I do not believe [said Sir Henry Stanley] in the charges brought against the Congo, and I do not share the opinions that inspire them. I do not think that any State will be inclined to step in, and to spend the money that Belgium and the King of the Belgians spend to adapt the darkest part of Darkest Africa to the interests of commerce. King Leopold lately assigned £120,000 a year to the Congo administration. He thereafter gave £40,000 and Belgium £80,000. Tell me, what other country would be ready to do as much?

When I consider the limited number of years which have elapsed since the Congo became a State, I hold that the work which has been accomplished there does great honour to Belgium, and I am certain that not one of the countries who are invited by the newspapers to put itself in its place would have been able to do better.

You can feel certain that the King of the Belgians interests himself personally in the smallest detail of the administration. I do not pretend that he can superintend the acts of each individual, but what Government, what State could do that? But the recitals of atrocities, and of bad administration which have of late been spread about are almost all, if not all, pure reports. Naturally, if it is question of seeking cause for a quarrel there is no difficulty in finding it; but if the Congo of 1885 is compared with the Congo of to-day, it must be allowed that its progress has been remarkable.

The English Note of the month of August is founded, I am convinced, on reports stamped with partiality. The assertions of a missionary have been reproduced, according to whom the natives flee at the approach of the Congo State officials. They fled before me also when I was there. The mere apparition of a white man, the simple sight of an unusual being or object, puts them to flight. That is part of the animal instinct of self-preservation. Whites and blacks always approach one another for the first time with a general sentiment of distrust. Little by little they learn to know one another, and this sentiment disappears.

The Congo was in truth the darkest part of Africa. To-day with its forests pierced and open, its routes, its stations, it is in advance of all other African States. Take the French Congo, German East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, and compare them! The Congo State prospers in a greater degree than any other part of the black continent.

The Congo State is accused of employing as soldiers cannibal Negroes. When I was on the Congo, and I accused a tribe of cannibalism it replied: “We are not cannibals, but our neighbours are.” The neighbouring tribe said: “It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet”; and that tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt as to the existence of this practice. I frequently met with trenches freshly disturbed, from which corpses had been taken to be eaten. It was very seldom that I could discover the guilty. How then in recruiting its troops was the Congo State to distinguish the black cannibals from those who are not cannibals?

I am convinced that since I left Africa King Leopold has done his best to prevent all crime on the Congo. But he is no more responsible for the crimes which may be committed there than for those occasionally committed on the soil of Belgium itself. There are on the Congo 300 officials who report to the Governor-General, who in his turn addresses a summary of these reports to the King. They discharge their mission under the most difficult conditions, and I believe that I may assert that from the Governor-General down to the humblest official there is not one of them guilty of cruelty. Moreover, it is for those who speak of atrocities to furnish proof of them.

I know by experience what a large number of stories are put forward, then refuted, and afterwards resuscitated year after year. These are legends for travellers. Use is made of them with every change of the wind in Africa. Those who relate them are often the prey of climatic maladies.

The Congo has not the most enviable climate in the world. The maladies contracted there are often debilitating, and things are seen and things are described through the malady, which distorts the morale and changes the optic.

I had on the Congo under my orders 300 men—English, Germans, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians. There were 80 English, but the majority were Belgians. I found no difference between them. All did their best, according to their means. All were, in the course of duty, the object of some charge. I examined the charges minutely, and always found them to be without foundation. That did not prevent these stories reaching Banana, and from there Europe. Well, that is what happened on the Congo in my time; that is what is happening there to-day.

The sentiment that inspires the charges against the Congo is jealousy. The Congo is succeeding better than any other State of Africa.

I do not think that the Congo State would be administered better by France, the United States, or Germany. Under French administration the Congo would retrogress. Germany would content itself with fortifying it in a military sense. And commerce does not develop when it is covered with a coat of mail. Germany does not permit and will not permit the English to penetrate into its territory, except under certain restrictions. England would not have managed the Congo better than King Leopold has done if she had been mistress of it, as she might have become in 1877.

