love and mercy and compassion, who layeth this heavy burden upon us by the hand of his anointed servants. Blessed be his holy name. The father shall bleed, the mother shall faint for hunger, the babe shall perish at the dry breast. The chosen of God have commanded, it shall be as they say. I am not meaning to object to the substitution of pagan customs for Christian. Here and there and now and then, when the Christian ones are inconvenient. No, I like it and admire it. I do it myself. And I admire the alertness of the board in watching out for chances to trade board morals for Chinese morals and get the best of the swap. For I cannot endure those people, they are yellow, and I have never considered yellow becoming. I have always been like the board, perfectly well-meaning, but destitute of the moral sense. Now, one of the main reasons why it is so hard to make the board understand that there is no moral difference between a big filch and a little filch, but only a legal one, is that vacancy in its makeup. Morally there are no degrees in the stealing. The commandment merely says, thou shall not steal, and stops there. It doesn't recognize any difference between stealing a third and stealing thirteen-fold. If I could think of a way to put it before the board in such a plain and— The Watermelons. I have it now. Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows, I had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a thoroughly good fellow, though devious. He was preparing to qualify for a place on the board, for there was going to be a vacancy by superannuation in about five years. This was down south in the slavery days. It was the nature of the negro, then, as now, to steal watermelons. They stole three of the melons of an adoptive brother of mine, the only good ones he had. I suspected three of a neighbor's negroes, but there was no proof, and besides the watermelons in those negro's private patches were all green and small and not up to indemnity standard, but in the private patches of three other negroes there was a number of competent melons. I consulted with my comrade, the understudy of the board. He said that if I would approve his arrangements, he would arrange. I said, consider me the board. I approve. Arrange. So he took a gun, and went and collected three large melons for my brother on the half-shell, and one over. I was greatly pleased, and asked, who gets the extra one? Widows and orphans. A good idea, too. Why didn't you take thirteen? It would have been wrong. A crime, in fact. Theft and extortion. What is the one-third extra, the odd melon? The same? It caused him to reflect, but there was no result. The justice of the peace was a stern man. On the trial he found fault with the scheme, and required us to explain upon what we based our strange conduct, as he called it. The understudy said, On the custom of the negroes, they all do it. The justice forgot his dignity, and descended to sarcasm. Custom of the negroes. Are our morals so inadequate that we have to borrow of niggers? Then he said to the jury, Three melons were owing. They were collected from persons not proven to owe them. This is theft. They were collected by compulsion. This is extortion. A melon was added for the widows and orphans. It was owed by no one. It is another theft. Another extortion. Return it once it came, with the others. It is not permissible here to apply to any object goods dishonestly obtained, not even to the feeding of widows and orphans, for that would be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it. He said it in open court before everybody, and to me it did not seem very kind. A clergyman in a church, he reminds me, with a touch of reproach, that many of the missionaries are good men, kind-hearted, earnest, devoted to their work. Certainly they are. No one is disputing it. Instead of many, he could have said almost all, and still said the truth, no doubt. I know many missionaries. I have met them all about the globe, and have known only one or two who could not fill that bill and answer to the question. Almost all comes near to being a proportion and a description applicable also to lawyers, authors, editors, merchants, manufacturers, in fact, to most gills and vocations. Without a doubt Dr. Ament did what he believed to be right, and I concede that when a man is doing what he believes to be right, there is argument on his side. I differ with Dr. Ament, but that is only because he got his training from the board, and I got mine outside. Neither of us is responsible altogether. RECAPITULATION But there is no need to sum up. Mr. Ament has acknowledged the one third extra, no other witnesses necessary. The Reverend Dr. Smith has carefully considered the act and labeled it with a stern name, and his verdict seems to have no flaw in it. The morals of the act are Chinese, but are approved by the board, and by some of the clergy and some of the newspapers as being a valuable improvement upon Christian ones, which leaves me with a closed mouth, though with a pain in my heart. Is the American board on trial? Do I think that Dr. Ament and certain of his fellow missionaries are as bad as their conduct? No, I do not. They are the product of their training, and now that I understand the whole case and where they got their ideals, and that they are merely subordinates and subject to authority, I comprehend that they are rather accessories than principles, and that their acts only show faulty heads curiously trained not bad hearts. Mainly, as it seems to me, it is the American board that is on trial. And again, it is a case of the head, not of the heart. That it has a heart which has never harbored an evil intention no one will deny, no one will question. The board's history can silence any challenge on that score. The board's heart is not in court. It is its head that is on trial. It is a sufficiently strange head. It's way's baffle comprehension. Its ideas are like no one else's. Its methods are novelties to the practical world. Its judgments are surprises. When one thinks it is going to speak and must speak, it is silent. When one thinks it ought to be silent and must be silent, it speaks. Put your finger where you think it ought to be. It is not there. Put it where you think it ought not to be. There you find it. When its servant in China seemed to be charging himself with amazing things in a reputable journal, in a dispatch which was copied into many other papers, the board was as silent about it as any dead man could have been who was informed that his house was burning over his head. An exchange of cable-grams could have enabled it within two days to prove to the world, possibly, that the damaging dispatch had not proceeded from the mouth of its servant. Yet it sat silent and asked no questions about the matter. It was silent during thirty-eight days. Then the dispatch came into prominence again. It chanced that I was the occasion of it. A break in the stillness followed. In what form? An exchange of cable-grams resulting in proof that the damaging dispatch had not been authorized? No. In the form of an open letter by the corresponding Secretary of the American Board, the Reverend Dr. Smith, in which it was argued that Dr. Ament could not have said and done the things set forth in the dispatch. Surely this was bad politics. A repudiating telegram would have been worth more than a library of argument. An extension of the silence would have been better than the open letter, I think. I thought so at the time. It seemed to me that mistakes enough had been made and harm enough done. I thought it questionable policy to publish the letter, for I did not think it likely that Dr. Ament would disown the dispatch. And I telegraphed that to the Reverend Dr. Smith. Personally I had nothing against Dr. Ament, and that is my attitude yet. Once more it was a good time for an extension of the silence, but no, the Board has its own ways, and one of them is to do the unwise thing when occasion offers. After having waited fifty-six days it cabled to Dr. Ament. No one can divine why it did so then, instead of fifty-six days earlier. Note! The Cablegram went on the day, February 18, that Mr. George Lynch's account of the looting was published. See Exhibit B. It seems a pity it did not inquire about the looting, and get it denied. It got a fatal reply, and was not aware of it. That was that curious confession about the one-third extra. Its application not to the propagation of the Gospel, but only to church expenses, support of widows and orphans. And on top of this confession that other strange one revealing the dizzying fact that our missionaries, who went to China to teach Christian morals and justice, had adopted pagan morals and justice in their place. That Cablegram was dynamite. It seems odd that the Board did not see that that revelation made the case far worse than it was before, for there was a saving doubt before, a doubt which was a Gibraltar for strength, and should have been carefully left undisturbed. Why did the Board allow that revelation to get into print? Why did the Board not suppress it, and keep still? But no. In the Board's opinion this was once more the time for speech. Hence Dr. Smith's latest letter to me, suggesting that I speak also, a letter which is a good enough letter, barring its nine defects, but is another evidence that the Board's head is not as good as its heart. A missionary is a man who is pretty nearly all heart, else he would not be in a calling which requires of him such large sacrifices of one kind and another.  He exiles himself from home and friends and the scenes and associations that are dearest to him, patiently endures discomforts, privations, discouragements, goes with good pluck into dangers which he knows may cost him his life, and when he must suffer death, willingly makes that supreme sacrifice for his cause. Sometimes the head-piece of that kind of a man can be of an inferior sort, and errors of judgment can result, as we have seen. Then, for his protection, as it seems to me, he ought to have at his back a Board able to know a blunder when it sees one and prompt to bring him back upon his right course when he strays from it. That is to say, I think the captain of a ship ought to understand navigation. Whether he does or not, he will have to take a captain's share of the blame if the crew bring the vessel to grief. Mark Twain To My Missionary Critics Read by John Greenman A Defence of General Funston by Mark Twain Today is the great birthday, and it was observed so widely in the earth that differences in longitudinal time made curious work with some of the cable testimonies of respect paid to the sublime name which the date calls up in our minds. For although they were all being offered at about the same hour, several of them were yesterday to us and several were tomorrow. There was a reference in the papers to General Funston. Neither Washington nor Funston was made in a day. It took a long time to accumulate the materials. In each case, the basis or moral skeleton of the man was inborn disposition, a thing which is as permanent as rock and never goes any actual and genuine change between cradle and grave. In each case, the moral flesh bulk, that is to say, character, was