BELGIUM AND THE CONGO.

[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR." J

Sin,—Your interpretation of Sir Edward Grey's speech in the House of Commons of February 26th is the interpretation which all of us who are anxiously following the developments of the Congo question placed upon it. But nowhere have I seen it expressed with such directness and felicity as in your issue of February 29th. Allow me to reproduce the passage from your article, for with the publication of the amended Treaty of Cession we have, indeed, come to the parting of the ways. This is what you said

" We have not, as we said, long to wait before we shall know whether the annexation scheme which is still the subject of dispute between King Leopold and the Belgian Cabinet will secure the absolute reversal of the economic system under which the Congo natives are so cruelly oppressed. If it does not provide for such a reversal, we cannot possibly assent to it as a satis- factory means of clearing our conscience."

Now we know conclusively that the Congo Reform Associa- tion's predictions were right once more, and that M. Schol- laert's " Traite additionnel " was exclusively concerned with the settlement between the King and Parliament of the Crown foundation squabble. With this one exception, the Treaty stands where it did, and the compromise, as I ventured in my

last letter in the Spectator to assert would be the case, has been accepted by the dissentient members of the Right. Failing

outside intervention, the Treaty is now assured of a majority in the Chamber, and it is virtually certain, as I have pre- viously explained, that it will be rushed through before the partial elections in May.

It is a misfortune that probably not more than half-a-dozen copies of this Treaty and its annexes are to be found in this country. This alone can explain the singular inability to realise the gravity of the position at which we have arrived which characterises many of the newspaper comments. Yet a pretty full analysis of its contents, together with a map illustrating the same, was published by the Congo Reform Association in December last, and I shall be happy to send any of your readers a copy. Under this Treaty, which, let us remember, is actually signed, not only by the plenipotentiaries of the Congo State and of Belgium, but by the Belgian Government, and which the Belgian Government will immediately proceed to ask the Chamber to pass [the Chamber cannot alter it, but can only accept or reject it], Belgium solemnly undertakes to respect the "foundations, as also the acquired rights, legally recog- nised, of third parties," and to "assume responsibility for the obligations of the Congo State such as they are set forth in Annex A." Under the " Traits additionnel " the Crown "foundation," as such, disappears, and is replaced by a monetary equivalent which does not concern us.

What Belgium must therefore maintain are the foundation of the National domain, and the acquired rights of the vast monopolistic concerns which, with the National domain, cover the whole of the Congo. Throughout this gigantic area the negotiable wealth of the land—that is to say, the produce of the soil, which by every law, human and divine, belongs to the

native population and constitutes its trading wealth—has been "legally" converted into the property of the Administration and its concessionnaires, for whom the native is compelled by

force to harvest it. In the three years 1905-7 the Adminis- tration has obtained a sum of £2,479,888 by selling the produce thus obtained in the Antwerp market, and as a beneficiary in

the profits, secured by the same process, of the concession- naires. That sum represents some 62 per cent. of its total revenues in those years.

Now, Sir, the time has come to face the facts boldly, and boldly to proclaim the naked truth. The Belgian Govern- ment is deliberately proposing to commit an unconsulted electorate to annexation based upon the most colossal act of spoliation ever perpetrated in the history of mankind, at the expense of a helpless people numbering, according to its own published data, some twenty millions, and in a territory solemnly set aside for absolute freedom of commercial intercourse between its inhabitants and the outer world by the Great Powers. That is what this Treaty means. I defy contradiction. It is in black and white. The economic rights of these millions of people are swept out of existence by a system which takes no account whatever of native land tenure, denies that the native has any right to buy or to sell, and lowers him to the position of a brute beast.

My attack upon the edifice of the Leopoldian conception has reposed from the very first upon the contention that the economic rights of the native population are the bulwark of their human liberties; that the destruction of those rights has been the fundamental policy of the Congo State; and that as a consequence thereof abuses, atrocities, and enslave- ment have been necessary, fatal, and inevitable. This con- tention, long misunderstood, denied, or fought shy of (because, no doubt, it went to rock-bottom), is now admitted by men of eminence whose views cannot be brushed aside, and was, indeed, embodied in the Resolution passed unanimously, and accepted by the Government, through the House of Commons on February 26th.

Yet the Belgian Government has learned nothing, and actually proposes to saddle the Belgian people—without con- sulting them—with the onus, and expose them to the risks, of responsibility before the world for a step which will damn their country for generations. For it is useless to contend that annexation going through on this basis can be modified by any provisions at all in any "Colonial law" which could be conceivably drafted. No talk about Parliamentary control, or voting Budgets, is going to alter the accomplished fact. You cannot superimpose " reforms" upon a foundation of wholesale robbery. You cannot orient your administration in humane channels when it rests upon a conception which violates every practice of civilised government, and puts back the clock a thousand years.

A grave responsibility has fallen upon his Majesty's Government. The country believes firmly that they will adopt such measures as will save the Congo races from the legalised perpetuation of a hitherto illegal tyranny. For those who have fought the Leopoldian conception year after year until its vileness has been dragged forth into the full light of day there is but one course to pursue,—to offer uncom- promising hostility to Belgian annexation on these lines, or on any lines which do not, to repeat your words, ensure an " absolute reversal of the economic system " existing.—I am,

[We cannot believe that Sir Edward Grey and the Cabinet will give their consent to any scheme of transfer which is open to the very serious objections stated by Mr. Morel. —ED. Spectator.]