YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

*

THE DAY MISSIONS LIBRARY

THE TREATMENT OF
WOMEN arid CHILDREN
IN THE CONGO STATE

1895-1904

An Appeal to the Women of
the United States of America

Selections from a. pamphlet of E. D. MOREL, with
comment by ROBERT E. PARK, Ph.D., of the Congo
 Reform Association 

THE
TREATMENT OF
WOMEN AND CHILDREN
IN THE CONGO STATE
1895-1904

An Appeal to the Women of the United
States of America
7W

Selections from a pamphlet of E. D. MOREL, of the
Congo Reform Association of Great Britain, with
comment by ROBERT E. PARK, of the
American Congo Reform Association

BOSTON *?&fc

TREATMENT OF THE WOMEN AND
CHILDREN IN THE CONGO STATE
1895 - 1904

Most savages in most respects are children or more
properly adolescents of adult size. Their faults and
their virtues are those of childhood and youth. They
need the same careful and painstaking study, lavish care
and adjustment to their nature and needs. The inex
orable laws of forcing, precocity, severity, and over
work produce similar results for both. Primitive
peoples have the same right to linger in the paradise
of childhood; to war upon them is to war upon children.
To commercialize and oppress them with work is child
labor on a large scale. G. Stanley Hall,
Adolescence, its Psychology, Physiology, etc.
Vol. 2, page 649. 1904.

NOTES FROM THE DIARY OF AN ENG
LISH TRAVELLER IN THE CONGO,
IN 1895.
When calamity, in the shape of war, famine,
pestilence or economic depression, falls upon a
[people, it is the women and children who suffer
most. What is true among civilized is also true among
savage peoples, with this difference: that among
savages the merciless process of natural selection,
3

Racial Youth Preserves the Negro
of which war, pestilence and famine are the ap
propriate instruments, is more ruthless than es -
where. Again it is the women and children wno
suffer most.
In recent years a great calamity has come upon
the peoples of the Congo basin. These peoples,—
for there are hundreds of different tribes inhabit
ing the broad valley of the Congo and its tribu
taries,— who display in their character and
temperament more than any other race the apti
tudes and manners of children, have for centuries
been subjected to the cruel oppressions of the
slave trade, but they have survived. Their racial
youth and habitual light-heartedness have pre
served them under hardships which, in the course
of a few generations, have swept other savage
races from the face of the earth.
But in recent years a Power more relentless
and more destructive than that of the Arab slave
trade which it superseded has arisen in Congoland.
Armed with all the machinery of modern civiliza
tion, railways, telegraph lines and weapons of
precision; steeled, against all human feeling of
pity, by a blind and well-nigh fanatical belief in
material progress for its own sake, this great new
Power has spread itself systematically and re
morselessly, with incredible waste of native life,
over the land and the peoples of the Congo basin,
crushing out, with a hurried and irreverent greed
for "results," the social institutions, the lives and
the very desire for existence of the peoples that it
gave the most solemn pledges to protect. In the
place of the native institutions this same Power
has erected a tinsel civilization foreign to the soil,
the people and every permanent interest of
humanity and true civilization in that region.
In this process of so-called "moral and materia]
regeneration" of the country, it is again the women
i

Excerpts from the Diary of E. J. Glave
and children who have suffered most. Volumes of
testimony have been gathered together to show the
evil effects of the cruel system under which the
country is at present administered. In the brief
citations which follow it is not possible to give an
understanding, but it may be possible to arouse
interest, — or at least to dispel the indifference
with which we in America have accustomed our
selves to look upon the fate of the black people of
equatorial Africa. The excerpts which are given
in the article which follows are taken from the
journal of E. J. Glave, who went out to Africa in
1883 as a member of the International Association,
of which Henry M. Stanley was the agent. AfteT
working in the country for nearly six years, Glave
returned to England in 1889- In 1894) he went
back to Africa, this time as an "independent travel
ler anxious to observe and report faithfully upon
the general condition of things in the country."
He never returned from that last visit in Africa,
but died at Matadi on May 12, 1895. His state
ments are the more important as they are the com
ments of a man who knew the country, the peo
ple and their possibilities, and described, in the
light of the aspirations of the pioneers whose
labors made the present State possible, the actual
results which had been achieved at that time under
the rule of King Leopold.*
At the beginning of his journey, Glave is per
plexed and incredulous as he notes the contrast be
tween actual conditions and the professed aims
and ideals that were proclaimed to the world when
the state was founded. This feeling slowly gives
place to one of indignation and abhorrence as he
—  . — _  j
* "His conscientiousness, his inflexible determination to do
the most that can be -done in a given period, the love with
which he sets about it, and the absorbing interest it has for
him," commended him to Stanley, in whose service and that
of the Congo government he spent six years.

Peaceful Families are Broken Up
gradually comprehends that these conditions are
not the result of administrative failures, but are
due to a deliberate policy of dealing with trie na-
tives-a policy, which in view of the obligations
assumed by the Congo government at the time it
took control in the Congo valley, and in view oi its
constant professions of benevolence and philan
thropy since then, seemed to him to indicate, so tar
as international public opinion is concerned, an at
titude on the part of the Congo government o±
cynical and systematic hypocrisy.
Writing from Moliro in October, 1894, Wave
says: "The Belgians are rather free at flogging, even
women are not exempt."
At this period the Congo State was engaged in
substituting for Arab rule, which, with fearful
slaughter, and much profit by the way of ivory
loot it had succeeded in extirpating, its own bene
ficent administration. This is what Glave found
in the Eastern district where the Arab power had
been paramount: "The White officer of Kamam-
bare has commissioned several Wangwana chiefs
to make raids in the country of the Warua,and bring
him the slaves. They are supposed to be taken out
of slavery and freed, but I fail to see how this can
be argued out. They are taken from their villages
and shipped south to be soldiers, workers, etc., on
the stations, and what we're peaceful families have
been broken up and the different members spread
about the place. They have to be made fast and
guarded for transportation or they would all run
away. This does not look as though the freedom
promised had any seductive prospects."
On December 8, 1894, he wrote: "The
Manyema soldiers (Congo State troops) complain
that the native hunters do not go after elephants.
Sungula says the reason is that when the

