The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 Part 43

Much of the credit of the early railway-making was due to Colonel Thys.]

[Footnote 470: _Ibid_. pp. 589-590.]

Far more important is the moral gain which has resulted from the suppression of the slave-trade over a large part of the State. On this point we may quote the testimony of Mr. Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt, British Consul at Boma, in an official report founded on observations taken during a long tour up the Congo. He writes: "The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys which once navigated the Upper Congo have everywhere disappeared. No act of the Congo State Government has perhaps produced more laudable results than the vigorous suppression of this widespread evil[471]."

[Footnote 471: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), p. 26.]

King Leopold has also striven hard to extend the bounds of the Congo State. Not satisfied with his compact with France of April 1887, which fixed the River Ubangi and its tributaries as the boundary of their possessions, he pushed ahead to the north-east of those confines, and early in the nineties established posts at Lado on the White Nile and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin. 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. After long discussions the Cabinet of London agreed to the convention of May 12, 1894, whereby the Congo State gained the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin and the left bank of the Upper Nile, together with a port on the Albert Nyanza. On his side, King Leopold recognised the claims of England to the right bank of the Nile and to a strip of land between the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Owing to the strong protests of France and Germany this agreement was rescinded, and the Cabinet of Paris finally compelled King Leopold to give up all claims to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, though he acquired the right to lease the Lado district below the Albert Nyanza. The importance of these questions in the development of British policy in the Nile basin has been pointed out in Chapter XVII.

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 quant.i.ties of ivory and rubber from Congoland, but the civilising and uplifting of Central Africa. The General Act of the Berlin Conference begins with an invocation to Almighty G.o.d; and the Brussels Conference imitated its predecessor in this particular. It is, therefore, as a civilising and moralising agency that the Congo Government will always be judged at the bar of posterity.

The first essential of success in dealing with backward races is sympathy with their most cherished notions. Yet from the very outset one of these was violated. On July 1, 1885, a decree of the Congo Free State a.s.serted that all vacant lands were the property of the Government, that is, virtually of the King himself. Further, on June 30, 1887, an ordinance was decreed, claiming the right to let or sell domains, and to grant mining or wood-cutting rights on any land, "the ownership of which is not recognised as appertaining to any one." These decrees, we may remark, were for some time kept secret, until their effects became obvious.

All who know anything of the land systems of primitive peoples will see that they contravened the customs which the savage holds dear. The plots actually held and tilled by the natives are infinitesimally small when compared with the vast tracts over which their tribes claim hunting, pasturage, and other rights. The land system of the savage is everywhere communal. 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.

Yet, in face of the experience of former times, the Congo State put forward a claim which has led, or will lead, to the confiscation of all tribal or communal land-rights in that huge area. Such confiscation may, perhaps, be defended in the case of the United States, where the new-comers enormously outnumbered the Red Indians, and tilled land that previously lay waste. It is indefensible in the tropics, where the white settlers will always remain the units as compared with the millions whom they elevate or exploit[472]. The savage holds strongly to certain rudimentary ideas of justice, especially to the right, which he and his tribe have always claimed and exercised, of _using_ the tribal land for the primary needs of life. When he is denied the right of hunting, cutting timber, or pasturage, he feels "cribbed, cabined, and confined."

This, doubtless, is the chief source of the quarrels between the new State and its _proteges_, also of the depression of spirits which Mr.

Cas.e.m.e.nt found so prevalent. The best French authorities on colonial development now admit that it is madness to interfere with the native land tenures in tropical Africa.

The method used in the enlisting of men for public works and for the army has also caused many troubles. This question is admittedly one of great difficulty. Hard work must be done, and, in the tropics, the white man can only direct it. Besides, where life is fairly easy, men will not readily come forward to labour. Either the inducement offered must be adequate, or some form of compulsory enlistment must be adopted. The Belgian officials, in the plentiful lack of funds that has always clogged their State, have tried compulsion, generally through the native chiefs. These are induced, by the offer of cotton cloth or bright-coloured handkerchiefs, to supply men from the tribe. If the labourers are not forthcoming, the chief is punished, his village being sometimes burned. By means, then, of gaudy handkerchiefs, or firebrands, the labourers are obtained. They figure as "apprentices," under the law of November 8, 1888, which accorded "special protection to the blacks."

[Footnote 472: The number of whites in Congoland is about 1700, of whom 1060 are Belgians; the blacks number about 29,000,000, according to Stanley; the Belgian Governor-General, Wahis, thinks this below the truth. See Wauters, _L'etat independant du Congo,_ pp. 261, 432.]

The British Consul, Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt, in his report on the administration of the Congo, stated that the majority of the government workmen at Leopoldville were under some form of compulsion, but were, on the whole, well cared for[473].

