereunder, has excited the envy and 
 the avarice of those whose ulterior motive is being cloaked in the 
 garb of humanitarianism and questionable philanthropy. On the 
 one hand it is charged that the Congo Government by its methods 
 seeks to enslave the native in order that he may serve it with 
 his hands for the benefit of interests whose welfare he does noi 
 
43 
 
 share. On the other hand, the Hbelers of the Congo wilfully 
 utter not only the unfounded accusation, but the inconsistent 
 charge, that the government cuts off the hand whose work it seeks 
 to enslave. Concerning the untruthful character of the testimony 
 in this respect which has been published against the Congo by the 
 promoters of the so-called "Congo Reform Association" of Liver- 
 pool, we beg to refer your Excellency to the great mass of 
 genuine and reliable evidence uttered by Englishmen, French- 
 men, Germans, Americans, Italians and Belgians in direct con- 
 tradiction of the falsehoods which form the traffic of the Associa- 
 tion, whose leading spirit has never been near the Congo nor the 
 natives who form the pretext of his search for personal notoriety 
 and aggrandisement. 
 
 May we also call your Excellency's attention to the fact that 
 the Congo Government, when assailed by missionaries at all, is 
 assailed by a few individual missionaries operating in conjunction 
 with the Liverpool Association, whose object we shall in due 
 course expose? The Congo Government has not been assailed by 
 Catholic missionaries at all. The Catholic missionaries are in 
 reality seeking the moral, spiritual and intellectual betterment 
 of the native race, while those of a maetrial faith, who have 
 sought from the Congo Government and been denied personal 
 concessions of material value solely, are secretly working in di- 
 rections entirely unconnected with the spiritual and moral wel- 
 fare of the Congo population. In due time and in the proper place 
 the government of the Congo Free State will produce its testi- 
 mony bearing upon this phase of the campaign begun in England, 
 and now carried to the United States, against an undertaking 
 which, within twenty years, has accomplished a greater success 
 of civilization than has ever before been attained in all the great 
 continent of Africa. 
 
 We beg your Excellency to receive from the hands of our 
 representative an abundance of carefully-prepared matter upon 
 this subject, and to command him in any further desires which 
 you may wish to express. A cursory outline, limited to only a 
 few phases of the questions which the enemies of the Congo so 
 
44 
 
 confusedly mince in their wild condemnation of a State justly 
 founded aiid intelligently and humanly governed, is not, of course, 
 intended as a sufficient statement of our case. It is merely in- 
 tended to introduce your Excellency to the subject on which our 
 representative and the evidence and Hterature he will offer to you 
 may lead you to those wise and equitable conclusions which have 
 always characterized the highest tribunals of the American 
 people. 
 
 Your Excellency is too well versed in the science of general 
 government to be influenced by the statement that where indi- 
 vidual acts are committed in violation of enacted penal laws the 
 government should be primarily charged therewith. If such 
 were the case penal institutions for the incarceration of violators 
 of police law would be no part of a nation's structures. 
 
 It is not infrequent that the cable bears to us mention that 
 in some sections of your own free and glorious country an in- 
 flamed mob seizes upon a black inhabitant and burns him at the 
 stake. Our governmental experience has taught us that such 
 acts would have been impossible if your government had been 
 advised in time to prevent them. And yet we know that your 
 government is the subject of harsh criticism by self-constituted 
 associations formed in the same country from whence come those 
 who accuse the sincere governmental effort of the Congo Free 
 State. The law of the Congo Free State is based upon the loftiest 
 ideals of humane control of a vast territory and undeveloped in- 
 terests, and every part of the State's machinery is employed to 
 ensure equal justice to all. 
 
 The "method of the State" at which Congo accusers hurl 
 their shafts, cannot be charged with the responsibility for the 
 lawless acts, in a vast territory of a million square miles, where 
 the government of that State is vigilantly and earnestly seeking 
 by the extension of its organization and police powers to sup- 
 press and punish all crime and redress all wrongs. If the subjects 
 of one nation were compelled to submit to the opinion of its un- 
 friendly neighbors as to the correctness of their habits and con- 
 duct, and were compelled to submit themselves to the penalties 
 
45 
 
 that their neighbors would attach to the alleged misconduct, the 
 subjects of one nation would be in the prisons of another. 
 