Strings of Emaciated Old Women
hunters are absent, the Manyema soldiers take
their wives. This is a heinous offence in the eyes
of the natives, who have a superstition that, if the
wife does not remain constant when the husband
is away fighting or hunting dangerous game, the
hunter will be sure to suffer serious failure, wounds
or death. . . . This is no reasonable way of
settling the land, it is merely persecution."
Writing from the important government station
of Kabambare on December 14, Glave remarked:
"In stations in charge of white men, government
officers, one sees strings of poor, emaciated old
women, some of them mere skeletons, working from
two to six, tramping about in gangs with a rope
round their necks and connected by a rope one and
a half yards apart. They are prisoners of war.
In war the old women are always caught, but
should receive a little humanity. They are naked,
except for a miserable patch of cloth in several
parts, held in place by a string round the waist.
They are not loosened from the rope for any pur
pose. They live in the Guardhouse under the
charge of black native sentries, who delight in
slapping and ill-using them. Some of the women
have babies, but they go to work just the
same. They form indeed a miserable spectacle,
and one wonders that old women, although prison
ers of war, should not receive a little more consid
eration; at least their nakedness might be hidden."
On December 21 he places on record seeing "an
old woman prisoner who had died, being dragged
to burial by her fellow prisoners in the rope gang."
On December 29, writing from the village of
Kestro, he describes how the Government soldiers
have taken "nearly all the women and children"
from the villagej ruled over by the Chief Kitete.
Early in January, 1895, Glave was at Bayonge.
While there, a Government expedition arrived,
7

Women "Deserters" in Chains
fresh from fighting the Uzimbu people. "Many
natives are said to have been killed and thirty
prisoners taken, mostly women."
These incidents were invariably connected with
the Government raids for ivory or in forcing the
people to collect rubber.
On January 24, 1895, at Riba-Riba, Glave
wrote: "The chain-gang is always a disgusting
sight to see, as those confined are generally old
women, reduced to skeletons by want of liberty,
hard treatment by the sentries, and hunger. Five
women who had deserted were in chains at Riba-
Riba; all were cut very badly, having been most
severely chicotted or flogged."
The flogging he describes very minutely. The
chicotte with which the punishment is inflicted is
a terrible weapon, and a few blows bring blood.
"To flog men with this instrument," he says, "is
bad enough, but it is far worse when inflicted on
women and children. Small boys of ten and twelve
are often most harshly treated. At Kasongo there
is a great deal of cruelty displayed. I saw two
boys very badly cut. At Nyangwe and Riba-Riba
boys are punished by beating on the hands. I
conscientiously believe that a man who receives
one hundred blows is often nearly killed, and has
his spirit broken for life."
Travelling down the Congo, Glave reached
Basonko at the mouth of the Aruwimi. Writing
from there on February 21, 1895, he reports:
"The natives are compelled to transport in their
canoes all State loads for nothing" also to provide
work people for the station, generally wo
men. . . . The State has not suppressed slav
ery. . . . Arabs were sent {by the Govern
ment) to punish the natives; many women and
children were taken, and twenty-one heads were
brought to the falls {Stanley falls'), and have
8

One Hundred Small Slaves
been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round
a flower-bed in front of his house."
And from Coquilhatville on March 5:
We are taking down (i. e., on the Government
steamer on which he travelled) one hundred
slaves — mere children — all taken in unholy wars
against the natives. . . . War has been
waged all through the district of the Equateur and
thousands of people have been killed and homes
destroyed. This forced commerce is depopulating
the country."
The next entry is:
"Left Equateur at 11 o'clock this morning, after
taking on a cargo of one hundred small slaves, prin-
pally boys seven or eight years old, with a few girls
among the batch, all stolen from the natives. The
commissaire of the district (i. e., the Government
official in supreme charge) is a violent tempered
fellow. While arranging to take on the hundred
small slaves, a woman who had charge of the
youngsters was rather slow in understanding his
orders; he sprang at her, slapped her in the face,
and, as she ran away, kicked her. They talk of
philanthropy and civilisation! Where it is I do
not know."
From Lukolela on March 8, he wrote:
"Very few people came on the beach to-day; in
old times crowds thronged the place. The one
hundred youngsters on board are ill cared for by
the State; most of them are quite naked, with no
covering for the night. They make small fires,
and huddle round these for warmth. Many are
getting the germs of disease sown in their little
bodies. Their offence is that their fathers and
mothers fought for a little independence. Most
white officers out in the Congo are averse to the
india-rubber policy of the State, BUT THE
LAWS COMMAND IT."

Fighting Natives to Get Rubber
His final summing up of the sights he had him
self witnessed, he wrote at Matadi on April 25,
1895. This is what he wrote:
The occupation of the territories of the Congo Free
State by the Belgians is an enormous expense, and the
Administration is making most frantic efforts to obtain a
revenue. ... In the fighting consequent upon this policy,
owing to the inability or disinclination of the natives to
bring in rubber, slaves are taken — men, women and
children, called in State documents Liberes (i. e., freed
slaves). These slaves or prisoners are most of them
sent down stream, first to Leopoldville. There the
children are handed over to a Jesuit mission to be
schooled, and to receive military training from a State
officer established at the mission for that purpose. In
two years this Catholic mission has buried three hundred
of these poor, unfortunate children, victims of the in
human policy of the Congo Free State.
On the "Ville de Bruxelles," the big State boat upon
which I descended the Congo, we took on board at the
Equateur 102 little homeless, motherless, fatherless
children, varying from" four years to seven or eight,
among them a few little girls. Many of them had
frightful ulcers, which showed no sign of having been
attended to, although there was a State doctor at the
Equateurville Station. . . . As they were huddled
together on the lower decks of the boat on the damp,
chill mornings, shivering with cold, death was marking
many more for hasty baptism and a grave at the Jesuit
mission near Leopoldville.
If the Arabs had been the masters it would be styled
iniquitous trafficking in human flesh and blood; but be
ing under the administration of the Congo Free State, it
is merely a part of their philanthropic system of liber
ating the natives.
Mr. Glave's story was written in the winter of
1894 and 1895. The rubber industry of the Congo
State was then in its infancy. There was still
trade with the natives. What has followed? — we
shall see.

