Chapter VII: Consul Roger Casement's Report

Up to this time the published reports as to the black doings of King Leopold and his men were, with the exception of a guarded document from Consul Pickersgill, in 1898, entirely from private individuals. No doubt there were official reports but the Government withheld them. In 1904, this policy of reticence was abandoned, and the historic report of Consul Roger Casement confirmed, and in some ways amplified, all that had reached Europe from other sources.

A word or two as to Mr. Casement's own personality and qualifications may not be amiss, since both were attacked by his Belgian detractors. He is a tried and experienced public servant, who has had exceptional opportunities of knowing Africa and the natives. He entered the Consular Service in 1892, served on the Niger till 1895, was Consul at Delagoa Bay to 1898, and was finally transferred to the Congo. Personally, he is a man of the highest character, truthful, unselfish--one who is deeply respected by all who know him. His experience, which deals with the Crown Domain districts in the year 1903, covers some sixty-two pages, to be read in full in "White Book, Africa, No. 1, 1904." I will not apologize for the length of the extracts, as this, the first official exposure, was an historical document and from its publication we mark the first step in that train of events which is surely destined to remove the Congo State from hands which have proved so unworthy, and to place it in conditions which shall no longer be a disgrace to European civilization. It may be remarked before beginning that at some of these conversations with the natives Mr. Scrivener was present, and that he corroborates the account given by the Consul.

The beginning of Mr. Casement's report shows how willing he was to give praise where praise was possible, and to say all that could be said for the Administration. He talks of "energetic European intervention," and adds, "that very much of this intervention has been called for no one who formerly knew the Upper Congo could doubt." "Admirably built and admirably kept stations greet the traveller at many points." "To-day the railway works most efficiently." He attributes sleeping sickness as "one cause of the seemingly wholesale diminution of human life which I everywhere observed in the regions re-visited; a prominent place must be assigned to this malady. The natives certainly attribute their alarming death-rate to this as one of the inducing causes, although they attribute, and I think principally, their rapid decrease in numbers to other causes as well."

The Government work shop "was brightness, care, order, and activity, and it was impossible not to admire and commend the industry which had created and maintained in constant working order this useful establishment."

These are not the words of a critic who has started with a prejudiced mind or the desire to make out a case.

In the lower reaches of the river above Stanley Pool Casement found no gross ill-usage. The natives were hopeless and listless, being debarred from trade and heavily taxed in food, fish and other produce. It was not until he began to approach the cursed rubber zones that terrible things began to dawn upon him. Casement had travelled in 1887 in the Congo, and was surprised to note the timidity of the natives. Soon he had his explanation:

"At one of these village, S----, after confidence had been restored
and the fugitives had been induced to come in from the surrounding
forest, where they had hidden themselves, I saw women coming back,
carrying their babies, their household utensils, and even the food
they had hastily snatched up, up to a late hour of the evening.
Meeting some of these returning women in one of the fields I asked
them why they had run away at my approach, and they said, smiling, 'We
thought you were Bula Matadi' (_i. e._, 'men of the Government'). Fear
of this kind was formerly unknown on the Upper Congo; and in much more
out-of-the-way places visited many years ago the people flocked from
all sides to greet a white stranger. But to-day the apparition of a
white man's steamer evidently gave the signal for instant flight."

"... Men, he said, still came to him whose hands had been cut off by
the Government soldiers during those evil days, and he said there were
still many victims of this species of mutilation in the surrounding
country. Two cases of the kind came to my actual notice while I was in
the lake. One, a young man, both of whose hands had been beaten off
with the butt-ends of rifles against a tree, the other a young lad of
eleven or twelve years of age, whose right hand was cut off at the
wrist. This boy described the circumstances of his mutilation, and, in
answer to my inquiry, said that although wounded at the time he was
perfectly sensible of the severing of his wrist, but lay still fearing
that if he moved he would be killed. In both these cases the
Government soldiers had been accompanied by white officers whose names
were given to me. Of six natives (one a girl, three little boys, one
youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during
the rubber _regime_, all except one were dead at the date of my visit.
The old woman had died at the beginning of this year, and her niece
described to me how the act of mutilation in her case had been
accomplished."

The fines inflicted upon villages for trifling offences were such as to produce the results here described:

"The officer had then imposed as further punishment a fine of 55,000
brass rods (2,750 fr.)--L110. This sum they had been forced to pay,
and as they had no other means of raising so large a sum they had,
many of them, been compelled to sell their children and their wives. I
saw no live-stock of any kind in W---- save a very few fowls--possibly
under a dozen--and it seemed, indeed, not unlikely that, as these
people asserted, they had great difficulty in always getting their
supplies ready. A father and mother stepped out and said that they had
been forced to sell their son, a little boy called F, for 1,000 rods
to meet their share of the fine. A widow came and declared that she
had been forced, in order to meet her share of the fine, to sell her
daughter G, a little girl whom I judged from her description to be
about ten years of age. She had been sold to a man in Y----, who was
named, for 1,000 rods, which had then gone to make up the fine."