The white man must remain master of the Congo. Drive him out of it, and you will see war arise anew between one native village and another, a return to barbarism. It is difficult to govern so vast a country; yet, in a limited number of years, the King of the Belgians has put an end to the horrible Arab slave trade. I do not think there is another sovereign living who has done so much for humanity as Leopold II.

In spite of an element of Arab civilisation which the slave-trader had certainly implanted in the Congo Forest, he had made himself notorious for his ravages and cruelties. Numbers of natives had been horribly mutilated, hands and feet lopped off, and women’s breasts cut away. These people explained to me that these mutilations—which, as only a Negro could, they had survived—had been the work of the Manyema slave-trader and his gang, done sometimes out of wanton cruelty, sometimes as a punishment for thieving or absconding. May it not be that many of the mutilated people of whom we hear so much in the northern and eastern part of the Congo Free State are also the surviving results of Arab cruelty? I am aware that it is customary to attribute these outrages to the native soldiery and police employed by the Belgians to maintain order or to collect taxes; and though I am fully aware that these native soldiers and police under imperfect Belgian administration, as under imperfect British control, can commit all sorts of atrocities (as we know they did in Mashonaland and in Uganda), every bad deed of this description is not to be laid to their charge, for many outrages are the work of the Arab traders and raiders in these countries, and of their apt pupils the Manyemas. This much I can speak of with certainty and emphasis: that from the British frontier near Fort George to the limit of my journeys into the Mbuba country of the Congo Free State, up and down the Semliki, the natives appeared to be prosperous and happy under the excellent administration of the late Lieutenant Meura and his coadjutor, Mr. Karl Eriksson. The extent to which they were building their villages and cultivating their plantations within the precincts of Fort Mbeni showed that they had no fear of the Belgians, while the Dwarfs equally asserted the goodness of the local white men.

I was present on the Congo at the birth of the Congo Free State. In 1882-1883 I paid a prolonged visit of eight months to Stanley. During the course of this visit I travelled up the Congo nearly as far as the point where it crosses the Equator. I came into continual contact with the Belgian officers and officials who had been sent out on the part of the Comité d’Études du Haut-Congo to assist Stanley. I may mention that I was “nobody’s” man. I paid my own travelling expenses, and had no reason to espouse any one cause more than another. I conceived, however, the highest admiration for Sir Henry Stanley, personally, and for the work he was doing. I convinced myself over and over again by constant cross-examination of the natives of the Congo, and of Zanzibaris and Somalis, that Sir Henry was always just and never cruel, and that the first interests he had at heart were those of the natives of Africa. His memory still lingers in all the regions from the mouth of the Congo to Zanzibar, and any one who doubts the justice of my opinion has only to do as I have done through many years—question the natives as to their impressions of “Bula Matadi” (the Breaker of Stones). Nor did I at that date see anything to object to in the conduct of the Belgian officers, for many of whom I entertained feelings of warm friendship and esteem. The work of such men as Nilis, Van Gèle, Hanssens, Coquilhat, Braconnier, Janssen, and Roger, not to mention others, was such as no missionary could or did find fault with.

Subsequently when I returned to the vicinity of those regions as Commissioner for British Central Africa, I came a good deal into contact with the Belgian officers sent to control those countries. I never received any complaints from natives or Europeans at that time which tended to show that the natives were ill-treated by the Belgians.