10

II
Natives of Africa cannot be taught that there are
blessings in civilization if they are permitted to be op
pressed and to be treated as unworthy of the treatment
due to human beings, to be despoiled and enslaved at
will by a licentious soldiery. The habit of regarding the
aborigines as nothing better than pagan abid or slaves
dates from Ibrahim Pasha, and must be utterly sup
pressed before any semblance of civilization can be seen
outside the military settlements. When every grain of
corn, and every fowl, sheep, goat and cow which is neces
sary for the troops is paid for in sterling money or its
equivalent in necessary goods, then civilization will be
come irresistible in its influence, and the gospel even
may be introduced; but without impartial justice, both
are impossible, certainly never when preceded and ac
companied by spoliation, which I fear was too general
a custom in the Soudan. — Henry M. Stanley, in
preface to "Darkest Africa."

REPORT OF AN INDEPENDENT
INVESTIGATOR. 1904.
Glave's journal was first given to the world in
a series of articles entitled, "New Conditions in
Central Africa," published in the "Century
Magazine."* The effect of these revelations upon
the public, particularly that part of the public
that had hailed with enthusiasm the founding of
the Free State, was one of perplexed incredulity.
*Edward James Glave's account of his observations in the
Congo State were first printed in the Century Magazine. There
were two articles. A first article entitled, "New Conditions in
Central Africa," will be found in Vol. 53, and a second,
"Cruelty in the Congo Free State," in Vol. 54.
11

Cannibals as Policemen
The tradition that the Congo State was a philan
thropic experiment on a grand scale, such an ad
venture in disinterestedness as only a king would
dare conceive, and only royal munificence could
carry out, had firmly established itself in the public
mind. Glave himself was at first loath to be
lieve the stories that he heard upon entering
the country, and it was only after his own eyes,
ears, and every other sense had been assailed with
the horror of the situation that he began, with ris
ing indignation, to realize the truth. Eight years
have elapsed since Glave visited the Congo.
During that time the Congo State has slowly, but
persistently, extended its authority and the rubber
industry over the whole vast territory committed
to its charge. The Arab slave trader has been
driven out, the State slavery has been substituted;
the tribal wars have been suppressed, the warlike
cannibal tribes have been converted into State
policemen, armed with rifles, and allowed to wreak
their vengeance on their inter-tribal enemies by
compelling them, under the lash and rifle, to col
lect rubber for the State. A great railway has
been built in the interior; the whole country has
been parcelled out to large companies, who collect
rubber as a tax for the State, receiving fifty per
cent, of the profit for their services; an army of
30,000 troops aids the companies in collecting the
tax. For all this machinery of civilization, the
railway, the army, companies of exploitation, and
the superadded judicial and administrative ma
chinery that these entail — for all these the native
pays with sweat and blood and decimating hard
ships. For eight years, at an appalling expense of na
tive life, the rubber industry has been pushed
forward with unflagging energy. Rubber produc
tion has increased, trade has diminished, and the
natives have disappeared. 12

A Persistent Stream of Testimony
During this time "a persistent stream of testi
mony," as the New York Sun remarks, has con
tinued^ issue from the heart of the "Dark Con
tinent." This testimony has been upon the whole,
necessarily that of casual observation. Naturally
the more atrocious incidents, the things in regard
to which one who complained might hope to obtain
a hearing before a vast and indifferent inter
national public, as a rule take place far from the
eyes of either travellers or missionaries. In the
ordinary course of things it is only accident that
reveals them. The more familiar and less
atrocious wrongs which it seems useless to report
to a public so preoccupied are only mentioned in
private letters, and never reach the great public
who would not comprehend, even if it did not re
fuse to listen to them.
But these things accumulate. During the last
two years certain Protestant missionaries have so
taken to heart the sufferings of the natives that
they have made systematic effort to get detailed
information for the purpose of bringing these
facts to the knowledge of the civilized world. In
July, August and September, 1903, Rev. A. E.
Scrivener, an English missionary of the Baptist
denomination, made an expedition into the
Domaine de la Couronne, the private preserve of
the King, where no white man, not an agent of the
king or one of his companies, is ever known to
have been. , Since then systematic observation in
other quarters, remote from the mission stations,
has been made by. other missionaries. Finally,
owing to the persistent complaints that were made
to it through mssionary and peace societies, who
had become acquainted with the situation there, the
British Government sent its official representative,
Roger Casement, Consul at Boma, on an expedi
tion into the interior to learn to what extent the
complaints constantly reaching it could be es-
13

A Hospital for Natives
tablished by testimony. His report is un
doubtedly one of the most remarkable official docu
ments ever issued, and seems to have startled for
a moment even the immovable sovereign of the
Congo. One impression made upon Mr. Casement in his
journey into the interior of the State was that of
the appalling diminution of the population ; for ex
ample, in one locality he says, "During the rub
ber wars the population has decreased sixty per
cent." But our interest is only with his testimony
concerning women and children.
At Leopoldville, capital of the State for the
Upper Congo, he thus describes a hospital for
natives :
"When I visited the three mud huts which serve as
hospital, all of them dilapidated, and two with the
thatched roofs almost gone, I found seventeen sleeping
sickness patients, .male and female, lying about in the
utmost dirt. Most of them were lying on the bare
ground — several out on the pathway in front of the
houses, and one, a woman, had fallen into the fire just
prior to my arrival (while in the final, insensible stage
of the disease), and had burned herself very badly. She
had since been well bandaged, but was still lying out
on the ground with her head almost in the fire, and while
I sought to speak to her, in turning, she upset a pot of
scalding water over her shoulder. All of the seventeen
persons I saw were near their end, and on my second
visit, two days later, the 19th of June, I found one of
them lying dead out in the open."*
Proceeding up river Mr. Casement found that
the population of certain villages, consisting of
240 persons, all told, men, women and children,
were compelled to supply Government with one
ton of carefully prepared food-stuffs per week, re-
?This "hospital," it should be noted, is one of the beneficent
institutions which is usually mentioned along with the rail
ways, the steamers upon the river, etc., as marking the
progress of civilization in the Congo State. It is a fitting illus
tration of the difference which may exist between the mere
official statement and the actual existing thing.
14