The natives were broken in spirit by the treatment:

"One of them--a strong, indeed, a splendid-looking man--broke down and
wept, saying that their lives were useless to them, and that they knew
of no means of escape from the troubles which were gathering around
them. I could only assure these people that their obvious course to
obtain relief was by appeal to their own constituted authorities, and
that if their circumstances were clearly understood by those
responsible for these fines I trusted and believed some satisfaction
would be forthcoming."

These fines, it may be added, were absolutely illegal. It was the officer, not the poor, harried natives, who had broken the law.

"These fines, it should be borne in mind, are illegally imposed; they
are not 'fines of Court'; are not pronounced after any judicial
hearing, or for any proved offence against the law, but are quite
arbitrarily levied according to the whim or ill-will of the executive
officers of the district, and their collection, as well as their
imposition, involves continuous breaches of the Congolese laws. They
do not, moreover, figure in the account of public revenues in the
Congo 'Budgets'; they are not paid into the public purse of the
country, but are spent on the needs of the station or military camp of
the officer imposing them, just as seems good to this official."

Here is an illustrative anecdote:

"One of the largest Congo Concession Companies had, when I was on the
Upper River, addressed a request to its Directors in Europe for a
further supply of ball-cartridge. The Directors had met this demand by
asking what had become of the 72,000 cartridges shipped some three
years ago, to which a reply was sent to the effect that these had all
been used in the production of india-rubber. I did not see this
correspondence, and cannot vouch for the truth of the statement; but
the officer who informed me that it had passed before his own eyes was
one of the highest standing in the interior."

Another witness showed the exact ratio between cartridges and rubber:

"'The S. A. B. on the Bussira, with 150 guns, get only ten tons
(rubber) a month; we, the State, at Momboyo, with 130 guns, get
thirteen tons per month.' 'So you count by guns?' I asked him.
'Partout,' M. P. said. 'Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber
cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used; and for
every one used, he must bring back a right hand.' M. P. told me that
sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut
off a hand from a living man. As to the extent to which this is
carried on, he informed me that in six months they, the State, on the
Momboyo River, had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000
people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000 for the
people have told me repeatedly that the soldiers kill children with
the butt of their guns."

That the statement about the cutting off of living hands is correct is amply proved by the Kodak. I have photographs of at least twenty such mutilated Negroes in my own possession.

Here is a copy of a dispatch from an official quoted in its naked frankness:

"Le Chef Ngulu de Wangata est envoye dans la Maringa, pour m'y acheter
des esclaves. Priere a MM. les agents de l'A.B.I.R. de bien vouloir me
signaler les mefaits que celui-ci pourrait commettre en route.

"Le Capitaine-Commandant,
(Signe) "SARRAZZYN."

"_Colquilhatville, le 1er Mai, 1896._"

Pretty good for the State which boasts that it has put down the slave trade.

There is a passage showing the working of the rubber system which is so clear and authoritative that I transcribe it in full:

"I went to the homes of these men some miles away and found out their
circumstances. To get the rubber they had first to go fully a two
days' journey from their homes, leaving their wives, and being absent
for from five to six days. They were seen to the forest limits under
guard, and if not back by the sixth day trouble was likely to ensue.
To get the rubber in the forests--which, generally speaking, are very
swampy--involves much fatigue and often fruitless searching for a
well-flowing vine. As the area of supply diminishes, moreover, the
demand for rubber constantly increases. Some little time back I
learned the Bongandanga district supplied seven tons of rubber a
month, a quantity which it was hoped would shortly be increased to ten
tons. The quantity of rubber brought by the three men in question
would have represented, probably, for the three of them certainly not
less than seven kilog. of pure rubber. That would be a very safe
estimate, and at an average of 7fr. per kilog. they might be said to
have brought in L2 worth of rubber. In return for this labour, or
imposition, they had received goods which cost certainly under 1_s._,
and whose local valuation came to 45 rods (1_s._ 10_d._). As this
process repeats itself twenty-six times a year, it will be seen that
they would have yielded L52 in kind at the end of the year to the
local factory, and would have received in return some 24_s._ or 25_s._
worth of goods, which had a market value on the spot of L2 7_s._ 8_d._
In addition to these formal payments they were liable at times to be
dealt with in another manner, for should their work, which might have
been just as hard, have proved less profitable in its yield of rubber,
the local prison would have seen them. The people everywhere assured
me that they were not happy under this system, and it was apparent to
a callous eye that in this they spoke the strict truth."

