CHAPTER X.
The Story of the French Congo.
Ruin and death … terrifying depopulation …. universal exodus … the continuous destruction of the population—purely and simply.—De Brazza.
In 1899 King Leopold planned what, after his initial triumph in hoodwinking public opinion fifteen years before, was the master-stroke of his African career. And he succeeded in carrying it out. He induced the French Government of the day by "scandalous, financial and political intrigues, bribery, corruption and cowardice," as a French author of repute remarks, to adopt and apply in the coterminous territory of the French Congo, the principles and the policy that he had inaugurated in the Congo Free State. Thenceforth the French Congo was ringed round by a fence of Franco-Belgian financial interests. His object in doing so was obvious. The Congo Reform movement in England was still weak and had aroused little or no echo abroad. But it was gathering in volume, and the Sovereign of the Congo State was uneasy. By persuading one of the great Powers to imitate his methods, he established a community of interest with its Government, thus enormously strengthening his position should it be severely assailed. He sought, indeed, `to contaminate not only the French Congo, but the whole of the French West African dependencies and the German Kamerun also. His success in Kamerun was shortlived. The German Government granted two concessions to Belgo-German financial groups, but after about twelve months' experience, drastically restricted their privileges and refused to grant any more. The attempt to introduce the System into French West Africa, though supported from Paris, was defeated by the combined opposition of the high officials and of the powerful trading firms established there. M. Ballay, the Governor-General, bluntly described it as requiring for its enforcement "a soldier behind every producer," and set his face against it absolutely.
