I 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 291 bids for idealist support. The terms of the Berlin Act of 1885, from which, as founder and controller of the International Commission for the Naviga- tion of the Congo, Leopold derived his personal title to sovereignty over the independent state of the Congo, contain little more than sounding generalizations in favour of free trade and free access, the suppression of slavery, and the welfare of native races. It is difficult to say how far, if at all, the great powers were hoodwinked by these phrases. Great Britain was beset at the moment by grave diplomatic difficulties with Russia, France, and Germany, and had no option but to acquiesce in a settlement which placed practically unlimited power in Leopold's hands. Her non-exercise of her right to a jurisdiction analogous to that conferred upon European states by the capitulations in Egypt led unhappily to the murder of Stokes in 1895. The misrule of the Congo from 1891 to 1908 prostituted whatever fair motives blended with the sordid aims of the founders of the state. Government in the hands of Leopold II's agents became a vast system of exploitation, and aimed only at the pursuit of wealth. Dr. Keith does not expatiate on what are commonly called the Congo atrocities. He makes it clear, however, that the case put forward for so many years by English reformers does not rest merely or mainly on the evidence of Casement and Morel. There is to-day a school of thought which would have us revise our entire verdict on Belgian administration in Africa, simply because these two men were afterwards exposed, on very much the same principle as that on which they would have British history rewritten so as to prove Germany our arch-enemy through all the ages. Dr. Keith's pages give no warranty for such a challenge to our past judgement. What he does to make our vision clearer is rather to bring into relief those immense diffi- culties in Leopold's path which brought about, though they cannot excuse, the degradation of his mission on the Congo. It was impossible to construct the useful public works which he promoted, or to wage a necessary war against slavers and rebellious soldiery, without having infinitely more money than he could procure either on loan in Belgium, or from exercising the very restricted fiscal rights of the Congo state. Forced labour was imposed by him on the natives in lieu of money taxes which they could not pay, and seemed to him to be the only way by which the government could be carried on. Similarly, the refusal of land to Protestant missions and the very unwise handing over to Roman Catholic missions in 1890 of all children alleged to have been rescued from slave- traders were steps taken under the pressure of political necessity. It is to Belgium's credit that since her acquisition of the Congo from the Belgian Crown in 1908, its government has ceased to be little better than a fierce scramble for ivory and rubber, and that British views on such questions as the treatment of natives, freedom of trade, the liquor traffic, and dealing in arms, have had a certain influence upon administra- tion. The task is hard. * The Congolese native, so long oppressed and ill-used, has inevitably since his liberation developed a spirit of disinclination to work . . . accompanied by insubordination and insolence to Europeans.' There is a short but excellent account of the German menace in central U2
