ome way ahead, I would like to
see the English take over and administrate the Congo. Wherever I
visit a colony governed by Englishmen I find under their
administration, in spite of opium in China and gin on the West
Coast, that three people are benefited: the Englishman, the native,
and the foreign trader from any other part of the world. Of the
colonies of what other country can one say the same?

As a rule our present governments are not loath to protect their
rights. But toward asserting them in the Congo they have been moved
neither by the protests of traders, chambers of commerce,
missionaries, the public press, nor by the cry of the black man to
"let my people go." By only those in high places can it be
explained. We will leave it as a curious fact, and return to the
"Unjust Steward."

His first act was to wage wars upon the Arabs. From the Soudan and
from the East Coast they were raiding the Congo for slaves and
ivory, and he drove them from it. By these wars he accomplished two
things. As the defender of the slave, he gained much public credit,
and he kept the ivory. But war is expensive, and soon he pointed out
to the Powers that to ask him out of his own pocket to maintain
armies in the field and to administer a great estate was unfair. He
humbly sought their permission to levy a few taxes. It seemed a
reasonable request. To clear roads, to keep boats upon the great
rivers, to mark it with buoys, to maintain wood stations for the
steamers, to improve the "moral and material welfare of the
natives," would cost money, and to allow Leopold to bring about
these improvements, which would be for the good of all, he was
permitted to levy the few taxes. That was twenty years ago; to-day I
saw none of these improvements, and the taxes have increased.

From the first they were so heavy that the great trade houses, which
for one hundred years in peace and mutual goodwill bartered with the
natives, found themselves ruined. It was not alone the export taxes,
lighterage dues, port dues, and personal taxes that drove them out
of the Congo; it was the King appearing against them as a rival
trader, the man appointed to maintain the "open door." And a trader
with methods they could not or would not imitate. Leopold, or the
"State," saw for the existence of the Congo only two reasons: Rubber
and Ivory. And the collecting of this rubber and ivory was, as he
saw it, the sole duty of the State and its officers. When he threw
o