Review of Kevieics, 20ISI06. 



L ea ding A rticles. 



19 



THE SAVIOUR OF THE CONGO. 



The " Quarterly's " Tribute to Mr. Morel. 



There is no more estimable journalist in Britain, 

 possibly even in the world, than Mr. E. D. Morel, the 

 editor of West Africa, the leader of the agitation for 

 the reform of the Congo. He is the heart and soul 

 of the Congo Reform Association. He has kept the 

 movement going for ) ears, and now I am glad to see 

 his sterling merits are gaining recognition. There 

 is a very weighty article on the Congo Question in 

 the Quarterly Review, in which a well-earned tribute 

 is paid to this indomitable young North-country jour- 

 nalisr, who, almost single-handed, has brought the 

 Emperor of Cannibal-land to bay. 



THE HOEEORS 01^ THE CONCESSIONNAIEE SYSTEM. 



The Quarterly, after giving a rapid sketch of how 

 the Congo State came into being, says that the grant 

 of concessions to trading monopolist companies led 

 to horrible atrocities. The exploitation of the 

 natives was facilitated by laws, of which, says the re- 

 viewer, 



it ia no exaggeration to say that the regulations regarding 

 native taxation turned millions of unhappy negroes into 

 ijotential criminals, people -who, on some count or another, 

 had gone astray, and were therefore liable to punishment 

 in the form of further impositions, fines, imprisonmente, 

 forced labour, exile, or, terrible to say, mutilation and 

 death. For, if the laws were harsh, their enforcement, 

 especially in the territory of the concessionnaire com- 

 panies, was accompanied by the most horrible and illegal 

 cruelties. 



The reviewer says that the worst of the companies, 

 the Abir, was so called from the fact that it was 

 partly founded by Colonel North. The Anglo-Bel- 

 <^an ' India-rubber Company, whose initials make 

 ']?bir. 



have directed a policy which has resulted in the death of 

 several thousand defenceless savages, the mutilation of 

 many more, the outraging of women, the destruction of 

 homes, and the depopulation of a once well-peopled land. 

 Possibly other concessionnaire companies (such as tlio Mon- 

 gala) were nearly as much to blame: and dark stories cir- 

 culate as to the doings in the Domaine Prive. 



ENTER ME. MOREL! 



The Quarterly thinks that " The stories to the 

 effect that the King-sovereign has enriched himself 

 enormously by these enterprises are probably with- 

 out foundation." He may even have been out of 

 pocket by his expenditure. But whether out of 

 pocket or not, he refused to trouble himself about 

 the stories of atrocities committed in his name until 

 Mr. Morel took the matter in hand. The reviewer 

 says : — 



The credit of having at length aroused him from his con- 

 tentment with things as they were is due in tlio main to 

 one man, Mr. E. D Morel, foimerly an employe in the great 

 shipping house of Elder, Dempster and Co.. of Liverpool. 

 Mr. Morel, who, we believe, is partly of French descent, 

 had long taken an interest in the philosophic aspect of 

 the white man's work in Africa. ... He commenced a 

 series of brilliant attacks on both abuses, attacks which 

 cost him much in the way of lost emolument; but he has 

 gained his cause with a completeness which rarely falls to 

 the lot of a reformer during his lifetime. 



HIS ACHIEVEMENT. 



Consul Casement's report having confirmed Mr. 



Morel's charges, the King sent out a commission,. 



whose report 



brings to light a state of affairs, as regards all the cen- 

 tral basin of the Congo, which is quite as bad as anything 

 depicted by Mr. Morel and Consul Casement. In short, 

 tliese aeiitlemen do not seem to have made a single allega- 

 tion that has not loeen proved. But, for all time, the Congo 

 natives in the first place, and secondly, Belgium and the 

 King of the Belgians, will, or should, owe a debt of grati- 

 tude to Mr. Morel. He has brought to light a most grievous 

 wrong. He has convinced the chief person responsible for 

 that wrong — King Leopold — of its existence. The King has 

 assured the world that he has taken the report of his Com- 

 mission to heart, and that he is about to establish a new 

 committee, to devise for the Congo territories under his 

 sway a scheme of government which shall satisfy the con- 

 scienc© of the civilised world. 



No doubt the outcome of the Congo Free State will be 

 that Belgium will become the guardian of a Black State in 

 Central Africa, and that Belgian commerce will profit 

 richly b.v the honest development of this enterprise. 



I suspect that Mr. Morel is not quite so sanguine 

 as is his eulogist concerning the certainty of King 

 Leopold's reformation. 



In Dispraise of tiie American Woman. 



Dr. Emil Reich, writing in the Grand Magazine 

 on " Women in History,'' prattles in a lively way on 

 the chief national types of womanhood. Of the 

 American woman he writes: — 



I only say, and I say it emphatically, that the American 

 woman is not womanly; she is not a woman. 



In America woman commands man. Man does not count 

 there. The last man that came to America was Christo- 

 pher Columbus. To-day man lias no existence, he does 

 not talk in the drawing-room, but is a dummy. The woman 

 lives one life, the man another, and they are totally dis- 

 tinct from each other. She lives so that she can have a 

 good time; she lives for sensations. I do not blame her, 

 I do not condemn her. Her interest lies not in man. 

 She wants to be alone, and she cannot be alone without 

 dabbling to-day with chemistry, to-morrow with physi- 

 ology, and the day after with Buddhism, passing on to 

 Swedenborgianism, to wireless telegraphy, and to the 

 works of Marie Corelli. Having taken in doses of science, 

 of philosoi)hy, of mathematics, siie tiien thinks she is up 

 to date; she feels she has develoi>ed into something new; 

 it is a search for a new siiiver, sometliing out of the 

 ordinary, a deadl.y desire to be very new. Aspasias, 

 Gretchens and Ophelias are obsolete, in her opinion. She 

 is as new as a man born to-day is new; she is made up 

 of restlessness and fidgetiness long Ijefore she is twenty- 

 five. But she is very beautiful ; she has the best com- 

 plexion in the world— better than that of any European 

 woman. She is also well built and handsome. You see 

 fine specimens of tlie American woman in Kentucky and 

 Massachusetts. But siie is a type quite distinct from the 

 English type; she does not try to have dignit.y or reflne- 

 meht: she wants to affect man b.v what she says, and not 

 by what she does not say. She lias no passion, no senti- 

 nient; all this is alien to her. She is a mass of nervous 

 eiierg.v. To her, home and husband are nothing, and her 

 child— her own craiition — but very little. The two tyjiPS 

 of woman, the American and the English, are in fact totally 

 different. 



The French woman is marked by energy and 

 logic, and a greater dislike of false positions, than 

 an Englishwoman. The German woman is a mix- 

 ture of English and French. The Berlin New 

 Woman is de-feminised. The Spartan woman was 

 like the American woman. So was the Roman 

 woman. Dr. Reich urges the Englishwoman to com- 

 bine some features of both French and Irish women, 

 and become a little more active, a little more in- 

 fluential. Tn larger empires there is, he says, a 

 terrible tendency to depreciate women, to the fatal 

 detriment of the empire. 