Many Severed Hands
ceiving in remuneration the princely sum of 15s.
lOd. Much of the work entailed in providing this
Government taxation falls to the women.
As an illustration of the nature of the taxation
the native labors under, Mr. Casement gives sev
eral instances, among them that of the village of
Mantaka. The population of this village comprises from
600 to 800 men, women and children, who, for
"the great majority of the days throughout the
year" are compelled to be busily supplying this
gum-copal tax, which appears to be an arduous
labor. The village of Mantaka supplies six and
a half tons of gum-copal per annum, value ,£364
(about $1,750), and "each adult householder re
ceived for his entire year's work Is. 4d. {about 33
cents), the value of a fowl in Mantaka."
Many mutilated people whose hands had been
cut off by soldiers in the course of the rubber wars
were seen by Mr. Casement, and specific details
covering many other cases were furnished to him.
He mentions particularly two cases he saw per
sonally — one of a "young boy," the other of a
"boy not more than 12 years of age." An "old
woman," similarly mutilated, had died a few
months previous to Mr. Casement's visit. The
circumstances were thus described to Mr. Case
ment by her niece:
The town had been attacked by the Government
troops and all had fled, pursued into the forest. This
old woman (whose name was V W) had fled with her
son, when he fell, shot dead, and she herself fell down
beside him— she supposed she fainted. She then felt
her hand being cut of, but had made no sign. When
all was quiet and the soldiers had gone, she found her
son's dead body beside her with one hand cut off and
her own also taken away.
Mr. Casement makes it perfectly clear that this
hand-cutting horror is not a native custom, but an
15

Tried to Sell Her Daughter
exotic introduced by Congolese officials. In this
he is confirmed by many other white men of long
acquaintance with the country and its people.
In another town close by, the natives com
plained that during a tax-collecting visit to the
town a woman had been shot through the head by
a soldier. "Another woman named L , the
wife of a man named M  , had been taken
away by the native sergeant who was with the
soldiers. He had admired her, and so took her
back with him to Coquilhatville. Her husband
heard she had died there of smallpox, but he did
not know anything of her circumstances after she
had been taken away."*
In one of the villages near Coquilhatville, the
straits to which the natives are put in this re
spect was brought to the notice of Mr. Casement.
He writes:
A father and mother stepped out, and said they had
been forced to sell their son, a little boy, for 1,000 rods,
to meet their share of the fine. A widow came, and de
clared she had been forced, in order to meet her share
of the fine, to sell her daughter, a little girl who, I
judged from her description, to be about ten years of
age. She had been sold to a marl named T  , who was
named, for 1,000 rods, which had then gone to make up
the fine. The little girl, our Consul subsequently ascer
tained, had again changed hands, and was promised in
sale to a town on the north bank of the Congo, named
Iberi, whose people are said to be still open cannibals.
Continuing his journey, Consul Casement
passed up the Lulongo and Lopori rivers. He
gives an extract from a diary shown him by a
gentleman who had recorded the impressions made
upon him by conversation with one "M. P.," a
government official.
*The names of places and persons designated in Mr. Case
ment's published report by letters have been withheld until the
Congo government is willing to give proper guarantees that the
witnesses will be protected from the persecutions of the officers
against whom they have testified. 16

A Hand for Every Cartridge
Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber,
cartridges are given him. He must bring back all not
used, and for every one used he must bring back a right
hand. M. P. told me that sometimes they shot a
cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a
hand from a living man. As to the extent to which this
is carried on, he informed me that in six months the
State on the Mambogo river, had used 6,000 cartridges,
which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It
means more than 6,000, for the people have told me re
peatedly that the soldiers kill the children with the butt
of their guns.
Mr. Casement next chose for his inspection a
little village on the main stream of the Lulongo
river, designated in the official report as Q. He
says: I chose for the next inspection a town lying some
what off this beaten track, where my coming would be
quite unexpected. Steaming up a small tributary of the
Lulongo, I arrived, unpreceded by any rumor of my
coming, at the village of A.** In an open shed 1 found
two sentries of the La Lulanga Company guarding
fifteen native women, five of whom had infants at the
breast, and three of whom were about to become mothers.
The chief of these sentries, a man called S  , who was
bearing a double-barrelled shot-gun, for which he had
a belt of cartridges, at once volunteered an explana
tion of the reason for these women's detention. Four
of them, he said, were hostages who were being held to
insure the peaceful settlement of a dispute between two
neighboring towns, which had already cost the life of a
man. His employer, the agent of the La Lulanga
Company at B** near by, he said, had ordered these
women to be seized and kept until the Chief of the of
fending town to which they belonged should come in to
talk over the palaver.
The remaining eleven women, whom he indicated, he
said he had caught and was detaining as prisoners to
compel their husbands to bring in the right amount of
india-rubber required of them on next market day.
When I asked if it was a woman's work to collect india-
rubber, he said, "No; that, of course, is a man's work."
"Then why do you catch the women and not the men?"
I asked. "Don't you see" was the answer, "if I caught
and kept the men, who would work the rubber? But if
17

