WHAT BELGIUM IS DOING IN AFRICA.
Much has been said of Belgium’s work in the heart of Africa in the Kongo country. It has been supposed that King Leopold II., through his officials, was exercising an uplifting influence over the Kongo Free State. But ugly rumors of slavery and cannibalism with the consent of the Belgian officials have multiplied of late years, till it has become quite clear that the natives would be far better off if Belgium control was utterly destroyed. One of the latest to write upon the subject is James A. Phillips, a Methodist missionary, who has just returned to his home in Pennsylvania after a sojourn of eleven years under the equator in Africa. It is Mr. Phillips’ purpose to lay this information before the government in Washington, and then before influential people in London. He has written an article in the Hearst newspapers, from which the following excerpts are taken, Mr. Phillips gives many details, of which he has kept faithful record as to places, dates, and facts:— I say calmly and deliberately that since the Spanish Inquisition no such Satanic cruelty and infamous brutality have been visited by soldiers and authorities upon a helpless, childish, ignorant people as that which the Belgians inflict upon the Kongo blacks. It would take a score of big volumes for me to tell of the atrocities and barbarities that I know of personally in Kongo, and what I know is a mere drop in the hogshead of facts that occur among the 18,000,000 natives there, and in the 900,000 square miles. I have seen squads of nude, terrified, half-fainting women dragged into Mussumba as recent captures for the Belgian Slave Service. I once counted 288 slaves proceeding northward. They had already come some 300 miles. A guard of five Belgians and 150 armed, native soldiers went along with the melancholy procession of humanity. I have seen native women literally spitted on a pike pole by cannibal soldiers because they refused to move on the march to the north. I can give names and dates of times when I have known women to be beaten into a hideous mass of flesh and broken bones because they were obstreperous when ordered to move on. I can give names and dates also of the burning and slaughtering of hamlets of several hundred people by a few score of armed, cannibal soldiers, under orders of a Belgian officer, for petty anger. Here is a sample of many similar recent episodes in Kongo:— Twenty-two miles from Kitumba, where I was staying, several hundred soldiers of the Zappo Luba tribe, famous for its ferocity and cannibalistic habits, were ordered to go to a hamlet of about 700 meek agricultural natives and demand their rubber and ivory product for the year, on the score that the village had been protected from marauding bands of natives. The hamlet demurred, and the chief at last refused to yield anything to the Zappo Lubas, whereupon the armed force made war upon the place. Most of the women fled into the forest, but every soul in the town that was caught and shot was put to death. Several Americans and English went there a week later, and we saw over 131 decayed human heads stuck upon bamboo poles, and corpses of men, women, children, and babies lying where they had been struck down. I will not go into the shocking details of the way that hamlet was massacred, and what hideous sights we whites came upon in our search through the place. I boldly say that over 50,000 men and women are wantonly killed or slowly tortured to death in Kongo Free State every year by the Belgian native soldiers and with the consent of the Belgian authorities. I could fill this newspaper with statements of facts concerning unmentionable atrocities upon men and women—especially young women natives in Kongo land. I charge the Belgians, from King Leopold down to the boys in the hundreds of trading headquarters, with an all-consuming desire to make money in the Kongo Free State, no matter at what cost of human life, or at what cruelty or barbarism necessary to accomplish the making of dividends for the Belgian trading companies. Chronic intoxication, infamous and open immorality prevail wherever the Belgians set up their headquarters. The causes: Greed and appetite; conscience destroyed by appetite, and a conscienceless greed which counts sous of more worth than souls. And yet Belgium is called a “Christian” nation! And these days are said to be the dawn of the millennium!