In 1900, whilst at work in Uganda, I had occasion to visit the adjoining regions of the Congo Free State along and across the Semliki River. In this portion of the Congo Forest (into which my expedition penetrated for about thirty miles west of the Semliki) I questioned many natives—Pigmies, Babira, Bambuba, Lendu, Bakonjo, and Basongora. From none of them did I receive the slightest complaint as regards the treatment they received from the Belgians, and indeed the sight of their villages, plantations, and settlements, the fact that they so freely came and talked to the white man, were sufficient to show that they were perfectly content with their present lot. The Belgian and Swedish officers whom I met in this portion of the territory of the Congo Free State were men of the best character. In short, this portion of Congo territory left little to be desired, and in some respects was better organised than the adjoining districts of the British Protectorate. One Musongora chief complained to me that the native soldiers in Belgian employ had taken away some of his wives. He expressed himself so dissatisfied with this treatment that he asked permission to cross over into British territory. That permission was given him; but when he found that he had to pay the hut tax on Uganda soil he returned to his old quarters. In addition to the foregoing experiences I might say that I took into my employ about this time natives of many districts along the Upper Congo, from the country of Bangala on the west to the mouth of the Aruwimi on the east. I did this with the idea of making studies of their languages, and they lived with me for about a year, accompanying me on all my journeys through the Uganda Protectorate. I did not ask the permission of the Belgians to recruit these people, for the very good reason that, having apparently complete liberty of action, they had walked through the Congo Forest to the British frontier to offer themselves for work. It cannot be said therefore that the Belgians selected people especially to fill my ears with pleasing stories as to Belgian administration. I questioned these natives of villages all along the great northern bend of the Congo. Not one of them had any complaint to make against the Belgians. When I was preparing to leave Uganda to return to England I offered these men (who were accompanied by their wives) plots of land in the Uganda Protectorate; but they were quite decided in wishing to return to their homes on the Upper Congo; and so far as I know they did so, as every facility was given them in that direction. It strikes one that if these particular people were living under a reign of terror they would hardly have been so eager to return to their homes with the wages they had earned.

There are, no doubt, bad Belgians, as there have been bad, cruel, and wicked Englishmen and Scotchmen, amongst African pioneers. In the early days of African enterprise I have seen too many misdeeds of my own countrymen in Africa to be very keen about denouncing other nations for similar faults.

To the Editor of the “Times”

Sir,—Having just returned from a shooting trip across the Congo Free State from the Nile to Boma, on the West Coast, I naturally feel much interested in the correspondence now going on with regard to that country. As I came down the Congo River a copy of Mr. Casement’s report was lent me to read, and I was more than surprised at the contents of a letter written by Lord Cromer, which was inserted as a prelude to the more serious indictment following.

Now, Sir, had this letter been published alone it might not have seemed so serious, but taken in conjunction with what followed it formed a most damaging article.

As my experience of the Government of the Lado Enclave is so entirely opposite to the view taken of it by Lord Cromer, I feel compelled, in fairness to the Belgian officials, to give my views of the country and its Government. That I am not alone in discovering so much that is good in the Belgian administration of the Lado Enclave is vouched for by other English officers who have hunted and travelled among the natives beyond the waters west of the Nile.

I assume from Lord Cromer’s report, and from what I was told at Lado, that he only landed at the Kiro and Lado stations, so that the greater part of his report must have been founded on information supplied by others, which, besides being often incorrect, might possibly have reference to times gone by, when, I believe, a certain official was promptly dismissed the service for unfair treatment of the natives.

Lord Cromer compares the deserted appearance of the west banks of the Nile with the east bank between Kiro and Lado.

My experience of this part was that you could hardly see anything of the west bank, owing to the channel lying well over to the east, and endless sudd stretching to the west. The reasons for natives not living near the bank I give later on.

Again, Lord Cromer contrasts the peaceful, settled state and the confidence of the tribes under English rule on the Nile as compared with those on Belgian territory; yet within a few months of his visit a whole British force was annihilated on the Bahr el Ghazal, while in the Game Ordinance published last year it stated: “The whole of the left bank of the Nile is at present closed to sportsmen, owing to the unsettled state of the natives.”