Women Tied Neck to Neck at Night
I catch their wives, the husbands are anxious to have
them home again, and so the rubber is brought m quickly
and quite up to the mark."
Mr. Casement continues:
At nightfall the fifteen women in the shed were tied
together, either neck to neck or ankle to ankle, to secure
them for the night, and in this posture I saw them twice
during the evening. They were then trying to huddle
around a fire. In the morning the leading sentry, before
leaving the village, ordered his companion in my hearing
to "keep close guard on the prisoners." I subsequently
discovered that this sentry, learning that I was not, as
he had at first thought, a missionary, had gone or sent
to inform his employer at C** that a strange white man
was in the town.
When walking in the grounds of the Abir
Trust, upon which the State has conferred the ex
clusive "exploitation" of the territories within the
Lopori and Maringa valleys, Mr. Casement made
the following observations:
I saw six of the local sentries going back with cap-
guns and ammunition pouches to E — , after the previ
ous day's market, and later in the day, when in the fac
tory grounds, two armed sentries came up to the agent
as he walked, guarding sixteen natives, five men tied
neck by neck, with five untied women and six young
children. This somewhat embarrassing situation, it was
explained to me, was due to the persistent failure of
the people of the village these persons came from to
supply its proper quota of food. These people, I was
told, had just been captured "on the river" by one of
the sentries placed there to watch the waterway. They
had been proceeding in their canoes to some native fish
ing grounds, and were espied and brought in. I asked
if the children also held were responsible for food sup
plies, and they, along with an elderly woman, were re
leased, and told to run over to the Mission, and go to
school there. This they did not do, but doubtless re
turned to their homes in the recalcitrant village. The
remaining five men and four women were led off to the
"maison des otages," under guard of the sentry.
"On September 2," says Mr. Casement, contin
uing the narrative of his experiences in this dis-
18

Boy's Hand Severed by a Sentry
trict, "I met when walking in the A. B. I. R.
grounds with the subordinate agent of the factory,
a file of fifteen women, under the guard of three
unarmed sentries, who were being brought in from
the adjoining villages, and were led past me.
These women, who were evidently wives and
mothers, it was explained in answer to my inquiry,
had been seized in order to compel their husbands
to bring in antelope or other meat which was due.
"As I was leaving Bongandanga, on the third
of September, several elderly head-men of the
neighboring villages were putting off in their
canoes to the opposite forest, to get meat where
with to redeem their wives, whom I had seen ar
rested the previous day. I learned later that the
husband of one of these women brought in, two
days afterwards, to the Mission station, his infant
daughter, who, being deprived of her mother, had
fallen seriously ill, and whom he could not feed.
At the request of the missionary this woman was
released on the fifth of September."
Leaving Bongandanga, the limit of his journey,
on September S, Mr. Casement returned down the
Lopori and Lulongo fivers. On the ninth, at
night, the natives of a village brought him a
lad 16 years old "whose right hand was missing."
His hand "had been cut off by a sentry of the La
Lulanga Company." In addition to this mutila
tion, the lad had been "shot in the shoulder blade
and, as a consequence, was deformed." The next
morning many of the neighboring people came to
see Mr. Casement.
They brought with them three individuals who had
been shockingly wounded by gun-fire, two men and a
very small boy, not more than six years of age, and a
fourth  a boy child of six or seven — whose right hand
was cut of at the wrist.
These people were immediately followed by a number
of natives, who came before me, bringing a small boy of
not more than seven years of age, whose right hand was
19

Sixty Women Were Crucified
gone at the wrist. This child, whose name was F F,
they had brought from the village of N — .
Mr. Casement calls attention to the fact that
the wrongs to which he refers became, in certain
instances, so notorious, and led to such outbreaks
among the natives, as to become the subject of
official investigation. He cites one case in which
a British colored subject — a native of Lagos, who
alone with three Europeans had been in the ser
vice of one of the concessionaire companies
("Compagnie Anversoise du Commerce au Congo")
— sought his help. Mr. Casement says, "The facts
charged against the British colored subject were,
among others, that he had illegally arrested women
and kept them in illegal detention at his trading
stations, and it was alleged that many of these
women died of starvation while thus confined. This
man himself, when I visited him in Boma gaol ill
March, 1901, said that more than 100 women and
children had died of starvation at his hands, but
the responsibility for both their arrest and his own
lack of food to give them was due to the orders and
neglect of his superiors."
It is worthy of note that the agents condemned
to long terms of imprisonment for crimes con
nected with the incident to which Mr. Casement
refers, have already been released, although the
indictment against them included on their own con
fession the crucifying of 60 women.
These are but instances of what one man,
unassisted by officers of the government or the
agents of the rubber industry, saw and heard in a
brief visit to those points where the government is
dealing directly and unreservedly with the natives.
One sees the process of "civilization" here, not as
described in the vague formulas of official reports,
or as it appears to the casual observer making his
investigation under the bland auspices of the
King's officers, — but as it is, in its naked reality.
20

Another Point of View
But there is another point of view, too little con
sidered, from which this process of "moral and
material regeneration" of the Congo can and should
be considered. Let us turn now to that.

21

Ill
What then is our neighbor? Thou hast regarded his
thought, his feeling, as somehow different from thine.
Thou hast said, "A pain in him is not like a pain in me,
but something tar easier to bear." He seems to thee a
little less living than thou; his life is dim, it is cold, it
is a pale fire beside thy own burning desires. . . .
So, dimly and by instinct thou hast lived with thy
neighbor, and thou hast known him not, being blind.
Thou hast made (of him) a thing, no Self at all. Have
done with this illusion, and simply try to learn the
truth. Pain is pain, joy is joy, everywhere, even as in
thee. In all the songs of the forest birds; in all the
cries of the wounded and dying, struggling in the cap
tor's power; in the boundless sea where the myriads of
water-creatures strive and die; amid all the countless
hordes of savage men; in all sickness and sorrow; in all
exultation and hope, everywhere, from the lowest to the
noblest, the same conscious, burning, wilful life is found,
endlessly manifold as the forr„s of the living creatures,
unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as these im
pulses that even now throb in thing own little selfish
heart. Lift up thy eyes, behold that life, and then turn
away, and forget it as thou canst; but, if thou hast
known that, thou hast begun to know thy duty.
Prof. Josiah Royce,
Religious Aspects of Philosophy, quoted by Prof.
William James in his "Talks to Teachers."