 We need hardly call the attention of your government to the 
 great and humane work which your government is now so 
 earnestly and with so much sacrifice furthering in the Philippine 
 Islands, to meet with that broad and sympathetic view of the 
 situation in all savage countries which, if fairly and justly ap- 
 plied to the Congo Free State, would place us upon that plane 
 where co-operation, not criticism, were the merit of our sacrificial 
 work in the darkest part of Africa. 
 
 It has been the pleasure of our beloved King, Leopold 11. , 
 Sovereign of the Congo Free State, to appoint a Commission 
 composed of eminent men to undertake w4th the utmost freedom 
 a judicial investigation upon all and singular the vague charges 
 from time to time used by the promoters of the ''Congo Reform 
 Association" in prostituting certain public journals published in 
 England. Your Excellency may be assured of the utmost in- 
 tegrity of the gentlemen who compose this Commission and that 
 the Congo Government will afford them all the help in its power 
 to place the truth before the eyes of the world. 
 
 In this connection Congo reformers- pretend that the decisions 
 of the Congo courts indicate that the government is bad, when 
 in truth and in fact these very decisions are, in our opinion, proof 
 of unimpeachable good faith and judicial independence. 
 
 Concerning the Congo standing army of 14,000 natives, as 
 to which some criticism is uttered by the same persons, we need 
 only indicate that the State Government is so well respected in 
 the Congo Basin that it is able to control its vast territory with 
 only seven soldiers to every 625 square miles. We have no doubt 
 that if the Congo governmental system had not included this 
 meagre police force for the repression of tribal strife and the 
 maintenance of order, its critics would have represented the 
 Congo Government as unprepared to guarantee protection to per- 
 sons and to property, and unable to maintain the integrity of its 
 frontiers. The Congo army is recruited in conformity with the 
 Belgian law of Conscription, which is a restriction of the universal 
 
46 
 
 service in continental Europe. When heretofore the government 
 enlisted a part of its army in a neighboring colony, it was re- 
 quested to desist, the promises of England to permit such recruit- 
 ing notwithstanding. Now the Congo Army is characterized as 
 barbarian! We are assured that the Congo Government would 
 have no objection to the advantage of recruiting its army in 
 China, in a manner following that of the Transvaal. 
 
 It is the earnest desire of the Belgian people and those who 
 are sincerely interested in the welfare and progress of the native 
 population of mid- Africa, that the good-will and respect of the 
 people of the United States and their President may continue, 
 by their sympathy, to enliven the devotion, energy and sacrifice 
 which the builders of the Congo Free State are expending upon 
 races which but a few years ago were in a state of the wildest 
 savagery. The vein of sympathy between Belgium and America 
 has its highest proof from the fact that we have a large popula- 
 tion of Americans residing in Belgium, where their residence has 
 always been peculiarly pleasurable to the Belgian people. 
 
 Commending to your Excellency our representative, who is 
 an eminent citizen of the United States and well known to its 
 President, we beg for him that courtesy and attention and the 
 application of those broad principles which your Excellency in- 
 variably brings to the consideration of all subjects. 
 
 We are, Mr. President, with great respect, 
 
 Your obedient servants, 
 (Signed) DUFOURNE, 
 
 The President of the Federation pour 
 le Defense des Interets Beiges a 
 I'Etrangfer. 
 
47 
 
 THOMAS S. BARBOUR TO HENRY I. KOWALSKY. 
 
 THE AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION. 
 Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 
 
 October i8, 1904. 
 Colonel Henry Kowalsky, 
 
 Care Baron Moncheur, Minister, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 My Dear Sir : 
 
 I have read with interest the statements made in the papers 
 of this morning regarding your interview with President Roose- 
 velt, and your conversation with newspaper correspondents in ref- 
 erence to Conditions in the Independent State of the Congo. I 
 observe that the views to which you give expression differ widely 
 from the impressions made upon my mind by testimony received 
 from many sources. As this subject is one of profound interest, 
 affecting the well-being of many millions of people, and concerning 
 the duty of our own Government as well as that of other govern- 
 ments in relation to these people, it seems to me very important 
 that a correct understanding of the situation shall be reached, not 
 only by ourselves but by the general public. 
 
