The Eastern Congo 



remaining portion of the great Dominion, the Katanga district 

 stands out alone as unable to meet its wants in this respect. 



Lastly we come to the perils — the White Man's Burden — 

 the price of Empire which Belgium, having once put her 

 foot on African soil, will one day have to pay ; for the 

 Ethiopian question looms darkly across the horizon, by no 

 means of immediate urgency but nevertheless of imperative 

 importance, as evinced by a report that reaches me as I write 

 of a local native rising in the Lulonga country, headed by a 

 disbanded soldier. The fact that these insurgents are en- 

 trenching themselves may be taken as a sign of the times. 



What if the White Man's Burden, heavier day by day. 



Should swell like a leaden millstone, draining his strength away ? 



" Nay, they are only children ! " — that is the parrot- crj'. 



Aye 1 but there have been children whose brains were fashioned awry ! 



Still are the coils about them, and the cobweb bonds of Fate, 

 But thunder follows the silence — and issues may lie in wait ; 

 Issues undreamt and buried down in the deeps of Time, 

 Issues no man may measure in careless strings of rhjine. 



The oft-heard cry in the Belgian Congo, " not in our time," 

 no longer holds good, since the war has speeded the pace 

 of progress. Issues may lie in wait, for it is not generally 

 realised that the natives of the Congo basin form a homo- 

 geneous whole, speaking nearly-allied Bantu tongues, and 

 all using the Kingwana (Swahili) lingua franca, undivided 

 by creed or caste and possessing a high order of intelligence 

 only equalled by the Arab himself. 



We have our native problem in South Africa and for many 

 reasons which need not be given here the issue is scarcely 

 in doubt, but it is mere child's play to the proposition that 

 Belgium has to solve in her trained active and time-expired 

 native police and soldiers, who form the dangerous factor 



220 