Since my return I see that yet another British force has been severely handled by the natives. Through the whole of my Congo trip, absolutely alone, I wandered about, visiting 50 different tribes and hundreds of villages, armed as a rule with a camera, umbrella, and, at times, a collecting gun. Yet I had no unpleasant experiences; on the contrary, I was received with kindness far different to any I ever met with when hunting among British African natives.

As I went up the Nile I heard the same stories Lord Cromer did—as to how all the natives were flying across the river from the Belgian country owing, I was told, to ill-treatment. As I spent a month hunting all the district 40 miles inland from Lado and Kiro, looked after by the two big Bari chiefs, Kenion and Fariala, I took great interest in learning all I could, and, owing to my capitow talking Arabic, the chiefs’ favourite language, I had excellent chances for finding out all I wanted.

To my question as to whether many of their tribes went over the river, and why, they replied: “A few boys ran away the other side, but mostly bad boys who won’t work.” Asked again, if a few good men went, and, if so, why, they answered: “English pay in money; some boys, if once had money, like it better than being paid in cloth or beads,” but no mention of ill-treatment.

Lord Cromer considers because the native villages happen at these particular posts to be several hours’ distant, that this is also owing to bad treatment. I wish to point out that the villages must either be right on the Nile bank, or inland where they are, for the whole country between is waterless during four months. Another reason given for not living on the Nile was that in olden days the few who did so were all killed or taken prisoners by the Dervishes; hence the survivors kept clear of waterways.

Again, there are no sites for villages near the river, as nearly all the banks, lying low, are covered with marsh and sudd, harbouring millions of mosquitoes, whereas a few miles inland there is good water, not a single mosquito, plenty of game, with good grass and tillage land.

When I visited Gondokoro every one was complaining at having the station on the Nile, instead of a few miles inland, for similar reasons.

One of the wisest rules of the Congo is not to allow native villages adjoining the posts; and I hear we are copying the same on the West Coast; it means a reduction of 75 per cent. in sickness.

That no natives live near Lado arises from purely natural causes. Lord Cromer would find plenty of posts in the interior, with thousands of natives settled as near as they are allowed to.

Another statement, that “the soldiers are allowed full liberty to plunder the natives,” is by no means correct. During my journey I saw hundreds of soldiers being sent off on different work—such as postal, Government despatches, fetching in porters, etc.; but not one ever left without having received cloth, beads, or wire sufficient to purchase all necessary food. I quite admit a few of the soldiers helped themselves now and again, and I found the worst sinners in this respect were our own Sierra Leone boys, a number of whom take service in the Congo. Should their acts be reported they are quickly dealt with.

During my trip I must have employed over 1200 porters. I can only say I never came across a more cheerful, well-disposed set of men. I never had the least trouble with them, though asking them to march 30 and 40 miles a day. How often I thought of my woes and worries in British Central Africa, never knowing how many porters would run away each night, though only marching ten miles a day! Had all the accounts of ill-treatment and non-payment been true, would men have come in so readily and worked for me as these carriers did? Many an hour at night I used to spend getting them to talk about the country, its ways, and any grievances. I found, naturally, two or three officers who were evidently disliked (no doubt I will be added to that list after our long marches); but, on the other hand, they talked of many officers as their “white fathers.” As for the way in which the Belgians have opened out the country, it is wonderful. The posts are now all well-built brick houses, and in a few months’ time most of the barracks will be similar; excellent roads connect many of the posts, while all sorts of vegetables and fruit are being grown, cattle and sheep also being introduced in many parts. Though I was told in Khartoum by several of our officers who had been stationed on the frontier how well the Lado Enclave was run, I was quite astonished at such progress. I am glad to see my views are shared by Major Gibbons and Captain Bell, both of whom have had chances of seeing life inland from the Nile.

I met during my wanderings several English and American traders having concessions both in Uganda and the Congo. These men have to visit all the villages. They all said the same thing—that there was nothing wrong with the Government of the Enclave. I also had a long and interesting talk with Father Maguire, of the Roman Catholic mission station at Amadi. He spoke most warmly in praise of the work done by the Belgians in such a few years. He said: “Think of what this country was only a few years ago, overrun with Dervishes, decimated by the slave-dealers, the natives all cannibals—and now you walk in here with only an umbrella as a protection.”