[Footnote 473: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1904), p. 27.]

According to a German resident in Congoland, the lot of the apprentices differs little from that of slaves. Their position, as contrasted with that of their former relation to the chief, is humorously defined by the term _liberes_[474] The hardships of the labourers on the State railways were such that the British Government refused to allow them to be recruited from Sierra Leone or other British possessions.

[Footnote 474: A. Boshart, _Zehn Jahre Afrikanischen Lebens_ (1898), quoted by Fox Bourne, _op. cit._ p. 77. For further details see the article by Mr. Glave, once an official of the Congo Free State, in the _Century Magazine_, vol. liii.; also his work, _Six Years in the Congo_ (1892).]

However, now that a British Cabinet has allowed a great colony to make use of indentured yellow labour in its mines, Great Britain cannot, without glaring inconsistency, lodge any protest against the infringement, in Congoland, of the Act of the Berlin Conference in the matter of the treatment of hired labourers. If the lot of the Congolese apprentices is to be bettered, the initiative must be taken at some capital other than London.

Another subject which nearly concerns the welfare of the Congo State is the recruiting and use of native troops. These are often raised from the most barbarous tribes of the far interior; their pay is very small; and too often the main inducement to serve under the blue banner with the golden star, is the facility for feasting and plunder at the expense of other natives who have not satisfied the authorities. As one of them navely said to Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt, _he preferred to be with the hunters rather than with the hunted._

It seems that grave abuses first crept in during the course of the campaign for the extirpation of slavery and slave-raiding in the Stanley Falls region. The Arab slave-raiders were rich, not only in slaves, but in ivory--prizes which tempted the cupidity of the native troops, and even, it is said, of their European officers. In any case, it is certain that the liberating forces, hastily raised and imperfectly controlled, perpetrated shocking outrages on the tribes for whose sake they were waging war. The late Mr. Glave, in the article in the _Century Magazine_ above referred to, found reason for doubting whether the crusade did not work almost as much harm as the evils it was sent to cure. His words were these: "The black soldiers are bent on fighting and raiding; they want no peaceful settlement. They have good rifles and ammunition, realise their superiority over the natives with their bows and arrows, and they want to shoot and kill and rob. Black delights to kill black, whether the victim be man, woman, or child, and no matter how defenceless." This deep-seated habit of mind is hard to eradicate; and among certain of the less reputable of the Belgian officers it has occasionally been used, in order to terrorise into obedience tribes that kicked against the decrees of the Congo State.

Undoubtedly there is great difficulty in avoiding friction with native tribes. All Governments have at certain times and places behaved more or less culpably towards them. British annals have been fouled by many a misdeed on the part of harsh officials and grasping pioneers, while recent revelations as to the treatment of natives in Western Australia show the need of close supervision of officials even in a popularly governed colony. The record of German East Africa and the French Congo is also very far from clean. Still, in the opinion of all who have watched over the welfare of the aborigines--among whom we may name Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Fox Bourne--the treatment of the natives in a large part of the Congo Free State has been worse than in the districts named above[475]. There is also the further d.a.m.ning fact that the very State which claimed to be a great philanthropic agency has, until very recently, refused to inst.i.tute any full inquiry into the alleged defects of its administration.

[Footnote 475: Sir Charles Dilke stated this very forcibly in a speech delivered at the Holborn Town Hall on June 7, 1905.]

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. Students of Roman History know that, when this feeling becomes a tradition, it is apt to lead to grave abuses, the recital of which adds an undying interest to the speech of Cicero against Verres. In the case of the Congolese administrators the State provided (doubtless unwittingly) an incentive to harshness. It frequently supplemented its inadequate stipends by "gratifications," which are thus described and criticised by M. Cattier: "The custom was introduced of paying to officials prizes proportioned to the amount of produce of the 'private domain' of the State, and of the taxes paid by the natives. That amounted to the inciting, by the spur of personal interest, of officials to severity and to rigour in the application of laws and regulations."

Truly, a more pernicious application of the plan of "payment by results"

cannot be conceived; and M. Cattier affirms that, though nominally abolished, it existed in reality down to the year 1898.

Added to this are defects arising from the uncertainty of employment. An official may be discharged at once by the Governor-General on the ground of unfitness for service in Africa; and the man, when discharged, has no means of gaining redress. The natural result is the growth of a habit of almost slavish obedience to the authorities, not only in regard to the written law, but also to private and semi-official intimations[476].

[Footnote 476: Cattier, _Droit et Administration . . . du Congo,_ pp.

243-245.]