built and shaped around the skeleton by training, association, and circumstances. Given a crooked disposition skeleton, no power nor influence in the earth can mold a permanently shapely form it. Training, association, and circumstances can trust it and brace it and prop it and strain it and crowd it into an artificial shapeliness that can endure till the end, deceiving not only the spectator but the man himself. But there is nothing there but artificiality, and if at any time the props and trusses chance to be removed, the form will collapse into its proper and native crookedness. Washington did not create the basic skeleton, disposition, that was in him, it was born there, and the merit of its perfection was not his, it, and only it, moved him to seek and prefer associations which were contending to its spirit, to welcome influences which pleased it and satisfied it, and to repeal or be indifferent to influences which were not to its taste. Moment by moment, day by day, year by year, it stood in the ceaseless sweep of minute influences, automatically arresting and retaining, like a magnet of mercury, all dust particles of gold that came, and with automatic scorn repelling certain dust particles of trash, and with as automatic indifference allowing the rest of that base kinship to go by unnoticed. It had a native affinity for all influences fine and great, and gave them hospitable welcome and permanent shelter. It had a native aversion for all influences mean and gross, and passed them on. It chose its subject associations for him. It chose his influences for him. It chose his ideals for him. And out of its patiently gathered materials it built and shaped his golden character. And we give him the credit. We give God credit and praise for being all wise and all powerful, but that is quite another matter. No exterior contributor, no birth commission conferred these possessions upon him. He did it himself. But Washington's disposition was born in him. He did not create it. It was the architect of his character. His character was the architect of his achievements. If my disposition had been born in him and his in me, the map of history would have been changed. It is our privilege to admire the splendor of the sun, and the beauty of the rainbow, and the character of Washington. But there is no occasion to praise them for these qualities, since they did not create the source whence the qualities sprang. The sun's fires, the light upon the falling raindrop, the sane and clean and benignant disposition born to the father of his country. Is there a value then in having a Washington since we may not concede to him personal merit for what he was and did? Necessarily there is a value. A value so immense that it defies all estimate. Acceptable outside influences were the materials out of which Washington's native disposition built Washington's character and fitted him for his achievements. Suppose there hadn't been any. Suppose he had been born and reared in a pirate's cave. The acceptable materials would have been lacking. The Washingtonian character would not have been built. Fortunately for us and for the world, and for future ages and peoples, he was born where the sort of influences and associations acceptable to his disposition were findable, where the building of his character at its best and highest was possible, and where the accident of favorable circumstances was present to furnish it a conspicuous field for the full exercise and exhibition of its commanding capabilities. Did Washington's great value then lie in what he accomplished? No. That was only a minor value. His major value, his vast value, his immeasurable value to us and to the world and to future ages and peoples lies in his permanent and sky-reaching conspicuousness as an influence. We are made, brick by brick, of influences, patiently built up around the framework of our born dispositions. It is the sole process of construction. There is no other. Every man and woman and child is an influence. A daily and hourly influence which never ceases from work and never ceases from affecting, for good or evil, the characters about it, some contributing gold dust, some contributing trash dust, but in either case helping on the building and never stopping to rest. The filmmaker helps to build his two dozen associates. The pickpocket helps to build his four dozen associates. The village clergyman helps to build his five hundred associates. The renowned bank robbers name and fame help to build his hundred associates and three thousand persons whom he has never seen. The renowned philanthropists labors and the benevolent millionaires' gifts move to kindly service and generous outlays of money, a hundred thousand persons whom they have never met and never will meet. And to the building of the character of every individual thus moved these movers have added a brick. The unprincipled newspaper adds a baseness to a million decaying character fabrics every day. The high principled newspaper adds a daily betterment to the character of another million. The swiftly enriched wrecker and robber of railway systems lowers the commercial morals of a whole nation for three generations. A Washington standing upon the world's utmost summit, eternally visible, eternally closed in light, a serene, inspiring, heartening example in admonition, is an influence which raises the level of character in all receptive men and peoples, alien and domestic, and the term of its gracious work is not measurable by fleeting generations but only by the lingering march of the centuries. Washington was more and greater than the father of a nation, he was the father of its patriotism, patriotism at its loftiest and best. And so powerful was the influence which he left behind him that that golden patriotism remained undimmed and unsullied for a hundred years lacking one. And so fundamentally right-hearted are our people by grace of that long and ennobling teaching that today already they are facing back for home. They are laying aside their foreign-born and foreign bread-imported patriotism, and resuming that which Washington gave to their fathers, which is American, and the only American, which lasted ninety-nine years and is good for a million more. Doubt, doubt that we did right by the Filipinos, is rising steadily higher and higher in the nation's breast. Conviction will follow doubt. The nation will speak. Its will is law. There is no other sovereign on this soil, and in that day we shall write such unfairness as we have done. We shall let go our obsequious hold on the rear skirts of the septored land thieves of Europe and be what we were before, a real world power, and the chiefest of them all by right of the only clean hands in Christendom, the only hands guiltless of the sordid plunder of any helpless people's stolen liberties, hands reclensed in the patriotism of Washington, and once more fit to touch the hem of the revered shade's garment and stand in its presence unashamed. It was Washington's influence that made Lincoln and all other real patriots the Republic has known. It was Washington's influence that made the soldiers who saved the Union, and that influence will save us always and bring us back to the fold when we stray. And so when a Washington has given us, or a Lincoln, or a Grant, what should we do? Knowing as we do that a conspicuous influence for good is worth more than a billion obscure ones, without doubt the logic of it is that we should highly value it and make a vestal flame of it, and keep it briskly burning in every way we can, in the nursery, in the school, in the college, in the pulpit, in the newspaper, even in Congress, if such a thing were possible. The proper inborn disposition was required to start a Washington. The acceptable influences and circumstances and a large field were required to develop and complete him, the same with Funston. Two. The war was over. End of 1900. A month later the mountain village of the defeated and hunted, and now powerless, but not yet hopeless, Filipino chief, was discovered. His army was gone, his republic extinguished, his abless statesmen deported, his generals all in their graves, or prisoners of war. The memory of his worthy dream had entered upon a historic life to be an inspiration to unfortunate patriots in other centuries. The dream itself was dead beyond resurrection, though he could not believe it. Now came his capture. An admiring author, note, Aguinaldo by Edwin Wildman, Lathrop Publishing Company, Boston, end of note, shall tell us about it. His account can be trusted, for it is correctly synopsized from General Funston's own voluntary confession made by him at the time. The italics are mine. It was not until February 1901 that his actual hiding-place was discovered. The clue was in the shape of a letter from Aguinaldo commanding his cousin Baldormero Aguinaldo to send him four hundred armed men, the bearer to act as a guide to the same. The order was cipher, but among other effects captured at various times a copy of the insurgent cipher was found. The insurgent courier was convinced of the error of his ways, though by exactly what means history does not reveal, and offered to lead the way to Aguinaldo's place of hiding. Here was an opportunity that suggested an adventure equal to anything in penny-awful fiction. It was just the kind of a daredevil exploit that appealed to the romantic Funston. It was something out of the ordinary for a brigadier general to leave his command and turn into a scout, but Funston was irresistible. He formulated a scheme and asked General MacArthur's permission. It was impossible to refuse the daring adventurer, the hero of the Rio Grande, anything. So Funston set to work imitating the peculiar handwriting of Lacuna, the insurgent officer to whom Aguinaldo's communication referred. Some little time previous to the capture of the tagalog courier, several of Lacuna's letters were found, together with Aguinaldo's cipher code. Having perfected Lacuna's signature, Funston wrote two letters on February 24 and 28, acknowledging Aguinaldo's communication and informing him that he, Lacuna, was sending him a few of the best soldiers in his command. Added to this neat forgery, General Funston dictated a letter which was that the relief force had surprised and captured a detachment of Americans, taking five prisoners whom they were bringing to him because of their importance. This ruse was employed to explain the presence of the five Americans—General Funston, Captain Hazard, Captain Newton, Lieutenant Hazard, and General Funston's aide Lieutenant Kitchell, who were to accompany the expedition. Seventy-eight Macabedes, hereditary enemies of the tagalogs, were chosen by Funston to form the body of the command. These fearless and hardy natives fell into the scheme with a vengeance. Three tagalogs and one Spaniard were also invited. The Macabedes were fitted out in cast-off insurgent uniforms, and the Americans donned field-worn uniforms of privates. Three days' rations were provided, and each man was given a rifle. The Vicksburg was chosen to take the daring imposters to some spot on the east coast near Pelanan, where Aguinaldo was in hiding. Arriving off the coast at Casigdán, some distance from the insurgent