" to introduce
commerce and civilization. What came of it? "Rubber and murder, slavery
in its worst form," wrote Glave in 1895.

Harris declares that King Leopold's regime meant the death of twelve
million natives, "but what we who were behind the scenes felt most
keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was
desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life,
the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of
every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck
the chiefs of the people dumb with horror--in a word, a veritable
avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes."

Yet the fields of Belgium laughed, the cities were gay, art and science
flourished; the groans that helped to nourish this civilization fell on
deaf ears because the world round about was doing the same sort of thing
elsewhere on its own account.

As we saw the dead dimly through rifts of battlesmoke and heard faintly
the cursings and accusations of blood brothers, we darker men said: This
is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this _is_
Europe; this seeming Terrible is the real soul of white culture--back of
all culture,--stripped and visible today. This is where the world has
arrived,--these dark and awful depths and not the shining and ineffable
heights of which it boasted. Here is whither the might and energy of
modern humanity has really gone.

But may not the world cry back at us and ask: "What better thing have
you to show? What have you done or would do better than this if you had
today the world rule? Paint with all riot of hateful colors the thin
skin of European culture,--is it not better than any culture that arose
in Africa or Asia?"

It is. Of this there is no doubt and never has been; but why is it
better? Is it better because Europeans are better, nobler, greater, and
more gifted than other folk? It is not. Europe has never produced and
never will in our day bring forth a single human soul who cannot be
matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by Asia and
Africa. Run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the Europeans who in
sober truth over-match Nefertari, Mohammed, Rameses and Askia,
Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. If we could scan the calendar of
thousands of lesser men, in like comparison, the result would be the
same; but we cannot do this because of the deliberately educated
ignorance of wh