Again I insert a passage to show that Casement was by no means an ill-natured critic:

"It is only right to say that the present agent of the A.B.I.R.
Society I met at Bongandanga seemed to me to try, in very difficult
and embarrassing circumstances, to minimize as far as possible, and
within the limits of his duties, the evils of the system I there
observed at work."

Speaking of the Mongalla massacres--those in which Lothaire was implicated--he quotes from the judgment of the Court of Appeal:

"That it is just to take into account that, by the correspondence
produced in the case, the chiefs of the Concession Company have, if
not by formal orders, at least by their example and their tolerance,
induced their agents to take no account whatever of the rights,
property, and lives of the natives; to use the arms and the soldiers
which should have served for their defence and the maintenance of
order to force the natives to furnish them with produce and to work
for the Company, as also to pursue as rebels and outlaws those who
sought to escape from the requisitions imposed upon them.... That,
above all, the fact that the arrest of women and their detention, to
compel the villages to furnish both produce and workmen, was tolerated
and admitted even by certain of the administrative authorities of the
region."

Yet another example of the workings of the system:

"In the morning, when about to start for K----, many people from the
surrounding country came in to see me. They brought with them three
individuals who had been shockingly wounded by gun fire, two men and a
very small boy, not more than six years of age, and a fourth--a boy
child of six or seven--whose right hand was cut off at the wrist. One
of the men, who had been shot through the arm, declared that he was Y
of L----, a village situated some miles away. He declared that he had
been shot as I saw under the following circumstances: the soldiers had
entered his town, he alleged, to enforce the due fulfilment of the
rubber tax due by the community. These men had tied him up and said
that unless he paid 1,000 brass rods to them they would shoot him.
Having no rods to give them they had shot him through the arm and had
left him."

I may say that among my photographs are several with shattered arms who have been treated in this fashion.

This is how the natives were treated when they complained to the white man:

"In addition, fifty women are required each morning to go to the
factory and work there all day. They complained that the remuneration
given for these services was most inadequate, and that they were
continually beaten. When I asked the Chief W why he had not gone to D
F to complain if the sentries beat him or his people, opening his
mouth he pointed to one of the teeth which was just dropping out, and
said: 'That is what I got from the D F four days ago when I went to
tell him what I now say to you.' He added that he was frequently
beaten, along with others of his people, by the white man."

One sentry was taken almost red-handed by Mr. Casement:

"After some little delay a boy of about fifteen years of age appeared,
whose left arm was wrapped up in a dirty rag. Removing this, I found
the left hand had been hacked off by the wrist, and that a shot hole
appeared in the fleshy part of the forearm. The boy, who gave his name
as I I, in answer to my inquiry, said that a sentry of the La Lulanga
Company now in the town had cut off his hand. I proceeded to look for
this man, who at first could not be found, the natives to a
considerable number gathering behind me as I walked through the town.
After some delay the sentry appeared, carrying a cap-gun. The boy,
whom I placed before him, then accused him to his face of having
mutilated him. The men of the town, who were questioned in
succession, corroborated the boy's statement. The sentry, who gave his
name as K K, could make no answer to the charge. He met it by vaguely
saying some other sentry of the Company had mutilated I I; his
predecessor, he said, had cut off several hands, and probably this was
one of the victims. The natives around said that there were two other
sentries at present in the town, who were not so bad as K K, but that
he was a villain. As the evidence against him was perfectly clear, man
after man standing out and declaring he had seen the act committed, I
informed him and the people present that I should appeal to the local
authorities for his immediate arrest and trial."

The following extract must be my final quotation from Consul Casement's report:

"I asked then how this tax was imposed. One of them, who had been
hammering out an iron neck-collar on my arrival, spoke first. He said:

"'I am N N. These other two beside me are O O and P P, all of us
Y----. From our country each village had to take twenty loads of
rubber. These loads were big: they were as big as this....' (Producing
an empty basket which came nearly up to the handle of my
walking-stick.) 'That was the first size. We had to fill that up, but
as rubber got scarcer the white man reduced the amount. We had to take
these loads in four times a month.'

"_Q._ 'How much pay did you get for this?'

"_A._ (Entire audience.) 'We got no pay! We got nothing!'

"And then N N, whom I asked again, said:

"'Our village got cloth and a little salt, but not the people who did
the work. Our chiefs eat up the cloth; the workers got nothing. The
pay was a fathom of cloth and a little salt for every big basketful,
but it was given to the chief, never to the men. It used to take ten
days to get the twenty baskets of rubber--we were always in the forest
and then when we were late we were killed. We had to go further and
further into the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food,
and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then
we starved. Wild beasts--the leopards--killed some of us when we were
working away in the forest, and others got lost or died from exposure
and starvation, and we begged the white man to leave us alone, saying
we could get no more rubber, but the white men and their soldiers
said: "Go! You are only beasts yourselves; you are nyama (meat)." We
tried, always going further into the forest, and when we failed and
our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us.
Many were shot, some had their ears cut off: others were tied up with
ropes around their necks and bodies and taken away. The white men
sometimes at the posts did not know of the bad things the soldiers did
to us, but it was the white men who sent the soldiers to punish us for
not bringing in enough rubber.'