INCIDENTS OF THE "RUBBER WARS,"
TOLD BY CONGO CHILDREN.
It is a singular fact in regard to this contro
versy, in which, particularly from the side of the
Congo government, so much is heard about the
rights of nations, the interests of rubber merchants
and the bold enterprise of the king, that one hears
22

Severed Hands as Vouchers
almost nothing in regard to the rights and inter
ests of the native. In this struggle, in which the
future, indeed the very existence, not only of him
self, but of his race is at stake, he is a mute, help
less, uncomprehending spectator. It is from others,
mostly, that we know what there is to know of his
sad story. Others have described to us the wasted
villages, the troops of women toiling in the chains,
the herds of orphan children, surplusage of wast
ing wars, huddled, naked and shivering on the
decks of steamers in transit from the interior to
the coast. Others have told us of the severed
hands, those ghastly vouchers, with which the na
tive soldier attests the fact that his cartridges have
not been "wasted." But in all this we have not
heard the voice of the native himself. At most we
have seen him in photographs, stretching mute,
mutilated and uncomprehending hands to that
world beyond the forest and the sea, whence he
has been told help may some day come.
It is in this report of Roger Casement, who
knows Africa, and is a friend of her people, that
the native, almost for the first time, speaks to us
in his own person. In this report — that is what
makes it remarkable as an official document — we
gather from his own lips, as it were, what a "rub
ber raid" is and means to the hunted wretches who
have fled to the bush, or from the security of some
tree top have watched the destruction of their
homes and the slaughter of their families.
Some of these stories, and the most pathetic ones,
are those of children.
Out of many of these stories accredited by those
who saw the children and heard their artless testi
mony, passages from four are reproduced here.
The first contains the following:
When we were told by the men that the soldiers were
coming we began to run away. My mother told me to
23

Made to Carry Baskets of Hands
wait for her until she got some things ready to take with
us, but I told her we must go now, as the soldiers were
coming. I ran away and left my mother, and went with
two old people who were running away, but we were
caught, and the old people were killed, and the soldiers
made me carry the baskets with the things these dead
people had and the hands they cut off. ... I went
on with the soldiers. . . . Then we went into the
bush to look for people, and we heard children crying,
and a soldier went over to the place and killed
a mother and four children. . . ¦ They took me
to  , and he told me to go and stay with the soldier
who had caught me. ... I cannot tell how many
people were killed, because there were too many for me
to count. They got my little sister and killed her, and
threw her into a house, and set fire to the house."
The second tale is an account of the wanderings
in the bush of two children, who, in their flight,
were separated from their parents. It chronicles
their fortunes and their fears, and the vain efforts
of the older child during their long wanderings in
the forest to save her baby sister from the soldiers
who were hunting them.
After she had been a little while in the house with
her little brother and sister she heard the firing of guns.
When she heard that she took up her little sister and a
big basket with a lot of native money in it, but she
could not manage both, so she left the basket behind
and ran away with the youngest child; the little boy ran
away by himself. The oldest boys had gone away to
wait for the soldiers at the other town. As she went
past she heard her mother calling to her, but she told her
to run away in another direction, and she would go on
with the little sister. She found her little sister rather
heavy for her, so she could not run very fast, and a
great number of people went past her, and she was left
alone with the little one. Then she left the main road
and went to hide in the bush. When night came on she
tried to find the road again and follow the people who
had passed her, but she could not find them, so she had
to sleep in the bush alone. She wandered about in the
bush for six days, then she came upon a town. At this
town she found that the soldiers were fighting there, too.
Before entering the town she dug up some sweet manioc
24

Kept Her for the White Man
.to eat, because she was very, very hungry. She went
about looking for a fire to roast her sweet manioc, but
she could not find any. Then she heard a noise as of
people talking, so she hid her little sister in a deserted
house, and went to see those people she had heard talk
ing, thinking they might be those from her own town;
but when she got to the house where the noise was com
ing from she saw one of the soldier's boys sitting at the
door of the house, and then also she could not quite
understand their language. Then she knew that they were
not her people, so she took fright and ran away in an
other direction from where she had put her sister. After
she had reached the outside of the town she stood still,
and remembered that she would be scolded by her
father and mother for leaving her sister, so she went
back at night. She came upon a house where the white
man was sleeping; she saw the sentry on a deck chair
outside in front of the house, apparently asleep, be
cause he did not see her slip past him. Then she came
to the house where her sister was, and took her, and she
started to run away again. They slept in a deserted
house at the very end of the town. Early in the morn
ing the white man sent out the soldiers to go and look
for people all over the town and in the houses. S S
was standing outside in front of the house, trying to
make her sister walk some, as she was very tired, but the
little sister could not run away through weakness. While
they were both standing outside the soldiers came upon
them and took them both. One of the soldiers said:
"We might keep them both, the little one is not bad-
looking;" but the others said: "No, we are not going
to carry her all the way; we must kill the youngest girl."
So they put a knife through the child's stomach, and
left the body lying there where they had killed it.
The story goes on to tell the further fortunes
of the older child after her sister had been killed.
In the morning the soldiers wanted S S to go and
look for manioc for them, but she was afraid to go out,
as they looked as if they wanted to kill her. The
soldiers thrashed her very much, and began to drag her
outside, but the corporal (N N N) came and took her
by the hand and said, "We must not kill her, we must
take her to the white man." They then went back to the
town where the officer in command of the troops
at that date was, and they showed him the child.
The officer handed her over to a soldier. At this town
25

Brought Severed Hands to the Officers
she found that they had caught three people, and among
them was a very old woman, and the cannibal soldiers
asked the officer to give them the old woman to eat, and
the officer told them to take her. The soldiers took the
old woman and cut her throat, and then divided her and
ate her. The little girl saw all this done.
They stayed several days at this place, then the officer
asked the child if she knew all the towns round about,
and she said yes, then he told her to show them the way,
so that they could go and catch people. They came to
a town, and found only one woman, who was dying of
sickness, and the soldiers killed her with a knife. At
several towns they found no people, but at last they
came to a town where several people had run to, as they
did not know where else to go, because the soldiers were
fighting everywhere. At this town they killed a lot of
people — men, women and children — and took some as
prisoners. They cut the hands off those they had killed,
and brought them to the officer. They spread out the
hands in a row for the officer to see. After that they
left to return to Bikoro. They took a lot of prisoners
with them. The hands which they had cut off they just
left lying, because the white man had seen them, so they
did not need to take them to P.
The third story is that of a young girl who had
seen two rubber raids. In the first, being small,
she slid into the bush, and after three days her
grandmother found her and brought her home.
This is her story as reported by Mr. Casement:
She belonged to the village of R, where she lived with
her grandmother. R was attacked by the State soldiers
long ago. It was in S T's time. She does not know if he
was with the soldiers, but she heard the bugle blow when
they were going away. It was in the afternoon when
they came, they began catching and tying the people,
and killed lots of them. A lot of people — she thinks
perhaps fifty — ran away, and she was in the crowd with
them, but the soldiers came after them and killed them
all but herself. She was small, and she slid into the
bush. The people killed were many, and women — there
were not many children. The children had scattered
when the soldiers came, but she stayed with the big
people, thinking she might be safe.
When they were all killed she waited in the grass for
two nights. She was very frightened, and her throat
26

