Not only did successive French Governments suppress these reports of their own inspectors, but not a single Concessionaire company was proceeded against, or ever has been.
In 1910, M. Violette, the reporter for the French Colonial Budget of that year, concluded that:
The Dependency is absolutely exhausted… The rights of , the natives continue to be violated with the connivance of the Administration… The Concessionaire Companies are the most formidable enemies of the Dependency; it is time that they were spoken to in the only way which they are capable of understanding. … In this unfortunate dependency the Governor-General, the Governor, the Commissioners exist, and do not govern. There is no law, no authority, other than that of the Boards of the Concessionaire Companies.
If the Concessionaires ruled the French Congo on the spot, they also ruled the Colonial Ministry in all that pertained to Congo affairs. In 1909, the Colonial Minister was an honourable and amiable politician, who would have taken a strong line had he dared. He confessed, in his own cabinet, to the writer of this volume, that he was powerless. The financial interests had become too strong to be assailed; the financial ring too strong to be broken. Two years later these same interests played a -predominant but hidden role in bringing about the Franco-German Morocco crisis. They laboured strenuously to prevent the agreement of November of that year, which momentarily allayed it, and after the agreement was signed they did their best to precipitate another crisis.
The suppression of the travelling Inspectors dried up the sources of information from the French Congo, and since 1911 the veil has not been raised except as regards the coast region. There the long training which the native population had had in genuine commerce, the resolute character of most of the tribes, and the continued presence in the country of English merchants—who clung doggedly to their ground—have combined, more or less, to break down the "System" which has virtually perished after making a holocaust of victims.
An impenetrable mist still lies upon the forests of the middle and upper Congo, shutting them out from the observation of men.