 As you are aware, the body which I have the honor to repre- 
 sent in the appeal made to the Congress of the United States, has 
 asked only that the influence of our Government shall be given to 
 the promotion of an impartial inquiry into the conditions prevail- 
 ing under the rule of the Congo Government. With a view to a 
 clear understanding of the issue thus recognized, and the ascer- 
 tainment of the true facts of the situation, I venture to make to 
 you the proposition that we shall meet in some public hall in the 
 City of Washington, at a time and under conditions to be deter- 
 mined through correspondence, for a frank discussion of the 
 question, "Ought existing conditions in the Congo State to be 
 made a subject of international inquiry?" 
 
 I may add that in case you should find it inconvenient to 
 arrange for the appointment suggested I would consent that any 
 
48 
 
 other representative of the Congo State should meet the engage- 
 ment in your place. 
 
 In behalf of the Conference of Societies represented 
 in Missionary and Philanthropic Work in the 
 Congo State, believe me 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 THOMAS S. BARBOUR, 
 
 Chairman of Conference. 
 
49 
 
 HENRY I. KOWALSKY TO THOMAS S. BARBOUR. 
 
 New York, November i6, 1904. 
 
 Thomas S. Barbour, D.D., Cor. Sec'y, 
 American Baptist Missionary Union, 
 Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass. 
 
 My Dear Sir: 
 
 Your letter of October i8th addressed to me under care of 
 Baron Moncheur, Belgian Minister, Washington, D. C, was for- 
 warded to me at the Hoffman House. I learned of the existence 
 of this letter through the newspapers before I had the honor of 
 receiving the original. The important position you occupy as the 
 executive head of the foreign department of the American Baptist 
 Missionary Society entitles your letter to respectful consideration. 
 Absence from the city and important engagements must be my 
 excuse for not having answered it before this. 
 
 I note with pleasure the interest you take in the affairs of 
 the Congo Free State and your desire for light in regard to the 
 conditions existing in that country. You say the impressions made 
 upon your mind by testimony obtained from many sources differ 
 materially from the statements made by me in my conversations 
 with newspaper correspondents regarding the subject. I may say 
 that my views in relation to this subject are in no wise peculiar; 
 they were arrived at after a full investigation of the testimony 
 of reputable and disinterested persons and after an examination 
 of many documents. In fact, I reserved for myself a lawyer's 
 right of thorough investigation, and of being convinced of the 
 truth and justice of the cause of the Congo Free State before con- 
 senting to be retained. My continued investigations into the 
 State's affairs and my observation of the methods of those who are 
 slandering and vilifying it, only tend to confirm my belief that a 
 great wrong is being heaped upon a government which is working 
 nobly and unselfishly to advance civilization and religion among 
 a race which but a few years since was wild and savage. Minis- 
 ters properly following their vocation should be peacemakers, 
 not tormentors of those who, according to the testimony of honest 
 
50 
 
 travelers, regardless of creed, have embraced this vast field, and 
 its opportunities to serve God and humanity. 
 
 My beliefs represent in the main the views heretofore ex- 
 pressed by his Eminence, Cardinal Gibbons. 
 
 Your proposition to meet me in joint debate in the City of 
 Washington would have my hearty approval were it not for the 
 fact that I question the propriety of either you or I engaging, as 
 mere partisans, in debating a question, which as you well say, 
 involves a subject of profound interest affecting the well-being 
 of many millions of people. The subject, in my humble judgment, 
 is too grave and is fraught with too serious consequences to 
 warrant the indulgence of any partisanship, and I am not am- 
 bitious to occupy the public eye unnecessarily, especially for the 
 purpose of debating at random along partisan lines. 
 