I can only add that I admire the excellent work being done by such men as Commissioner General George Witerwulge, Commandants Ravello (Lado), Menwnaer (Redjaf), Wacquez (Buta), Holmes (Dungu), Grazione (Lodka), and all the many other officers, too numerous to mention, who are quietly working hard, day after day, opening out those vast regions to civilisation; and I shall never forget the kindness met with at the hands of all, from the Nile to Boma.

I must apologise for trespassing on your valuable space, but if I were to try and refute many of the statements I have seen in print I should have to trespass considerably more.

Yours truly,
James J. Harrison.

Bachelors’ Club, London,
June 6th.

P. S.—Since writing the above I see in to-day’s Morning Post quotations from some English trader in Matadi. He says: “From all I hear, things up country are worse than ever. In the Mayumbe country, behind Boma even, the State has begun collecting rubber by force from the natives.”

As I happened to travel home on the same boat as Mr. Ave, an American missionary, who has for some years been in charge of this Mayumbe district, his statements to me may be of interest. Mr. Ave said all these reports were untrue; that the district was governed by an officer who was most kind and considerate in all his dealings with the natives; that he had carefully readjusted the taxation so as to fall as fairly as possible with regard to villages and population of same; and that the officer was universally respected by all the natives as a kind and just man. The same Morning Post article seems to be slightly inconsistent. It quotes one Equatorial missionary as saying that “the white man will be swept out of the Congo and a revolution will take place within two years,” while farther on it quotes the Matadi trader “as deprecating the founding of a new post for 1,000 soldiers at Bomasundi.”

Surely, if the first assumption is correct, the wisdom of the second is sound. I am glad to find since my return that few people take notice of or believe those wonderful statements, copied from a more wonderful paper—the West African Mail.

Mr. Morel in your paper to-day himself answers the question asked him by others, viz., Why has the Congo Reform Association noticed my statements? If they were incorrect surely his letter would have dealt with them, instead of which all he can say is that I am attacking a man of Mr. Casement’s standing.

While quite ready to take full responsibility for any letter or interview alluded to by Mr. Morel, I absolutely deny having attacked the character of our Consul in any way, nor did I find in Boma Belgian officers “showering abuse” on him. Like myself they (and most people over here with whom I have discussed it) did not think it a wise appointment, and certainly it placed Mr. Casement in an awkward and unenviable position; but after all he would only carry out his orders. But as to the travelling about on a mission steamer I most strongly assert it was a most unfortunate error. It is well known to all natives on which side most of the Protestant and Baptist missionaries are, and to expect them to give contradictory evidence in such circumstances was attributing to them virtues unpossessed. I have noted Mr. Morel places much of the Belgian evidence (say, the Epondo case) out of court for the selfsame reasons. After the using of a mission steamer I hardly see that any work Mr. Casement might have been interested in originally could make any difference. Still, for his own sake it might be wise if Mr. Morel stated exactly what occupations or duties he was interested in, say, between 1885 and 1900. I trust Mr. Morel in his next letter will deal more fully with my “absurdities” put forward in my letter, and not have to simply try and find an imaginary attack on a gentleman for whom, through mutual friends, I have every respect.

My object in entering this Congo controversy is to try and place before the English public a more broad-minded view of the question, and while making allowances for the well-nigh insuperable difficulties the Congo Government have had to contend with, at the same time try to help on improvements for the future, rather than dwell entirely on the past. I can assure Mr. Morel that I am by no means alone in my “absurd views,” but will be supported by others who have lately crossed the whole Congo State, blessed with an open mind.

Yours, &c.,
James J. Harrison.

Bachelors’ Club, London,
June 24th.