hidden capital, the party was landed. Three Macabedes, who spoke tagalog fluently, were sent into the town to notify the natives that they were bringing additional forces and important American prisoners to Aguinaldo and request of the local authorities, guides and assistants. The insurgent president readily consented, and the little party, after refreshing themselves and exhibiting their prisoners, started over the ninety-mile trail to Pelanan, a mountain retreat on the coast of the Isabela province. Over the stony declevities and through the thick jungle, across bridgeless streams and up narrow passes, the footsore and bone-racked adventurers tramped until their food was exhausted, and they were too weak to move, though but eight miles from Aguinaldo's rendezvous. A messenger was sent forward to inform Aguinaldo of their position and to beg for food. The rebel chieftain promptly replied by dispatching rice and a letter to the officer in command, instructing him to treat the American prisoners well but to leave them outside the town. What better condition could the ingenious Funston have himself dictated? On the twenty-third of March the party reached Pelanan. Aguinaldo sent out eleven men to take charge of the American prisoners, but Funston and his associates succeeded in dodging them and scattering themselves in the jungle until they passed on to meet the Americans whom the insurgents were notified were left behind. Immediately joining his command, Funston ordered his little band of daredevils to march boldly into the town and present themselves to Aguinaldo. At the insurgent headquarters they were received by Aguinaldo's bodyguard, dressed in blue drill uniforms and white hats drawn up in military form. The spokesman so completely hoodwinked Aguinaldo that he did not suspect the ruse. In the meantime the Macabebes maneuvered around into advantageous positions, directed by the Spaniard, until all were in readiness. Then he shouted, Macabebes, now is your turn! Whereupon they emptied their rifles into Aguinaldo's bodyguard. The Americans joined in the skirmish and two of Aguinaldo's staff were wounded but escaped, the treasurer of the revolutionary government surrendering. The rest of the Filipino officers got away. Aguinaldo accepted his capture with resignation, though greatly in fear of the vengeance of the Macabebes. But General Funston's assurance of his personal safety set his mind easy on that point, and he calmed down and discussed the situation. He was greatly cast down at his capture and asserted that by no other means would he have been taken alive. An admission which added all the more to Funston's achievement for Aguinaldo's was a difficult and desperate case, and demanded extraordinary methods. Some of the customs of war are not pleasant to the civilian, but ages upon ages of training have reconciled us to them as being justifiable, and we accept them and make no demure, even when they give us an extra twinge. Every detail of Funston's scheme, but one, has been employed in war in the past and stands acquitted of blame by history. By the custom of war it is permissible, in the interest of an enterprise like the one under consideration, for a brigadier general, if he be of the sort that can so choose, to persuade or bribe a courier to betray his trust, to remove the badges of his honorable rank and disguise himself, to lie, to practice treachery, to forge, to associate with himself persons properly fitted by training an instinct for the work, to accept a courteous welcome and assassinate the welcomeers while their hands are still warm from the friendly handshake. By the custom of war all these things are innocent, none of them is blameworthy, all of them are justifiable, none of them is new, all of them have been done before, although not by a brigadier general. But there is one detail which is new, absolutely new, it has never been resorted to before in any age of the world, in any country, among any people, savage or civilized. It was the one meant by Naginaldo when he said that by no other means would he have been taken alive. When a man is exhausted by hunger to the point where he is too weak to move, he has a right to make supplication to his enemy to save his failing life. But if he takes so much as one taste of that food, which is holy, by the precept of all ages and all nations he is barred from lifting his hand against that enemy for that time. It was left to a brigadier general of volunteers in the American army to put shame upon a custom which even the degraded Spanish friars had respected. We promoted him for it! Our unsuspecting president was in the act of taking his murderer by the hand when the man shot him down. The amazed world dwelt upon that damning fact, brooded over it, discussed it, blushed for it, said it, put a blot and a shame upon our race. Yet, bad as it was, he had not, dying of starvation, begged food of the president to strengthen his failing forces for his treacherous work. He did not proceed against the life of a benefactor who had just saved his own. April 14. I have been absent several weeks in the West Indies. I will now resume this defense. It seems to me that General Funston's appreciation of the capture needs editing. It seems to me that in his after-dinner speeches he spreads out the heroisms of it, I say it with reference, and subject to correction, with an almost too generous hand. He is a brave man. His dearest enemy will cordially grant him that credit. For his sake it is a pity that somewhat of that quality was not needed in the episode under consideration that he would have furnished it no one doubts, but by his own showing he ran but one danger, that of starving. He and his party were well disguised in dishonored uniforms, American and insurgent. They greatly outnumber Dagnaldo's guard. Note. 89 to 48. Funston's Lotus Club Confessions. End of note. By his forgeries and falsehoods he had lulled suspicion to sleep. His coming was expected. His way was prepared. His course was through a solitude. Unfriendly interruption was unlikely. His party were well armed. They would catch their prey with welcoming smiles in their faces, and with hospitable hands extended for the friendly shake. Nothing would be necessary but to shoot these people down. That is what they did. It was hospitality repaid in a brand new, up-to-date, modern civilization fashion, and would be admired by many. The spokesman so completely hoodwinked Dagnaldo that he did not suspect the roosts. In the meantime the Maccabebes maneuvered around into advantageous positions directed by the Spaniard until all were in readiness. Then he shouted, Maccabebes, now is your turn, whereupon they emptied their rifles into Dagnaldo's bodyguard, from Wildman's book already quoted. The utter completeness of the surprise, the total absence of suspicion which had been secured by the forgeries and falsehoods is best brought out in Funston's humorous account of the episode in his rollicking speeches. The one he thought the president said he wanted to see republished. Though it turned out that this was only a dream. Dream of a reporter, the general says. The Maccabebes fired on those men and two fell dead. The others retreated, firing as they ran. And I might say here that they retreated with such great alacrity and enthusiasm that they dropped eighteen rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Sigismondo rushed back into the house, pulled his revolver, and told the insurgent officers to surrender. They all threw up their hands except Villia, Dagnaldo's chief of staff. He had on one of those newfangled Mauser revolvers, and he wanted to try it. But before he had the Mauser out of its scabbard, he was shot twice. Sigismondo was a pretty fair marksman himself. Alambra was shot in the face. He jumped out of the window, the house, by the way, stood on the bank of the river. He went out of the window and went clear down to the river, the water being twenty-five feet below the bank. He escaped, swam across the river and got away, and surrendered five months afterwards. Villia, shot in the shoulder, followed him out of the window and into the river, but the Maccababes saw him and ran down to the river bank, and they waded in and fished him out and kicked him all the way up the bank and asked him how he liked it. Laughter! While it is true that the dare devils were not in danger upon this occasion, they were in awful peril at one time, in peril of a death so awful that swift extinction by bullet, by the axe, by the sword, by the rope, by drowning, by fire, is a kindly mercy contrasted with it, a death so awful that it holds its place unchallenged as the supremist of human agonies, death by starvation. Aguinaldo saved them from that. These being the facts, we come now to the question. Is Funston to blame? I think not. And for that reason I think too much is being made of this matter. He did not make his own disposition, it was born with him. It chose his ideals for him, he did not choose them. It chose the kind of society he had liked, the kind of comrades it preferred, and imposed them upon him, rejecting the other kinds. He could not help this. It admired everything that Washington did not admire, and hospitality received and coddled everything that Washington would have turned out of doors. But it, and it only, was to blame not Funston. His it took as naturally to moral slag as Washington's took to moral gold, but only it was to blame not Funston. Its moral sense, if it had any, was colorblind, but this was no fault of Funston's, and he is not chargeable with the results. It had a native predilection for unsavory conduct, but it would be in the last degree unfair to hold Funston to blame for the outcome of his infirmity, as clearly unfair as it would be to blame him because his conscience leaked out through one of his pours when he was little, a thing which he could not help, and he couldn't have raised it anyway. It, was able to say to an enemy, have pity on me, I am starving, I am too weak to move, give me food, I am your friend, I am your fellow patriot, your fellow Filipino, and I am fighting for our dear country's liberties like you.  