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Having now traced the steps by which the Congolese Government reached its present anomalous position, we will proceed to give a short account of its material progress and administration. No one can deny that much has been done in the way of engineering.
Indeed at present most of the positions of responsibility, requiring a fair education, are held by foreign blacks, for very few true Congolese can be trusted. The personal servants we engaged were thus all foreigners in the State service. Two rejoiced in the names of Chikaia and Jean, and acted as boys. i.e. as valets, butlers and general servants while Luembo was cook, and Mavunga, washerman.
At present it is not clear at which of these objects she aimed. Kiderlen-Wächter declared privately that Germany must have the Agadir district, and would never merely accept in exchange Congolese territory .
Individual ownership in the European sense is a comparatively late development. The Congolese authorities must have known this; for nearly all troubles with native races have arisen from the profound differences in the ideas of the European and the savage on the subject of land-holding.
Clearly his aim was to conquer the districts which Egypt for the time had given up to the Mahdi. These efforts brought about sharp friction between the Congolese authorities and France and Great Britain.
For the present we may remark that by a clause of the Franco-Belgian Treaty of Feb. 5, 1895, the Government of Brussels declared that it "recognises the right of preference possessed by France over its Congolese possessions, in case of their compulsory alienation, in whole or in part ." Meanwhile King Leopold proceeded as if he were the absolute ruler of the new State.
The time is past when we may merely teach the native to become a Christian and then leave him in his poverty and squalor where he can be of little or no use to the Church. Second, the preparation of the native to take the largest and most influential position possible in the development of the Colony. Practically the only thing open to the Congolese is along the mechanical and manual lines."
It seems to me we do mean something when we say that Phidias, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, Raphael, Racine, Molière, Poussin, Milton, Wren, Jane Austen and Mozart are highly civilized artists, and that the creators of the Gothic cathedrals and the author of the Chanson de Roland, Villon, Webster, Rembrandt, Blake, Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, Whitman, Turner, Wagner and the Congolese fetish-makers are not.
Some of these defects may be traced to the bad system of payment of officials. Not only are they underpaid, but they have no pension, such as is given by the British, French, and Dutch Governments to their employees. The result is that the Congolese officer looks on his term of service in that unhealthy climate as a time when he must enrich himself for life.
The clause is obviously inoperative if Belgium ultimately declines to take over the Congo territory, and there is at least the chance that this will happen. If it does happen, King Leopold and the Belgian Parliament recognise the prior claim of France to all the Congolese territory.
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