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According to a German resident in Congoland, the lot of the apprentices differs little from that of slaves.
The raison d'être of the Congo Free State was, that it stood for freedom of trade in that great area; and to sign away one of the birthrights of modern civilisation, owing to the plea of a temporary want of cash in Congoland, can only be described as the act of a political Esau. He also granted to slaves the right of appeal to him in case they were cruelly treated. See Parl.
M. Vandervelde, leader of the Labour Party in Belgium, has boldly and persistently asserted the right of the Belgian people to a share in the control of its eventual inheritance, but hitherto all the efforts of his colleagues have failed before the groups of capitalists who have acquired great monopolist rights in Congoland.
The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of railways and the exportation of great quantities of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting of Central Africa.
Priests may be good servants, but they are, mundanely speaking, bad masters. The ecclesiastical tyranny exercised upon the people from the highest to the lowest goes far to account for the extinction of Christianity in the country where so much was done to spread it. The kings of Congoland, who "tread on the lion in the kingdom of their mothers" must abjectly address their spiritual lords.
Next day, being very tired and stiff, I pass the time looking through Civilisation in Congoland again. Having now visited many of the places mentioned in that book, the difficulties which beset a writer who publishes a work on a country he has never seen, become very apparent.
The King and the Congo Ministers seem to have made use of this circumstance so as to strengthen the financial relations of France to their new State in several ways, notably in the formation of monopolist groups for the exploitation of Congoland.
Waterloo left many curious things behind it. Not only a tea-shop or two; but a Nonconformist nucleus, that intermarried, as Sergeant Walker or Walcker had done, with Belgian women and left descendants who in the third generation and by inherent vigour, thrift, matrimony and conversion had built up quite a numerous congregation, which even grew large enough and rich enough to maintain a mission of its own in Congoland.
Had French statesmen and M. Marchand achieved their aims, there is little doubt that a solid wedge would have been driven through north-central Africa from west to east, from the Ubangi Province of French Congoland to the mouth of the Red Sea.
Is it surprising that thousands of the natives of the north have fled into French Congoland, itself by no means free from the grip of monopolist companies, but not terrorised as are most of the tribes of the "Free State"? The effort made by the Chevalier De Cuvelier to rebut Mr. Casement's charges consists mainly of an ineffective tu quoque.
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