And it was able to refresh and restore its marionette with the food, and then shoot down the giver of it while his hand was stretched out in welcome, like the Presidents. Yet if blame there was, and guilt, and treachery, and baseness, they are not Funston's, but only its. It has the noble gift of humor, and can make a banquet almost die with laughter as a funny incident to tell about. This one will bear reading again, and over and over again, in fact. The Maccababes fired on those men and two fell dead, the others retreated, firing as they ran, and I might say here that they retreated with such alacrity and enthusiasm that they dropped eighteen rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Sigismondo rushed back into the house, pulled his revolver and told the insurgent officers to surrender. They all threw up their hands, except Villia, Aquinaldo's chief of staff. He had on one of those new-fangled Mauser revolvers, and he wanted to try it. But before he had the Mauser out of its scabbard, he was shot twice. Sigismondo was a pretty fair marksman himself. Alhambra was shot in the face. He jumped out of the window, the house, by the way, stood on the bank of the river. He went out of the window and went clear down into the river, the water being twenty-five feet below the bank. He escaped, swam across the river and got away, and surrendered five months afterwards. Villia, shot in the shoulder, followed him out of the window and into the river. But the Maccababes saw him and ran down to the river bank, and they waded in and fished him out, and kicked him all the way up the bank, and asked him how he liked it. Laughter. This was a wounded man. But it is only it that is speaking, not Funston. With youthful glee it can see sink down in death the simple creatures who had answered its fainting prayer for food, and without remorse it can note the reproachful look in their dimming eyes. But in fairness we must remember that this is only it, not Funston. By proxy, in the person of its born servant, it can do its strange work, and practice its ingratitudes and amazing treacheries, while wearing the uniform of the American soldier and marching under the authority of the American flag. And it, not Funston, comes home now to teach us children what patriotism is. Surely it ought to know. It is plain to me, and I think it ought to be plain to all, that Funston is not in any way to blame for the things he has done, does, thinks, and says. Now, then, we have Funston. He has happened, and is on our hands. The question is, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to meet the emergency? We have seen what happened in Washington's case. He became a colossal example, an example to the whole world, and for all time, because his name and deeds went everywhere, and inspired, as they still inspire and will always inspire, admiration, and compel emulation. Then the thing for the world to do in the present case is to turn the guilt front of Funston's evil notoriety to the rear, and expose the back aspect of it, the right and black aspect of it, to the youth of the land. Otherwise he will become an example and a boy admiration, and will most sorrowfully and grotesquely bring his breed of patriotism into competition with Washington's. This competition has already begun, in fact. Some may not believe it, but it is nevertheless true that there are now public school teachers and superintendents who are holding up Funston as a model hero and patriot in the schools. If this Funstonian boom continues, Funstonism will presently affect the army. In fact, this has already happened. There are weak-headed and weak-principled officers in all armies, and these are always ready to imitate successful notoriety-breeding methods, let them be good or bad. The fact that Funston has achieved notoriety by paralyzing the universe with a fresh and hideous idea is sufficient for this kind, they will call that hand if they can, and go at one better when the chance offers. Funston's example has bred many imitators and many ghastly additions to our history. The torturing of Filipinos by the awful water cure, for instance, to make them confess, what, truth, or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless. Yet upon such evidence American officers have actually, but you know about those atrocities which the War Office has been hiding a year or two, and about General Smith's now world-celebrated order of massacre, thus summarized by the press from Major Waller's testimony. Kill and burn. This is no time to take prisoners. The more you kill and burn the better. Kill all above the age of ten. Make Samar a howling wilderness. You see what Funston's example has produced, just in this little while, even before he produced the example. It has advanced our civilization ever so far, fully as far as Europe advanced it, in China. Also, no doubt, it was Funston's example that made us, and England, copy Weyler's Reconcentrato horror after the pair of us, with our Sunday school smirk on, and our goody-goody noses upturned toward heaven, had been calling him a fiend. And the fearful earthquake out there in Krakatau that destroyed the island and killed two million people—no, that could not have been Funston's example. I remember now. He was not born then. However, for all these things I blame only his IT, not him. In conclusion, I have defended him as well as I could, and indeed I have found it quite easy, and have removed prejudice from him, and rehabilitated him in the public esteem and regard, I think. I was not able to do anything for his IT, it being out of my jurisdiction, and out of Funston's and everybody's. As I have shown, Funston is not to blame for his fearful deed, and if I tried, I might also show that he is not to blame for our still holding in bondage the man he captured by unlawful means, and who would not any more rightfully our prisoner and spoil than he would be if he were stolen money. He is entitled to his freedom. If he were a king of a great power, or an ex-president of our republic, instead of an ex-president of a destroyed and abolished little republic, civilization, with a large C, would criticize and complain until he got it. Mark Twain. P.S. April 16. The President is speaking up this morning, just as this goes to the printer, and there is no uncertain sound about the note. It is the speech and spirit of a President of a people, not of a party, and we all like it, traitors and all. I think I may speak for the other traitors, for I am sure they feel as I do about it. I will explain that we get our title from the Funstonian patriots, free of charge. They are always doing us little compliments like that. They are just born flatterers, those boys. M.T. A DEFENSE OF GENERAL FUNSTON. Read by John Greenman. Section 10 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain. King Leopold Soliloquy. Part 1. The publisher's desire to state that Mr. Clemens declines to accept any pecuniary return from this booklet, as it is his wish that all proceeds of sales above the cost of publication shall be used in furthering effort for relief of the people of the Congo State. The P. R. Warren Company, Boston, Massachusetts, January 1, 1906. It is I. Leopold II. It is the absolute master of the whole of the internal and external activity of the independent state of the Congo. The organization of justice, the army, the industrial and commercial regimes are established freely by himself. He would say, and with greater accuracy than did Louis XIV, the state it is I. Professor F. Cartier, Brussels University. Let us repeat after so many others what has become a platitude. The success of the African work is the work of a soul-directing will, without being hampered by the hesitation of timorous politicians carried out under his soul-responsibility. Intelligent, thoughtful, conscious of the perils and the advantages, discounting with an admirable prescience the great results of a near future. M. Alfred Poskine in Bilan Congolais. King Leopold Soliloquy, a defense of his Congo rule, by Mark Twain. Second edition, the P. R. Warren Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1905. Throws down pamphlets, which he has been reading. Excitedly combs his flowing spread of whiskers with his fingers. Pounds the table with his fists. Let's off brisk volleys of unsanctified language and brief intervals. Repentantly drooping his head between volleys and kissing Louis XI's crucifix hanging from his neck, accompanying the kisses with mumbled apologies. Presently vises, flushed and perspiring, and walks the floor, gesticulating. Blank, blank. Blank, blank. If I had them by the throat, hastily kisses the crucifix and mumbles, in these twenty years I have spent millions to keep the press of the two hemispheres quiet, and still these leaks keep on occurring. I have spent other millions on religion and art what do I get for it? Nothing. Not a compliment. These generosity's are studdedly ignored in print. In print I get nothing but slanders and slanders again, and still slanders and slanders on top of slanders. Grant them true, but what of it? They are slanders all the same, when uttered against a king. Miscreants! They are telling everything. Oh, everything! I went pilgrimming among the powers in tears with my mouth full of Bible and my pelt oozing piety at every pore, and implored them to place the vast and rich and populous Congo-free state in trust in my hands as their agent, so that I might root out slavery and stop the slave raids and lift up those twenty-five millions of rental and harmless blacks out of darkness into light, the light of our blessed Redeemer, the light that streams from his holy word, the light that makes glorious our noble civilization, lift them up and dry their tears, and fill their bruised hearts with joy and gratitude, lift them up and make them comprehend that they were no longer outcasts and forsaken, but our very brothers in Christ, how America and thirteen great European states wept in sympathy with me and were persuaded, how their representatives met in convention in Berlin and made me head foreman and superintendent of the Congo state, and drafted out my powers and limitations, carefully guarding the persons and liberties and properties of the natives against hurt and harm, forbidding whiskey traffic and gun traffic, providing courts of justice, making commerce free and fetterless to the merchants and traders of all nations, and welcoming and safeguarding all missionaries of all creeds and denominations. They have told how I planned and prepared my establishment and selected my horde of peoples, pals and pimps of mine, unspeakable Belgians every one, and hoisted my flag and took in a President of the United States and got him to be the first to recognize it and salute it. Oh, well, let them blackguard me if they like. It is a deep satisfaction to me to remember that I was a shade too smart for that nation that thinks so smart. Yes, I certainly did bunco a Yankee as those people phrase it. Pirate flag? Let them call it so, perhaps it is. All the same, they were the first to salute it. These meddlesome American missionaries, these frank British consuls, these blabbering Belgian-born trader rebels. Those tiresome parrots are always talking, always telling. They have told how for twenty years I have ruled the Congo State not as a trustee of the powers, an agent, a subordinate, a foreman, but as a sovereign, sovereign over a fruitful domain four times as large as the German Empire, sovereign absolute, irresponsible above all law, trampling the Berlin-made Congo charter underfoot, barring out all foreign traders but myself, restricting commerce to myself through concessionaires who are my creatures and confederates, seizing and holding the state as my personal property, the whole of its vast revenues as my private swag, mine solely mine, claiming and holding its millions of people as my private property, my serfs, my slaves, their labor mine with or without wage, the food they raise not their property, but mine, the rubber, the ivory and all the other riches of the land, mine, mine solely, and gathered for me by the men, the women, and the little children under compulsion of lash and bullet, fire, starvation, annihilation, and the halter. These pests! It is, as I say, they have kept back nothing. They have revealed these