The Barbarities of a Christian Prince
By L. A. S.
In a recent issue of The Independent reference is again made to the atrocities reported from the Kongo Free State, which come based upon evidence that can not be disregarded. This journal says:— Notwithstanding all the efforts made to blind the public as to the atrocities committed by the Belgian authorities in the Kongo State, they seem to be proved beyond all question, and they have been of a horrible character. It is not sufficient to say that atrocities are likely to occur sporadically in a settlement of any new country. That is true, and yet there seems to be a system about this which indicates heartless management. The Kongo Free State is not a free state at all. There is absolutely no freedom in it. It is the most extreme example of government by a single man, and that man the king of the Belgians. He rules everything, makes all laws, executes them at his own will, owns personally all the land, unless it be such as has been previously cultivated by natives, and is in possession of all its products, and has the profits of all its exports. Nothing like it is known in human government within regions familiar to civilized men. It is required that there should be a profit from this vast estate, and that profit comes from the sale of rubber. Horrible cruelties have been committed in compelling men to bring in rubber, even to the extent of mutilation, destruction of villages, and the existence of practical slavery. But when the matter of these atrocities was under consideration by the recent Peace Congress in Boston, it was Cardinal Gibbons, the head of Roman Catholicism in this country, who came forward with a laudatory defense of King Leopold, because the latter is a “most Christian prince” of the Catholic Church. In this incident the papacy appears in its true character. The subject is to be brought before the United States Senate by petition from various organizations, and the Senate will be asked to urge upon the powers responsible for the existence of the Kongo State such action as will at least mitigate the evils which oppress that land.