THE CONGO FREE STATE 261 



record, as plainly as may be, my opinion of the 

 present state of things in the Congo Free State. 



I do not think I can be accused of undue haste in 

 giving expression to my opinion. I have read with 

 great care most of the letters and articles and White 

 Books which have been written on the subject 

 during the last few years, and I am writing this 

 twelve months after I quitted Congo soil. 



At the outset I am confronted with an almost 

 insuperable difficulty in the prejudice — it is honest 

 and very praiseworthy, I admit — which exists in the 

 minds of a great majority of the British public. For 

 instance, a daily paper of the highest repute, in 

 reviewing a book^ of travel in Africa, in which the 

 author, one of the most observant and fair-minded 

 explorers of modern times, deliberately records a 

 favourable opinion of the administration of the 

 Congo, says : ' We suppose it is useless to try to 

 open the eyes of explorers to the futility of this sort 

 of thing and the egotism it displays. Even if the 

 system of administration in the districts on the edge 

 of the Congo State visited by Lieutenant Boyd 

 Alexander were above criticism — and Lieutenant 

 Alexander himself affords evidence that such is not 

 the case — it would not affect the testimony of other 

 eye-witnesses in other parts of the State as to the 

 conditions prevailing in time as recent as Lieutenant 

 Boyd Alexander's own journey.' 



* ' From the Niger to the Nile,' by Lieutenant Boyd 

 Alexander (1907). 