and yet other details, which shame should have kept them silent about, since they were exposures of a king, a sacred personage and immune from reproach, by right of his selection and appointment to his great office by God himself, a king whose acts cannot be criticized without blasphemy, since God has observed them from the beginning and has manifested no dissatisfaction with them, nor shown disapproval of them, nor hampered nor interrupted them in any way. By this sign I recognize his approval of what I have done, his cordial and glad approval, I am sure I may say. Blessed, crowned, beatified with his great reward, this golden reward, this unspeakably precious reward, why should I care for men's cursings and revilings of me? With a sudden outburst of feeling, may they roast a million eons in, catches his breath, and effusively kisses the crucifix, sorrowfully murmurs, I shall get myself damned yet with these indiscretions of speech. Yes, they go on telling everything these chatterers. They tell how I levy incredibly burdensome taxes upon the natives, taxes which are pure theft, taxes which they must satisfy by gathering rubber under hard and constantly harder conditions, and by raising and furnishing food supplies gratis, and it all comes out that when they fall short of their tasks, through hunger, sickness, despair, and ceaseless and exhausting labor without rest, and forsake their homes and flee to the woods to escape punishment, my black soldiers, drawn from unfriendly tribes and instigated and directed by my Belgians, hunt them down and butcher them and burn their villages, reserving some of the girls. They tell it all, how I am wiping a nation of friendless creatures out of existence by every form of murder, for my private pocket-sake, and how every shilling I get costs a rape, a mutilation, or a life. But they never say, although they know it, that I have labored in the cause of religion at the same time and all the time, and have sent missionaries there of a convenient stripe, as they phrase it, to teach them the error of their ways and bring them to him, who is all mercy and love, and who is the sleepless guardian and friend of all who suffer. They tell only what is against me, they will not tell what is in my favor. They tell how England required of me a commission of inquiry into Congo atrocities, and how to quiet that meddling country, with its disagreeable Congo reform association, made up of Earl's and Bishops and John Morley's and University grandees and other dudes, more interested in other people's business than in their own. I appointed it. Did it stop their mouths? No. They merely pointed out that it was a commission composed wholly of my Congo butchers, the very men whose acts were to be inquired into. They said it was equivalent to appointing a commission of wolves to inquire into depredations committed upon a sheepfold. Nothing can satisfy a cursed English man. Note. This visit had a more fortunate result than was anticipated. One member of the commission was a leading Congo official, another official of the government in Belgium, the third a Swiss jurist. It was feared that the work of the commission would not be more genuine than that of innumerable so-called investigations by local officials, but it appears that the commission was met by a very avalanche of awful testimony. One who was present at a public hearing writes, men of stone would be moved by the stories that are being unfolded as the commission probes into the awful history of rubber collection. It is evident the commissioners were moved. Of their report and its bearing upon the international issue presented by the conceded conditions in the Congo State, something is said on the supplementary page of this pamphlet. Certain reforms were ordered by the commission in the one section visited, but the latest word is that after its departure conditions were soon worse than before its coming. M.T. End of note. And were the fault-finders frank with my private character? They could not be more so if I were a plebeian, a peasant, a mechanic. They remind the world that from the earliest days my house has been chapel and brothel combined and both industries working full time, that I practiced cruelties upon my queen and my daughters and supplemented them with daily shame and humiliations, that when my queen lay in the happy refuge of her coffin and a daughter implored me on her knees to let her look for the last time upon her mother's face I refused, and that three years ago, not being satisfied with the stolen spoils of a whole alien nation, I robbed my own child of her property and appeared by proxy in court, a spectacle to the civilized world, to defend the act and complete the crime. It is as I have said. They are unfair, unjust. They will resurrect and give new currency to such things as those or to any other things that count against me, but they will not mention any act of mine that is in my favor. I have spent more money on art than any other monarch of my time and they know it. Do they speak of it? Do they tell about it? No, they do not. They prefer to work up what they call ghastly statistics into offensive kindergarten object lessons whose purpose is to make sentimental people shudder and prejudice them against me. The remark that if the innocent blood shed in the Congo State by King Leopold were put in buckets and the buckets every side by side, the line would stretch two thousand miles. If the skeletons of his ten millions of starved and butchered dead could rise up and march in single file, it would take them seven months and four days to pass a given point. If compacted together in a body they would occupy more ground than St. Louis covers. World fair and all. If they should all clap their bony hands at once, the grisly crash would be heard at a distance of... blank. Damnation it makes me tired! And they do similar miracles with the money I have distilled from that blood and put into my pocket. They pile it into Egyptian pyramids. They carpet Saharas with it. They spread it across the sky and the shadow it casts makes a twilight in the earth. And the tears I have caused. The hearts I have broken. Oh, nothing can persuade them to let them alone. Meditative pause. Well, no matter I did beat the Yankees anyway, there is comfort in that. Reads with mocking smile the President's order of recognition of April twenty-two, eighteen eighty-four. The government of the United States announces its sympathy with and approval of the main and benevolent purposes of my Congo scheme, and will order the officers of the United States both on land and sea to recognize its flag as the flag of a friendly government. Possibly the Yankees would like to take that back now, but they will find that my agents are not over there in America for nothing. But there is no danger. Neither nations nor governments can afford to confess a blunder. With a contented smile begins to read from Report by Reverend W. M. Morrison, American missionary in the Congo Free State. I furnish herewith some of the many atrocious incidents which have come under my own personal observation. They reveal the organized system of plunder and outrage which has been situated, and is now being carried on in that unfortunate country by King Leopold of Belgium. I say King Leopold because he and he alone is now responsible since he is the absolute sovereign. He styles himself such. When our government in eighteen eighty-four laid the foundation of the Congo Free State by recognizing its flag little did it know that this concern, parading under the guise of philanthropy, was really King Leopold of Belgium, one of the shrewdest, most heartless, and most consciousness rulers that ever sat on a throne. This is apart from his known corrupt morals which have made his name and his family a byword in two continents. Our government would most certainly not have recognized that flag had it known that it was really King Leopold individually who was asking for recognition. Had it known that it was setting in the heart of Africa an absolute monarchy. Had it known that, having put down African slavery in our own country at great cost of blood and money, it was establishing a worse form of slavery right in Africa. With evil joy. Yes, I certainly was a shade too clever for the Yankees. It hurts. It gravels them. They can't get over it. But it's a shame upon them in another way too, and a graver way, for they never can rid their records of the reproachful fact that their vain republic, self-appointed champion and promoter of the liberties of the world, is the only democracy in history that has lent its power and influence to the establishing of an absolute monarchy. Contemplating, with an unfriendly eye, a stately pile of pamphlets, blister the meddlesome missionaries. They write tons of these things. They seem to be always around, always spying, always eye-witnessing the happenings, and everything they see they commit to paper. They are always prowling from place to place. The natives consider them their only friends. They go to them with their sorrows. They show them their scars and their wounds inflicted by my soldier police. They hold up the stumps of their arms and lament because their hands have been chopped off, as punishment for not bringing in enough rubber, and as proof to be laid before my officers that the required punishment was well and truly carried out. One of these missionaries saw twenty-one of these hands drying over a fire for transmission to my officials, and of course he must go and set it down and print it. They travel and travel, they spy and spy, and nothing is too trivial for them to print. Takes up a pamphlet, reads a passage from Report of a Journey Made in July, August and September 1903 by Reverend A. E. Scrivner, a British missionary. Soon we began talking, and without an encouragement on my part the natives began the tales I had become so accustomed to. They were living in peace and quietness when the white men came in from the lake with all sorts of requests to do this and that, and they thought it meant slavery, so they attempted to keep the white men out of their country but without avail. The rifles were too much for them, so they submitted and made up their minds to do the best they could under the altered circumstances. First came the command to build houses for the soldiers, and this was done without a murmur. Then they had to feed the soldiers and all the men and women, hangers on, who accompanied them. Then they were told to bring in rubber. This was quite a new thing for them to do. There was rubber in the forest several days away from their home, but that it was worth anything was news to them. A small reward was offered, and a rush was made for the rubber. What strange white men to give us cloth and beads for the sap of a wild vine! They rejoiced in what they thought their good fortune. But soon the reward was reduced until at last they were told to bring in the rubber for nothing. To this they tried to demure, but to their great surprise several were shot by the soldiers, and the rest were told, with many curses and blows, to go at once, or more would be killed. Terrified they began to prepare their food for the fortnight's absence from the village which the collection