Cruelties in the Congo Free State
It has been announced that Governor Curtis Guild, Jr., of Massachusetts, vice-president of the Congo Reform Association, has made an appeal to the United States government to intervene in the affairs of the Congo Free State to secure protection to the natives against the cruelties practised upon them under the rulership of King Leopold of Belgium. Speaking on this subject recently, the Rev. Herbert S. Johnson, a Baptist pastor of Boston, who has spent three months in that part of Africa for the special purpose of securing information, said:— I got my information from the report of King Leopold's own commission of inquiry and from Protestant and Catholic missionaries. The report states that in six months six thousand right hands were cut off from subjects whom King Leopold compelled to work for him without remuneration. . . . When a slave falls short in his day's work, he is stripped and held face downward, while the chicotte [a sharp whip] is applied. Ninety lashes is the usual punishment. In many instances death results before the full punishment is meted out. All this array of evidence stands over against Cardinal Gibbons's attempted vindication of the conduct of King Leopold as being that of a Christian ruler. King Leopold is a faithful Catholic.