A CHAMPION

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Nov 3, 1904

to defend King Leopold, of Belgium, against the charges made against his administration of affairs in the Congo State of Africa, has come forward in the person of Cardinal Gibbons, who recently addressed a letter to the International Peace Congress, assembled at Boston, defending the policy of the Belgian government in that part of Africa. The papers have published an acknowledgment from King Leopold to the cardinal, thanking him for the service rendered, and a reply from the cardinal in which he says, “It was a duty which I performed with lively satisfaction, as it was done in behalf of a sovereign who has done so much in the cause of Christianity and civilization, and who is the ruler of a nation conspicuous not only for Catholic faith, but also for the noble qualities which exalt a nation.” Photographs which have appeared in the papers show natives with bodies shockingly mutilated and deformed, this being the result of punishments inflicted on them by their European taskmasters who are in charge of the leading industries in that country. Whatever may be said of Belgium as a conspicuously Christian nation, the whole history of the European’s dealings with the people of the Dark Continent is such as to afford every presumption of the truthfulness of the charges which have stirred to action humanitarians in this and other countries of the civilized world.