of rubber entailed. The soldiers discovered them sitting about. What, not gone yet? Bang, bang, bang, and down fell one and another dead in the midst of wives and companions. There is a terrible wail and an attempt made to prepare the dead for burial, but this is not allowed. All must go at once to the forest. Without food? Yes, without food. And off the poor wretches had to go without even their tinder-boxes to make fires. Many died in the forests of hunger and exposure, and still more from the rifles of the ferocious soldiers in charge of the post. In spite of all their efforts the amount fell off and more and more were killed. I was shown around the place, and the sights of former big chief settlements were pointed out. A careful estimate made the population of, say, seven years ago to be two thousand people in and about the post, within a radius of, say, a quarter of a mile. All told they would not muster two thousand now, and there was so much sadness and gloom about them that they are fast decreasing. We stayed there all day on Monday and had many talks with the people. On the Sunday some of the boys had told me of some bones which they had seen, so on the Monday I asked to be shown these bones. Lying about on the grass within a few yards of the house I was occupying were numbers of human skulls, bones, in some cases complete skeletons. I counted thirty-six skulls, and saw many sets of bones from which the skulls were missing. I called one of the men and asked the meaning of it. When the rubber paliver began, said he, the soldiers shot so many we grew tired of burying, and very often we were not allowed to bury, and so just dragged the bodies out into the grass and left them. There are hundreds all around, if you would like to see them. But I had seen more than enough and was sickened by the stories that came from men and women alike, of the awful time they had passed through. The Bulgarian atrocities might be considered as mildness itself when compared with what was done here. How the people submitted I don't know, and even now I wonder as I think of their patience, that some of them managed to run away is some cause for thankfulness. I stayed there two days, and the one thing that impressed itself upon me was the collection of rubber. I saw long files of men come in, as at Bongo, with their little baskets under their arms, saw them pay their milk tin full of salt, and the two yards of calico flung to the headmen, saw their trembling timidity, and in fact a great deal of that all went to prove the state of terrorism that exists, and the virtual slavery in which the people are held. That is their way. They spy and spy, and run into print with every foolish trifle. And that British consul, Mr. Casement, is just like them. He gets hold of a diary which had been kept by one of my government officers, and although it is a private diary and intended for no eye but its owners, Mr. Casement is so lacking in delicacy and refinement as to print passages from it. READS A PASSAGE FROM THE DIARY Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given 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 the state on the Mumbogo River had used six thousand cartridges, which means that six thousand people are killed or mutilated.  When the subtle counsel thinks silence will be more effective than words, he employs it. Here he leaves it to be recognized that a thousand killings and mutilations a month is a large output for so small a region as the Mumbogo River concession, silently indicating the dimensions of it by accompanying his report with a map of the prodigious Congo state in which there is not room for so small an object as that river. That silence is intended to say, if it is a thousand a month in this little corner, imagine the output of the whole vast state. A gentleman would not descend to these furtivenesses.  He dodges and straightway comes back at you from another direction.  When the mutilations, severing hands, unsexing men, etc., began to stir Europe, we hit upon the idea of excusing them with a retort which we judged would knock them dizzy on that subject for good and all, and leave them nothing more to say. To it, we boldly laid the custom on the natives, and said we did not invent it, but only followed it. Did it knock them dizzy?  Not for an hour. They dodged and came straight back at us with a remark that, if a Christian king can perceive a saving moral difference between inventing bloody barbarities and imitating them from savages, for charity's sake let him get what comfort he can out of his confession. It is most amazing the way that that consul acts, that spies, and busybody takes up pamphlet treatment of women and children in the Congo State, what Mr. Casement saw in 1903. Hardly two years ago intruding that date upon the public was a piece of cold malice. It was intended to weaken the force of my press syndicate's assurances to the public that my severities in the Congo ceased utterly years and years ago. This man is fond of trifles, revels in them, gloats over them, pets them, fondles them, sets them all down. One doesn't need to drowse through his monotonous report to see that. The mere subheadings of its chapters prove it. Two hundred and forty persons, men, women and children, compelled to supply government with one ton of carefully prepared foodstuffs per week, receiving in remuneration all told the princely sum of fifteen shilling tenpence. Very well it was liberal. It was not much short of a penny a week for each nigger. It suits this consul to belittle it, yet he knows very well that I could have had both the food and the labour for nothing. I can prove it by a thousand instances. Expedition against a village behind hand in its compulsory supplies result slaughter of sixteen persons, among them three women and a boy of five years. Ten carried off to be prisoners till ransomed, among them a child who died during the march. But he is careful not to explain that we are obliged to resort to ransom to collect debts where the people have nothing to pay with, families that escape to the woods sell some of their members into slavery and thus provide the ransom. He knows that I would stop this if I could find a less objectionable way to collect their debts. Hmm! Here is some more of the consul's delicacy. He reports the conversation he had with some natives. Q. How do you know it was the white men themselves who ordered these cruel things to be done to you?  A.   So then the soldiers, when they killed us—here he stopped and hesitated and then pointing to blank—he said, then they—blank—and took them to the white men who said, it is true, you have killed men. Q. You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being shot? All shouting out, nicoto, nicoto. Very many, very many. There was no doubt that these people were not inventing. Their vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement were not simulated. A. Of course the critic had to divulge that. He has no self-respect. All his kind reproached me, although they know quite well that I took no pleasure in punishing the men in that particular way, but only did it as a warning to other delinquents.  They make no impression. Reads more subheads. Devastated region, population reduced from forty thousand to eight thousand. He does not take the trouble to say how it happened. He is fertile in concealments. He hopes his readers and his Congo reformers of the Lord Aberdeen Norbury, John Morley, Sir Gilbert Parker Stripe, will think they were all killed. They were not. The great majority of them escaped. They fled to the bush with their families because of the rubber raids, and it was there they died of hunger. Could we help that? One of my sorrowing critics observes other Christian rulers tax their people, but furnish schools, courts of law, roads, light, water, and protection to life and limb in return. King Leopold taxes his stolen nation, but provides nothing in return but hunger, terror, grief, shame, captivity, mutilation, and massacre. That is their style. I furnish nothing. I send the gospel to the survivors. These censure mongers know it, but they would rather have their tongues cut out than mention it. I have several times required my raiders to give the dying an opportunity to kiss the sacred emblem, and if they obeyed me, I have without doubt been the humble means of saving many souls. None of my traducers have had the fairness to mention this, but let it pass. There is one who has not overlooked it, and that is my solace. That is my consolation." Puts down the report, takes up a pamphlet, glances along the middle of it. This is where the death trap comes in. Metal-some missionary spying around. Reverend W. H. Shepard talks with a black raider of mine after a raid, cousins him into giving away some particulars. The raider remarks, I demanded thirty slaves from this side of the stream and thirty from the other side, two points of ivory, two thousand five hundred balls of rubber, thirteen goats, ten fowls, and six dogs, some corn, chummy, etc. How did the fight come up? I asked. I sent for all their chiefs, sub-chiefs, men and women, to come on a certain day, saying that I was going to finish all the palaver. When they entered these small gates, the walls being made of fences brought from other villages, the high native ones, I demanded all my pay or I would kill them, so they refused to pay me, and I ordered the fence to be closed so they couldn't run away. Then we killed them here inside the fence. The panels of the fence fell down and some escaped. How many did you kill? I asked. We killed plenty. Will you see some of them? That was just what I wanted. He said, I think we have killed between eighty and ninety and those in the other villages I don't know. I did not go out but sent my people. He and I walked out on the plain just near the camp.  Why are they carved so, only leaving the bones? I asked. My people ate them, he answered promptly. He then explained, the men who have young children do not eat people, but all the rest ate them. On the left was a big man shot in the back and without a head. All these corpses were nude. Where is the man's head? I asked. Oh, they made a bowl of the forehead to rub up tobacco and diamba in. We continued to walk and examine until late in the afternoon and counted forty-one bodies. The rest had been eaten up by the people. On returning to the camp we crossed a young woman shot in the back of the head, one hand was cut away. I asked why and Mulumban Kusa explained that they always cut off the right hand to give to the State on their return. Can you not show me some of the hands? I asked.  And there they were, the right hands. I counted them. Eighty-one in all. There were not less than sixty women, Bena Pianga, prisoners. I saw them. We all say that we have as fully as possible investigated the whole outrage and find it was a plan previously made to get all the stuff possible and to catch and kill the poor people in the death trap. Another detail as we see cannibalism. They report cases of it with a most offensive frequency. My traducers do not forget to remark that, in as much as I am absolute, and with a word can prevent in the Congo anything I choose to prevent, then what so ever is done there by my permission is my act, my personal act, that I do it, that the hand of my agent is as truly my hand as if it were attached to my own arm.  