Another blot on the record of the Congo Free State is the exclusive character of the trading corporation to which it has granted concessions. Despite the promises made to private firms that early sought to open up business in its land, the Government itself has become a great trading corporation, with monopolist rights which close great regions to private traders and subject the natives to vexatious burdens.

This system took definite form in September 1891, when the Government claimed exclusive rights in trade in the extreme north and north-east.

At the close of that year Captain Baert, the administrator of these districts, also enjoined the collection of rubber and other products by the natives for the benefit of the State.

The next step was to forbid to private traders in that quarter the right of buying these products from natives. In May 1892 the State monopoly in rubber, etc., was extended to the "Equator" district, natives not being allowed to sell them to any one but a State official. Many of the merchants protested, but in vain. The chief result of their protest was the establishment of privileged companies, the "Societe Anversoise" and the "Anglo-Belgian," and the reservation to the State of large areas under the t.i.tle of _Domaines prives_ (Oct. 1892)[477]. The apologetic skill of the partisans of the Congo State is very great; but it will hardly be equal to the task of proving that this new departure is not a direct violation of Article V. of the General Act of the Berlin Conference of 1885, quoted above.

[Footnote 477: For a map of the domains now appropriated by these and other privileged "Trusts," see Morel, _op. cit._ p. 466.]

A strange commentary on the latter part of that article, according full protection to all foreigners, was furnished by the execution of the ex-missionary, Stokes, at the hands of Belgian officials in 1895--a matter for which the Congo Government finally made grudging and incomplete reparation[478]. Another case was as bad. In 1901 an Austrian trader, Rabinek, was arrested and imprisoned for "illegal" trading in rubber in the "Katanga Trust" country. Treated unfeelingly during his removal down the country, he succ.u.mbed to fever. His effects were seized and have not been restored to his heirs[479].

[Footnote 478: See the evidence in Parl. Papers, Africa. No. 8 (1896).]

[Footnote 479: Morel, _op. cit._ chaps. xxiii.-xxv.]

When such treatment is meted out to white men who pursued their trade in reliance on the original const.i.tution of the State, the natives may be expected to fare badly. Their misfortunes thickened when the Government, on the plea that natives must contribute towards the expenses of the State, began to require them to collect and hand in a certain amount of rubber. The evidence of Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt clearly shows that the natives could not understand why this should suddenly be imposed on them; that the amount claimed was often excessive; and that the punishment meted out for failure to comply with the official demands led to many barbarous actions on the part of officials and their native troops.

Thus, at Bolobo, he found large numbers of industrious workers in iron who had fled from the "Domaine de la Couronne" (King Leopold's private domain) because "they had endured such ill-treatment at the hands of the Government officials and Government soldiers in their own country that life had become intolerable, that nothing had remained for them at home but to be killed for failure to bring in a certain amount of rubber, or to die of starvation or exposure in their attempts to satisfy the demands made upon them[480]."

[Footnote 480: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), pp. 29, 60. A missionary, Rev. J. White-head, wrote in July 1903: "During the past seven years this 'domaine prive' of King Leopold has been a veritable 'h.e.l.l on earth.'" (_Ibid_. p. 64).]

On the north side of Lake Mantumba Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt found that the population had diminished by 60 or 70 per cent since the imposition of the rubber tax in 1893--a fact, however, which may be partly a.s.signed to the sleeping sickness. The tax led to constant fighting, until at last the officials gave up the effort and imposed a requisition of food or gum-copal; the change seems to have been satisfactory there and in other parts where it has been tried. In the former time the native soldiers punished delinquents with mutilation: proofs on this subject here and in several other places were indisputable. On the River Lulongo, Mr.

Cas.e.m.e.nt found that the amount of rubber collected from the natives generally proved to be in proportion to the number of guns used by the collecting force[481]. In some few cases natives were shot, even by white officers, on account of their failure to bring in the due amount of rubber[482]. A comparatively venial form of punishment was the capture and detention of wives until their husbands made up the tale. 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"?

[Footnote 481: _Ibid_. pp. 34, 43, 44, 49, 76, etc.]

[Footnote 482: _Ibid_. p. 70. The effort made by the Chevalier De Cuvelier to rebut Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt's charges consists mainly of an ineffective _tu quoque_. To compare the rubber-tax of the Congo State with the hut-tax of Sierra Leone begs the whole question. Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt proves (p. 27) that the natives do not object to reasonable taxation which comes regularly. They do object to demands for rubber which are excessive and often involve great privations. Above all, the punishments utterly cow them and cause them to flee to the forests.

The efforts of Mr. Macdonnell in _King Leopold II_. (London, 1905) to refute Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt also seem to me weak and inconclusive. The reply of the Congo Free State is printed by Mr. H.W. Wack in the Appendix of his _Story of the Congo Free State_ (New York, 1905). It convicts Mr.