Hunted by Soldiers in the Bush
was sore with thirst, and she looked about and at last
sne found some water in a pot. She stayed on in the
grass a third night, and buffaloes came near her and she
was very frightened— and they went away. When the
morning came she thought she would be better to move,
ana. went away and got up a tree. She was three days
without food, and was very hungry. In the tree she
was near her grandmother's house, and she looked
around^ and, seeing no soldiers, she crept to her grand
mother's house and got some food and got up the tree
again. The soldiers had gone away hunting for buf
faloes, and it was then she was able to get down from
the tree. The soldiers came back, and they came towards
the trees and bushes calling out: "Now we see you; come
down, come down!" This they used to do, so that peo
ple, thinking they were really discovered, should give
themselves up; but she thought she would stay on, ana
so she stayed up the tree. Soon afterwards the soldiers
went, but she was still afraid to come down. Presently
she heard her grandmother calling out to know if sne
was alive, and when she heard her grandmother's voice
she knew the soldiers were gone, and she answered, but
her voice was very small — and she came down and her
grandmother took her home.
That was the first raid. Soon afterwards when
she and her grandmother were living at another
village the white man again sent the soldiers. The
account continues:
Neither her own people nor the U U* people, where
she was living, knew there was any trouble with the
Government, so they were surprised. She was asleep.
Her grandmother — her mother's mother — tried to
awaken her, but she did not know. She felt the shaking,
but she did not mind because she was sleepy.
The soldiers came quickly into the house — her grand
mother rushed out just before. When she heard the
noise of the soldiers around the house, and saw her
grandmother not there, she ran out and called for her
grandmother; and as she ran her brass anklets made a
noise, and some one ran after and caught her by the leg,
and she fell and the soldiers took her.
¦ They were taken to a canoe, and went to V V*- The
soldier who caught her was the sentry there. At V V*
she was kept about a week with the sentry and when the
people took their weekly rations over to P* she was
27

Children Left in the Bush to Die
sent over. The other woman who was taken was
ransomed by her friends. They came after them to
V V*, and the sentry let the woman go for 750 rods.
She saw the money paid. Her friends came to ransom
her, too, but the sentry refused, saying the white man
wanted her because she was young— the other was an old
woman and could not work.
One other statement, giving, in the words and
from the point of view of the native, an account
of a fourth expedition in the interests of civiliza
tion and the extension of the rubber industry, con
tains the following passage:
When we began to run away from the fight, we ran
away many times. They did not catch me because I
was with mother and father. Afterwards mother died;
four days passed, father died also. I and an older
sister were left with two younger children, and then the
fighting came where I had run to. Then my elder sister
called me: "U U, come here." I went. She said: "Let
us run away, because we have not any one to take care
of us." When we were running away we saw a lot of
W W* people coming towards us. We told them to run
away; war was coming. They said: "Is it true?" We
said: "It is true; they are coming." The W W* people
said: "We will not run away; we did not see the
soldiers." Only a little while they saw the soldiers, and
they were killed. We stayed in a town named X X*.
A male relative called me: "U U, let us go;" but I did
not want to. The soldiers came there; I ran away by
myself; when I ran away I hid in the bush. While I was
running I met with an old man who was running from
a soldier. He (the soldier) fired a gun. 1 was not hit,
but the old man died. Afterwards they caught me and
two men. The soldiers asked: "Have you » father and
mother?" I answered, "No." They said to me: "If you
do not tell us we will kill you." I said: "Father and
mother are dead." After that my oldest sister was
caught, too, in the bush, and they left my little brother
and sister alone in the bush to die, because heavy rain
came on, and they had not had anything to eat for days
and days. At night they tied my hands and feet for
fear that I should run away. In the morning they
caught three people — two had children; they killed the
children. The story continues with this incidental refer-
28

Soldiers Kill a Baby Who Laughed
enee to the casual killing of ten children, who were
so young as to be an encumbrance to the expedi
tion :
When we were going on the way they killed ten
children because they were very, very small; they killed
them in the water. Then they killed a lot of people, and
they cut off their hands and put them into baskets and
took them to the white man. He counted out the hands
—200 in all; they left the hands lying.
The narrative concludes with the following sum
mary statement of the killing of an irreverent
baby who laughed, the murder of one sister, and
the selling into slavery of the second.
On our way, when we were coming to P*, the soldiers
saw a little child, and when they went to kill it the child
laughed, so the soldier took the butt of the gun and
struck the child with it, and then cut off its head. One
day they killed my half-sister and cut off her head,
hands, and feet because she had on rings. Her name
was Q Q Q. Then they caught another sister, and they
sold her to the W W* people, and now she is a. slave
there. These simple tragic narratives — through which
one hears always the quaint and plaintive voice of
the children — suggest one thing, apparently diffi
cult to comprehend, which deserves to be in
sistently repeated. It is this: the present condi
tion of the natives is not primarily an economic
question, nor even a question of the rights of na
tions. It is a question of common humanity.
Take but one moment the point of view of the
hunted native, whose lands, labor, and all whose
fortunes, present and future, have been made an
object of a heartless traffic, — and all the flimsy
scenery in which the industrious Bureaucrats have
sought to stage the story of Leopold's enterprise
in Africa, all the tinsel with which they have sought
to plaster over and decorate the sad havoc he has
wrought there, falls away, and one sees the thing
29

The Curse of Midas
for what it is — not civilization nor progress, but
ruthless, irreverent and alien meddling in the af
fairs and fortunes of helpless peoples, accom
panied by hideous butcheries, all in the interests
of a clique of mercantile free-booters.
This so-called civilization in the Congo has the
curse of Midas on it. At its touch everything, the
most vile and the most holy, the feasts of canni
bals, and the pious prayers of saints, smoking vil
lages, and the pale juice of the rubber vine, the
lusts of savages and the wails of little children;
everything has been somehow and somewhere
minted into gold, and has gone to swell the returns
of the Antwerp rubber market.