Dear, dear, when the soft hearts get hold of a thing like that missionary's contribution they quite lose their tranquility over it. They speak out profanely and reproach heaven for allowing such a fiend to live, meaning me. They think it irregular. They go shuddering around, brooding over the reduction of that Congo population from twenty-five million to fifteen million in the twenty years of my administration. Then they burst out and call me the king with ten million murders on his soul. They call me a record. The most of them do not stop with charging merely the ten million against me. No, they reflect that, but for me the population by natural increase would now be thirty million, so they charge another five million against me and make my total death harvest fifteen million. They remark that the man who killed the goose that laid the golden egg was responsible for the eggs she would subsequently have laid if she had been let alone. Oh yes, they call me a record. They remark that twice in a generation in India the great famine destroys two million out of a population of three hundred and twenty million and the whole world holds up its hands in pity and horror. Then they fall to wondering where the world would find room for its emotions if I had a chance to trade places with the great famine for twenty years. The idea fires their fancy, and they go on and imagine the famine coming in state at the end of the twenty years and prostrating itself before me saying, Teach me, Lord, I perceive that I am but an apprentice. And next they imagine death coming, with his scythe and hourglass, and begging me to marry his daughter and reorganize his plant and run the business. For the whole world, you see. By this time their diseased minds are under full steam. And they get down their books and expand their labors with me for text. They hunt through all biography for my match, working Atilla, Torquemada, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, and the rest of that crowd for all they are worth, and evilly exalting when they cannot find it. Then they examine the historical earthquakes and cyclones and blizzards and cataclysms and volcanic eruptions, verdict? None of them in it with me. At last they do really hit it, as they think, and they close their labors with conceding reluctantly that I have one match in history but only one, the flood. This is intemperate. But they are always that when they think of me. They can no more keep quiet when my name is mentioned than can a glass of water control its feelings with a seedlet's powder in its bowels. The bizarre things they can imagine with me for an inspiration. One Englishman offers to give me the odds of three to one and bet me anything I like, up to twenty thousand guineas, that for two million years I am going to be the most conspicuous foreigner in hell. The man is so beside himself with fear that he does not perceive that the idea is foolish. Foolish and un-business-like. You see, there could be no winner. Both of us would be losers on account of the loss of interest on the stakes.  He has it all ciphered out and drawn to scale. Out of the skulls he will build a combined monument and mausoleum to me which shall exactly replicate the Great Pyramid of Cheops, whose base covers thirteen acres and whose apex is four hundred and fifty-one feet above ground. He desires to stuff me and stand me up in the sky on that apex, robed and crowned, with my pirate flag in one hand and a butcher knife and pendant handcuffs in the other. He will build the pyramid in the center of a depopulated tract, a brooding solitude covered with weeds, and the mouldering ruins of burned villages, where the spirits of the starved and murdered dead will voice their laments forever in the whispers of the wandering winds. Radiating from the pyramid like the spokes of a wheel, there are to be forty grand avenues of approach each thirty-five miles long and each fenced on both sides by skullless skeletons standing a yard and a half apart and festooned together in line by short chains stretching from wrist to wrist and attached to tried and true old handcuffs stamped with my private trademark, a crucifix and butcher knife crossed with motto by this sign we prosper. Each oceous fence to consist of two hundred thousand skeletons inside, which is four hundred thousand to each avenue. It is remarked with satisfaction that it aggregates three or four thousand miles, single-ranked of skeletons, fifteen million all told, and would stretch across America from New York to San Francisco. It is remarked further, in the hopeful tone of a railroad company forecasting showy extensions of its mileage, that my output is five hundred thousand corpses a year when my plant is running full time, and that therefore, if I am spared ten years longer, there will be fresh skulls enough to add one hundred and seventy-five feet to the pyramid, making it by a long way the loftiest architectural construction on the earth, and fresh skeletons enough to continue the transcontinental file on piles a thousand miles into the Pacific. The cost of gathering the materials from my widely scattered and innumerable private graveyards, and transporting them and building the monument and the radiating grand avenues, is duly ciphered out, running into an aggregate of millions of guineas, and then, why then, blank, blank, blank, blank, this idiot asks me to furnish the money. Sudden and effusive application of the crucifix. He reminds me that my yearly income from the Congo is millions of guineas, and that only five million would be required for his enterprise. Every day wild attempts are made upon my purse. They do not affect me. They cost me not a thought. But this one, this one troubles me, makes me nervous. For there is no telling what an unhinged creature like this may think of next. If he should think of Carnegie—but I must banish that thought out of my mind. It worries my days. It troubles my sleep. That way lies madness. After a pause, there is no other way. I have got to buy Carnegie. Harassed and muttering, walks the floor a while, then takes to the consul's chapter headings again, reads, Government starved a woman's children to death and killed her sons. Butchery of women and children. The native has been converted into a being without ambition because without hope. Women chained by the neck by rubbered centuries. Women refused to bear children because, with a baby to carry, they cannot well run away and hide from the soldiers. Statement of a child. I, my mother, my grandmother, and my sister, we ran away into the bush. A great number of our people were killed by the soldiers. After that they saw a little bit of my mother's head and the soldiers ran quickly to where we were and caught my grandmother, my mother, my sister, and another little one younger than us.  They shot her through the stomach with a gun and she fell. And when I saw that I cried very much because they killed my grandmother and mother and I was left alone. I saw it all done. It has a sort of pitiful sound, although they are only blacks. It carries me back and back into the past, to when my children were little, and would fly to the bush, so to speak, when they saw me coming. Resumes reading of chapter headings of the Consul's report. They put a knife through a child's stomach.   Friends came to ransom a captured girl, but sentry refused, saying the white man wanted her because she was young. Extract from a native girl's testimony.  One day they killed my half-sister and cut off her head, hands and feet, because she had bangles on. Then they caught another sister and sold her to the W.W. people, and now she is a slave there. The little child laughed. A long pause musing. That innocent creature. Somehow I wish it had not laughed. Reads, Mutilated children. Government encouragement of intertribal slave traffic, the monstrous fines levied upon villages tardy in their supplies of foodstuffs, compel the natives to sell their fellows and children to other tribes in order to meet the fine.  Widow forced to sell her little girl. Irritated. Hang the monotonous grumbler! What would he have me do?  He knows quite well that there is nothing much left now but widows. I have nothing against widows as a class, but business is business, and I've got to live, haven't I? Even if it does cause inconvenience to somebody here and there. Reads, Men intimidated by the torture of their wives and daughters, to make the men furnish rubber and supplies, and so get their captured women released from chains and detention. The century explained to me that he caught the women and brought them in, chained together neck to neck, by direction of his employer. An agent explained that he was forced to catch women in preference to men, as then the men brought in supplies quicker, but he did not explain how the children deprived of their parents obtained their own food supplies. A file of fifteen captured women.  Musing. Death from hunger.  Days and days, and still days and days, the forces of the body failing, dribbling away, little by little. Yes, it must be the hardest death of all. And to see food carried by every day and you can have none of it. Of course, the little children cry for it, and that rings the mother's heart. A sigh. Ah, well, it cannot be helped. Circumstances make this discipline necessary. Reads. The Crucifying of Sixty Women.  Christendom's goose flesh will rise with horror at the news. Profanation of the sacred emblem. That is what Christendom will shout. Yes, Christendom will buzz. It can hear me charged with half a million murders a year for twenty years and keep its composure, but to profane the symbol is quite another matter. It will regard this as serious. It will wake up and want to look into my record. Buzz? Indeed it will. I seem to hear the distant hum already. It was wrong to crucify the women, clearly wrong, manifestly wrong. I can see it now myself, and I'm sorry it happened, sincerely sorry. I believe it would have answered, just as well, to skin them. With a sigh. But none of us thought of that. One cannot think of everything, and after all it is but human to err. It will make a stir. It certainly will. And these crucifixions, persons will begin to ask again, as now and then in times past, how I can hope to win and keep the respect of the human race if I continue to give up my life to murder and pillage. Scornfully. When have they heard me say I wanted the respect of the human race? Do they confuse me with the common herd? Do they forget that I am a king? What king has valued the respect of the human race? I mean deep down in his private heart. If they would reflect, they would know that it is impossible that a king should value the respect of the human race. He stands upon an eminence and looks out over the world and sees multitudes of meek human beings worshiping the persons and submitting to the oppressions and exactions of a dozen human beings who are in no way better or finer than themselves, made on just their own pattern, in fact, and out of the same quality of mud. When it talks, it is a race of whales. But a king knows it for a race of tadpoles. Its history gives it away. If men were really men, how could a czar be possible? And how could I be possible? But we are possible. We are quite safe. And with God's help we shall continue the business at the old stand. It will be found that the race will put up with us in its docile immemorial way. It may pull a rye face now and then and make large talk, but it will stay on its knees all the same. Making large talk is one of its specialties. It works itself up and froths at the mouth, and just when you think it is going to throw a brick, it heaves a poem.  