Cas.e.m.e.nt of inaccuracy on a few details. Despite all that has been written by various apologists, it may be affirmed that the Congo Free State has yet made no adequate defence. Possibly it will appear in the report which, it is hoped, will be published in full by the official commission of inquiry now sitting.]

Livingstone, in his day, regarded ivory as the chief cause of the slave-trade in Central and Eastern Africa; but it is questionable whether even ivory (now a vanishing product) brought more woe to millions of negroes than the viscous fluid which enables the pleasure-seekers of Paris, London, and New York to rush luxuriously through s.p.a.ce. The swift Juggernaut of the present age is accountable for as much misery as ever sugar or ivory was in the old slave days. But it seems that, so long as the motor-car industry prospers, the dumb woes of the millions of Africa will count for little in the Courts of Europe.

During the session of 1904 Lord Lansdowne made praiseworthy efforts to call their attention to the misgovernment of the Congo State; but he met with no response except from the United States, Italy, and Turkey(!) A more signal proof of the weakness and cynical selfishness now prevalent in high quarters has never been given than in this abandonment of a plain and bounden duty.

A slight amount of public spirit on the part of the signatories of the Berlin Act would have sufficed to prevent Congolese affairs drifting into the present highly anomalous situation. That land is not Belgian, and it is not international--except in a strictly legal sense. It is difficult to say what it is if it be not the private domain of King Leopold and of several monopolist-controlling trusts. Probably the only way out of the present slough of despond is the definite a.s.sumption of sole responsibility by the Belgian people; for it should be remembered that a very large number of patriotic Belgians urgently long to redress evils for which they feel themselves to be indirectly, and to a limited extent, chargeable. At present, those who carefully study the evidence relating to the Berlin Conference of 1885, and the facts, so far as they are ascertainable to-day, must p.r.o.nounce the Congo experiment to be a terrible failure.

CHAPTER XX

RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST

"This war, waged . . . for the command of the waters of the Pacific Ocean, so urgently necessary for the peaceful prosperity, not only of our own, but of other nations."--_The Czar's Proclamation of March 3, 1905_.

Of all the collisions of racial interests that have made recent history, none has turned the thoughts of the world to regions so remote, and events so dramatic in their intensity and momentous in their results, as that which has come about in Manchuria. The Far Eastern Question is the outcome of the expansion of two vigorous races, that of Russia and j.a.pan, at the expense of the almost torpid polity of China. The struggle has taken place in the debatable lands north and west of Korea, where Tartars and Chinese formerly warred for supremacy, and where geographical and commercial considerations enhance the value of the most northerly of the ice-free ports of the Continent of Asia.

In order to understand the significance of this great struggle, we must look back to the earlier stages of the extension of Russian influence.

Up to a very recent period the eastern growth of Russia affords an instance of swift and natural expansion. Picture on the one side a young and vigorous community, dowered with patriotic pride by the long and eventually triumphant conflict with the Tartar hordes, and dwelling in dreary plains where Nature now and again drives men forth on the quest for a sufficiency of food. On the other hand, behold a vast territory, well-watered, with no natural barrier between the Urals and the Pacific, spa.r.s.ely inhabited by tribes of nomads having little in common. The one active community will absorb the ill-organised units as inevitably as the rising tide overflows the neighbouring mud-flats when once the intervening barrier is overtopped. In the case of Russia and Siberia the only barrier is that of the Ural Mountains; and their gradual slopes form a slighter barrier than is anywhere else figured on the map of the world in so conspicuous a chain. The Urals once crossed, the slopes and waterways invite the traveller eastwards.

The French revolutionists of 1793 used to say, "With bread and iron one can get to China." Russian pioneers had made good that boast nearly two centuries before it was uttered in Paris. The impelling force which set in motion the Muscovite tide originated with a man whose name is rarely heard outside Russia. Yet, if the fame of men were proportionate to the effect of their exploits, few names would be more widely known than that of Jermak. This man had been a hauler of boats up the banks of the Volga, until his strength, hardihood, and love of adventure impelled him to a freebooting life, wherein his powers of command and the fierce thoroughness of his methods speedily earned him the name of Jermak, "the millstone." In the year 1580, the wealthy family of the Stroganoffs, tempted by stories of the wealth to be gained from the fur-bearing animals of Siberia, turned their thoughts to Jermak and his robber band as the readiest tools for the conquest of those plains. The enterprise appealed to Jermak and the hardy Cossacks with whom he had to do. He and his men were no less skilled in river craft than in fighting; and the roving Cossack spirit kindled at the thought of new lands to harry.