268 THE CONGO FREE STATE 



sponsibility ; but the central government of the Congo 

 is entirely Belgian, and nine-tenths of the agents 

 of the State are Belgians, so Belgium must bear 

 the brunt of the attack. It may also be objected 

 that only a small minority of the 2,000 are murderers 

 and villains ; but if it were true of only one in every 

 hundred of them, the rest of them would stand 

 condemned for being associated with such a system 

 of outrage. It will also be objected that I insist 

 too strongly upon the word ' atrocity ' ; but it is 

 through the stories of atrocities that this agitation 

 has grown and prospered, and it is safe to say 

 that, without ' that blessed word,' the Congo would 

 have been as unfamiliar a name as Angola or the 

 Kamerun. 



Leaving out of consideration for the moment that 

 large host of well-intentioned but rather hysterical 

 people, whose favourite intellectual food is scandal 

 and the halfpenny newspaper, is it to be supposed 

 that the solid balance of educated and thinking 

 people, who form public opinion in this country, 

 really believe that these Belgians are the blackguards 

 they are said to be ? I can hardly doubt that the 

 common sense and the prevailing generosity of the 

 majority render the question unnecessary. 



In the minds of most of our countrymen a Belgian 

 is a sort of inferior Frenchman, and a Congo official 

 is a scoundrel who has made his own country too 

 hot to hold him, and has taken service as a licensed 

 murderer in Africa. As a matter of fact, the average 