 Permit me to say in all kindness that your letter indicates the 
 advocate and controversialist rather than the unbiased seeker after 
 truth, and I fear that, owing to the weaknesses common to hu- 
 manity and of which it is reasonable to assume you and I possess 
 our share, a public controversy in the form of a debate would 
 lead only to heated argument not conducive to a correct under- 
 standing of the conditions now existing in the Congo Free State. 
 What the Congo Government has always desired and what up to 
 this time it has absolutely been denied, has been the opportunity 
 to meet and answer specific charges made by a complainant whose 
 motives are unquestionably fair and impartial and whose charges 
 are based upon the positive knowledge of a correctly informed 
 person rather than upon irresponsible information and belief. 
 
 In order to render the proposed debate of any value in the 
 interests of truth, it must occur to you, as to any right-minded 
 man, that specific charges should be formulated and persons should 
 be directly accused of the crimes so idly made against the Congo 
 Government. I ask you, therefore, to specify the exact charges 
 which are to be the subject of this debate so as to enable me to 
 frame an answer. 
 
 In approaching the discussion of this subject, permit me to 
 call your attention to the fact that the claim of impeccability is 
 
51 
 
 not asserted by the government in question. It freely confesses 
 that it is a human institution and that at times it may have failed 
 to discover and legally punish grave and serious offenses. On the 
 other hand, it should be conceded by our opponents that the gov- 
 ernment of such a people as inhabit the immense domain known as 
 the "Congo Free State" is not without difficulty, and that the 
 inhabitants of that region, in common with the other children of 
 Adam, are somewhat marked by the trail of the serpent. 
 
 That atrocities were committed by the natives on each other 
 in the early life of this State in accordance with tribal customs, 
 which acts would now be subject to the penal law of the country, 
 may be conceded. These occur even in highly civilized States, and 
 it is not to be wondered that they occasionally happen among a 
 savage and uncivilized people. 
 
 The Congo Free State contends, and this contention cannot 
 be successfully denied, that in the main its government has been 
 enlightened and civilized. It has always had an eye single to 
 the welfare and prosperity of its people, and wherever these prin- 
 ciples have been departed from it has been due to the infirmities 
 of the human instruments it has employed, infirmities common to 
 all governments and human institutions. 
 
 In conclusion, permit me to say that the most disheartening 
 feature of the attempts of the Congo Government to firmly plant 
 civilized institutions in this great territory has been the carping 
 criticism of some of the organizations whose purpose it was be- 
 lieved to be the planting of the seed of Christianity among the 
 uncivilized races of the globe. I recall the fact that at the late 
 Peace Congress held in Boston, it was with difficulty that one of 
 our friends obtained ten minutes' time to reply to an hour's dis- 
 cussion presented by the friends of the Honorary Secretary of a 
 self-constituted Liverpool association. A disgruntled American 
 missionary to whom concessions in the Congo were refused was 
 permitted to inveigh against the government without restriction, 
 but a respectful hearing was denied those who sought to enlighten 
 your Congress with facts and figures. The Resolutions passed 
 were not openly given to the members of the Convention to delib- 
 
52 
 
 erate upon, but were suddenly sprung upon the body, after a 
 judicious amount of politics had been done to arrange for their 
 passage and to avoid dissent. In fact the conduct of the Peace 
 Congress creates the impression that even good men may not al- 
 ways be relied upon to act fairly; that they are often inclined to 
 confound the denial of the commission of a crime with an ex- 
 pression of sympathy for it. Permit me to further say that neither 
 you nor I are in a position to speak authoritatively for the United 
 States Government, and to call your attention to the fact, which 
 perhaps you have lost sight of, that the government of the Congo 
 is an independent sovereignty, having absolute control, in common 
 with all governments, over its own internal affairs, and that it is 
 responsible only to its own subjects and to the law of nations for 
 any infractions it may commit. 
 
 I am leaving for California immediately, where my legal 
 engagements will require my attention until the latter part of 
 December, at which time, if proper issues are framed and it is 
 desirable in the interests of truth, I may arrange to meet you in 
 a public debate. I am. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 HENRY I. KOWALSKY. 
 
 P.S. — If this is to your satisfaction, you can give copies to 
 Washington Post and Star and also Associated Press. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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