30

Do You Want an Impartial Investigation
of Conditions in the Congo State?
The Congo Free State was founded in the interests of
international peace, and for the protection and safe-guarding of
the interests of the native peoples. All the governments of "the
western world participated in its formation, but among them
the United States was, in all deliberations which led to the
recognition of the present government of the Congo State by
western Powers, first and foremost.
A Memorial was presented to Congress last spring, asking
that' the United States government join with the Powers of
Europe in securing an international inquiry into present con
ditions in the Congo. Resolutions repeating or endorsing this
request have since been passed by the General Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Churches of Los Angeles; by Baptist
Churches of the United States, at their meeting in Cleveland,
last May ; by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions and the Triennial National Council of the Congregational
Churches at meetings held at Grinnell and Des Moines, Iowa,
in October ; by the General Conference of the Seventh Day Bap
tists at Nortonville, Kansas ; by the Joint Synod of the Lutheran
Churches at Fremont, Ohio, in August last; by the Peace
Congress at Boston in October; and by numerous other organi
zations. If you desire to promote action by our government
favorable to an impartial investigation, you can do so by writ
ing to Senators of the United States and to the Congressman
of your district a letter similar to that of which a model
follows :
To the Honorable  IT. S. Senator (or Member of Congress) from
Dear Sir: — As one of your constitutents , I take the liberty oj
writing to you in regard to a Memorial now before Congress relative
to the situation in the Independent State of the Congo. I respectfully
request that, so far as is consistent with your judgment as to what is
wise and proper, you will do what you can to secure action by our
Government favorable to an impartial investigation of conditions in
the Congo State. 1 am Very truly yours,

For any Information desired, address
THE CONGO REFORM ASSOCIATION, P.O.Box, 3707, Boston, Mass.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH CONRAD^
The Novelist, Formerly in Service on the
Upper Congo, in Regard to the Congo Statel
* It is an extraordinary thing that the conscience of Europe, which
seventy years ago put down the slave trade on humanitarian grounds, tol
erates the Congo State to-day. It is as if the moral clock had been put
back many hours. And yet nowadays, if I were to overwork my horse so
as to destroy its happiness or physical well-being, I should be hauled before
a magistrate. It seems to me that the black man — rsay of Upoto — is deserv
ing of as much humanitarian regard as any animal, since he has nerves, feels
pain, can be made physically miserable. But, as a matter of fact, his hap
piness and misery are much more complex than the misery or happiness of
animals, and deserving of greater regard. He shares with us the conscious
ness of the universe in which we live — no small burden. Barbarism per se
is no crime deserving of a heavy visitation, and the Belgians are worse than
the seven plagues of Egypt, insomuch that in that case it was a punishment
sent for a definite trangression ; but in this the Upoto man is not aware of
any transgression, and therefore can see no end to .the infliction. It must
appear to him very awful and mysterious, and" I confess it appears so to me, '
too. The slave trade has been abolished, and the Congo State exists
to-day. This is very remarkable. What makes it more remarkable is this :
the slave trade was an old-established form of commercial activity ; it was
not the monopoly of one small country, established to the disadvantagelof
the rest of the civilized world, in defiance of International treaties andln
brazen disregard of humanitarian declarations. But the Congo Stafje,
created yesterday, is all that, and yet it exists. It is very mysterk>4.
One is tempted to exclaim (as poor Thiers did in 1871), "II n'y a pas
d'Europe." And the fact remains that in 1903, seventy years or so after the
abolition of the slave trade (because it was cruel) , there exists in Africa *a
Congo State, created by the act of European Powers, where ruthless,
systematic cruelty towards the blacks is the basis of administration, arid
bad faith towards all the other States the basis of commercial policy.-*
Quoted by the London "Morning Post" in a review of "Leopold's Rule ill
Africa" by E. D. Morel. 1

* Mr. Conrad has narrated his experiences while in service on the Upper Congo in the storv "' *
"The Heart of Darkness," published in the volume entitled "Youth," McClure, Phillips & Co 1
New York, 1903.

Two or three days after a fight a dead mother was found with two of her children. The
mother was shot and the right hand taken off. On one side was the elder child, also shot and the
right hand also taken off. On the other side was the younger child, with its right hand cut off ;
but the child, still living, was resting against the mother's breast. I myself saw the child. — Extract
from the testimony of Rev. E. V. Sjoblom, a Swedish Missionary of the American Baptist
\Missio?tary Union, printed in the Memorial to Congress

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION IN REGARD TO
CONDITIONS IN THE CONGO FREE
STATE, READ:
E. D. Morel's "Leopold's Rule in Africa."
H. Fox Bourne's "Civilization in Congoland."
"Real Conditions in the Congo Free State."
By Paul S. Reinsch, Professor of Political Science in the
University of Wisconsin, North American Review, Feb
ruary, 1904.
Memorial Concerning Conditions in the Inde
pendent State of the Congo.
Presented to the Senate of the United States by John T.
Morgan, Senator from Alabama.
The Congo State and Its Autocrat.
I. Leopold, Emperor of the Congo, W. T. Stead.
II. Personal Observations of Congo Misgovernment, Rev.
W. M. Morrison, American Review of Reviews, July, 1903.
The Missionary Review of the World.
I. Belgian Treatment of Congo Natives, by E. D. Morel.
II. Instances of Belgian Cruelty in Africa, Rev. A. E.
Scrivener, Bolobo Mission, Upper Congo River.
"Recent Atrocities in the Congo State."
Robert E. Park, Secretary of the Congo Reform Associa
tion, The World To-day, October, 1904.
"Cruelty in the Congo Country."
Booker T. Washington, The Outlook, October 8, 1904.

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