"Here P P took up the tale from N N:

"'We said to the white men, "We are not enough people now to do what
you want us. Our country has not many people in it and we are dying
fast. We are killed by the work you make us do, by the stoppage of our
plantations, and the breaking up of our homes." The white man looked
at us and said: "There are lots of people in Mputu"' (Europe, the
white man's country). '"If there are lots of people in the white man's
country there must be many people in the black man's country." The
white man who said this was the chief white man at F F----; his name
was A B; he was a very bad man. Other white men of Bula Matadi who had
been bad and wicked were B C, C D, and D E.' 'These had killed us
often, and killed us by their own hands as well as by their soldiers.
Some white men were good. These were E F, F G, G H, H I, I K, K L.'

"These ones told them to stay in their homes and did not hunt and
chase them as the others had done, but after what they had suffered
they did not trust more any one's word, and they had fled from their
country and were now going to stay here, far from their homes, in this
country where there was no rubber.

"_Q._ 'How long is it since you left your homes, since the big trouble
you speak of?'

"_A._ 'It lasted for three full seasons, and it is now four seasons
since we fled and came into the K---- country.'

"_Q._ 'How many days is it from N---- to your own country?'

"_A._ 'Six days of quick marching. We fled because we could not endure
the things done to us. Our chiefs were hanged, and we were killed and
starved and worked beyond endurance to get rubber.'

"_Q._ 'How do you know it was the white men themselves who ordered
these cruel things to be done to you? These things must have been done
without the white man's knowledge by the black soldiers.'

"_A._ (P P): 'The white men told their soldiers: "You kill only women;
you cannot kill men. You must prove that you kill men." So then the
soldiers when they killed us' (here he stopped and hesitated, and then
pointing to the private parts of my bulldog--it was lying asleep at my
feet), he said: 'then they cut off those things and took them to the
white men, who said: "It is true, you have killed men."'

"_Q._ 'You mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to
be mutilated like that, and those parts of you carried to him?'

"P P, O O, and all (shouting): 'Yes! many white men. D E did it.'

"_Q._ 'You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being
shot?'

"All (shouting out): 'Nkoto! Nkoto!' (Very many! Very many!)

"There was no doubt that these people were not inventing. Their
vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement, was not simulated.
Doubtless they exaggerated the numbers, but they were clearly telling
what they knew and loathed. I was told that they often became so
furious at the recollection of what had been done to them that they
lost control over themselves. One of the men before me was getting
into this state now."

Such is the story--or a very small portion of it--which His Majesty's Consul conveyed to His Majesty's Government as to the condition of those natives, who, "in the name of Almighty God," we had pledged ourselves to defend!

The same damning White Book contained a brief account of Lord Cromer's experience upon the Upper Nile in the Lado district. He notes that for eighty miles the side of the river which is British territory was crowded with native villages, the inhabitants of which ran along the bank calling to the steamer. The other bank (Congolese territory), was a deserted wilderness. The "Tuquoque" argument which King Leopold's henchmen are so fond of advancing will find it hard to reconcile the difference. Lord Cromer ends his report:

"It appears to me that the facts which I have stated above afford
amply sufficient evidence of the spirit which animates the Belgian
Administration, if, indeed, Administration it can be called. The
Government, so far as I could judge, is conducted almost exclusively
on commercial principles, and, even judged by that standard, it would
appear that those principles are somewhat short-sighted."

In the same White Book which contains these documents there is printed the Congolese defence drawn up by M. de Cuvelier. The defence consists in simply ignoring all the definite facts laid before the public, and in making such statements as that the British have themselves made war upon natives, as if there were no distinction between war and massacre, and that the British have put a poll-tax upon natives, which, if it be reasonable in amount, is a perfectly just proceeding adopted by all Colonial nations. Let the possessors of the Free State use this system, and at the same time restore the freedom of trade by throwing open the country to all, and returning to the natives that land and produce which has been taken from them. When they have done this--and punished the guilty--there will be an end of anti-Congo agitation. Beyond this, a large part (nearly half) of the Congo Reply (_notes sur le rapport de Mr. Casement, de Dec. 11, 1903_), is taken up by trying to show that in one case of mutilation the injuries were, in truth, inflicted by a wild boar. There must be many wild boars in Congo land, and their habits are of a singular nature. It is not in the Congo that these boars are bred.