End of King Leopold Soliloquy Part 1. Section 11 of Anti-Imperialist Writings. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Greenman. Anti-Imperialist Writings by Mark Twain. King Leopold Soliloquy Part 2. A Pasteboard Autocrat. A despot out of date. A fading planet in the glare of day. A flickering candle in the bright sun's ray. Burnt to the socket. Fruit left too late. High on a blighted bow. Ripe till it's rotten. By God forsaken and by time forgotten. Watching the crumbling edges of his lands.  From Finland in the west to Far Cathay. Lord of a frostbound continent he stands. Her seeming ruin his dim mind appalls. And in the frozen stupor of his sleep he hears dull thunders. Peeling as she falls. And mighty fragments dropping in the deep. Note. B. H. Nadal in the New York Times. End of note. It is fine, one is obliged to concede it. It is a great picture and impressive. The mongrel handles his pen well. Still with opportunity I would cru- flay him. A spineless god. It is the Tsar to a dot. A god. And spineless. A royal invertebrate poor lad. Soft-hearted and out of place.  Remorselessly correct. Concise too and compact. The soul and spirit of the human race compressed into half a sentence. On their knees. One hundred and forty million. On their knees to a little tin deity. Masked together they would stretch away and away and away across the plains. Fading and dimming and failing in a measureless perspective. Why, even the telescope's vision could not reach to the final frontier of that continental spread of human servility. Now why should a king value the respect of the human race? It is quite unreasonable to expect it. A curious race certainly. It finds fault with me and with my occupations, and forgets that neither of us could exist an hour without its sanction. It is our confederate and all-powerful protector. It is our bulwark, our friend, our fortress. For this it has our gratitude, our deep and honest gratitude, but not our respect. Let it snivel and fret and grumble if it likes, and that is all right. We do not mind that. Turns over leaves of a scrapbook, pausing now and then to read a clipping and make a comment. The poets, how they do hunt that poor czar. French, Germans, English, Americans, they all have a bark at him. The finest and capabilities of the pack and the fiercest are Swilburne, English, I think, and a pair of Americans, Thomas Bailey Eldridge and Colonel Richard Waterson Gilder of the sentimental periodical called Century Magazine and Louisville Courier Journal. They certainly have uttered some very strong yelps. I can't seem to find them. I must have mislead them. If a poet's bite were as terrible as his bark, why dear me, but it isn't. A wise king minds neither of them, but the poet doesn't know it. It's a case of little dog and lightning express. When the czar goes thundering by, the poet skips out and rages alongside for a little distance, then returns to his kennel, wagging his head with satisfaction, and thinks he has inflicted a memorable scare, whereas nothing has really happened. The czar didn't know he was around. They never bark at me. I wonder why that is. I suppose my corruption department buys them. That must be it. For certainly I ought to inspire a bark or two. I'm rather choice material, I should say. Why, here is a yelp at me. Mumbling a poem. What gives the holy right to murder hope and water ignorance with human blood? From what high universe dividing power draws thou thy wondrous ripe brutality? Oh, horrible! Thou God who ceased these things help us to blot this terror from the earth. No, I see it is to the czar. Note. Louis Morgan Sill in Harper's Weekly. End of note. After all, but there are those who would say it fits me, and rather snuggly, too. Ripe brutality. They would say the czars isn't ripe yet, but that mine is, and not merely ripe, but rotten. Nothing could keep them from saying that, and they would think it smart. This terror. Let the czar keep that name, I am supplied. This long time I have been the monster. That was their favorite. The monster of crime. But now I have a new one. They have found a fossil dinosaur fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high, and set it up in the museum in New York and labeled it Leopold II. But it is no matter. One does not look for manners in a republic. That reminds me, I have never been caricatured. Could it be that the corsairs of the pencil could not find an offensive symbol that was big enough and ugly enough to do my reputation justice? After reflection. There is no other way. I will buy the dinosaur and suppress it. Rests himself with some more chapter headings. Reads. More mutilation of children.  Testimony of American missionaries. Evidence of British missionaries. It's all the same, old thing. Tedious repetitions and duplications of shop-worn episodes, mutilations, murders, massacres, and so on and so on, till one gets drowsy over it. Mr. Morel intrudes at this point and contributes a comment which he could just as well have kept to himself, and throws in some italics, of course. These people can never get along without italics. It is one heart-rending story of human misery from beginning to end, and it is all recent. Meaning 1904 and 1905. I do not see how a person can act, so this Morel is a king's subject, and reverence for monarchy should have restrained him from reflecting upon me with that exposure. This Morel is a reformer, a Congo reformer, that sizes him up. He publishes a sheet in Liverpool called the West African Mail, which is supported by the voluntary contributions of the sap-headed and soft-hearted, and every week it steams and reeks and festers with up-to-date Congo atrocities of the sort detailed in this pile of pamphlets here. I will suppress it. I suppressed a Congo atrocity book there after it was actually in print. It should not be difficult for me to suppress a newspaper. Studies some photographs of mutilated negroes throws them down, sighs. The Kodak has been a sore calamity to us. The most powerful enemy that has confronted us indeed. In the early years we had no trouble in getting the press to expose the tales of the mutilations as slanders, lies, inventions of busy-body American missionaries, and exasperated foreigners who had found the open door of the Berlin-Kongo charter closed against them when they innocently went out there to trade, and by the press's help we got the Christian nations everywhere to turn an irritated and unbelieving ear to those tales and say hard things about the tellers of them. Yes, all things went harmoniously and pleasantly in those good days, and I was looked up to as the benefactor of a downtrodden and friendless people. Then all of a sudden came the crash, that is to say, the incorruptible Kodak, and all the harmony went to hell. The only witness I have encountered in my long experience that I couldn't bribe. Every Yankee missionary and every interrupted trader sent home and got one, and now—oh, well, the pictures get sneaked around everywhere in spite of all we can do to ferret them out and suppress them. Ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand presses are saying the good word for me all the time and placidly and convincingly denying the mutilations.  What is this fragment? reads, But enough of trying to tally off his crimes, his list is interminable. We should never get to the end of it. His awful shadow lies across his congo-free state and under it an unoffending nation of fifteen million is withering away and swiftly succumbing to their miseries. It is a land of graves. It is THE land of graves. It is the congo-free graveyard. It is a majestic thought that is this gasliest episode in all human history is the work of one man alone, one solitary man, just a single individual, Leopold, king of the Belgians. He is personally and solely responsible for all the myriad crimes that have blackened the history of the congo-state. He is sole master there. He is absolute. He could have prevented the crimes by his mere command. He could stop them today with a word. He withholds the word for his pocket's sake. It seems strange to see a king destroying a nation and laying waste a country of former sordid money's sake and solely and only for that. Lust of conquest is royal. Kings have always exercised that stately vice. We are used to it. By old habit we condone it, perceiving a certain dignity in it. But lust of money, lust of shillings, lust of nickels, lust of dirty coin, not for the nation's enrichment but for the king's alone. This is new. It distinctly revolts us. We cannot seem to reconcile ourselves to it. We resent it. We despise it. We say it is shabby, unkingly out of character. Being Democrats we ought to jeer and jest. We ought to rejoice to see the purple dragged in the dirt. But, well, account for it as we may, we don't. We see this awful king, this pitiless and blood-drenched king, this money-crazy king towering toward the sky in a world solitude of sordid crime, unfellowed and apart from the human race, sol butcher for personal gain findable in all his caste, ancient or modern, pagan or Christian, proper and legitimate target for the scorn of the lowest and the highest, and the execrations of all who hold in cold esteem the oppressor and the coward. And, well, it is a mystery, but we do not wish to look. For he is a king, and it hurts us, it troubles us. By ancient and inherited instinct it shames us to see a king degraded to this aspect, and we shrink from hearing the particulars of how it happened. We shudder and turn away when we come upon them in print. Why, certainly, that is my protection, and you will continue to do it. I know the human race. An original mistake. This work of civilisation is an enormous and continual butchery. All the facts we brought forward in this chamber were denied at first most energetically, but later, little by little, they were proved by documents and by official texts. The practice of cutting off hands is said to be contrary to instructions, but you are content to say that indulgence must be shown and that this bad habit must be corrected little by little, and you plead, moreover, that only the hands of fallen enemies are cut off, and that if hands are cut off, enemies not quite dead, and who, after recovery, have had the bad taste to come to the missionaries and show them their stumps, it was due to an original mistaken thinking that they were dead. From Debate in Belgian Parliament, July 1903. Supplementary. Since the first edition of this pamphlet was issued, the Congo story has entered upon a new chapter. The King's commission concedes the correctness of the delineation contained in the foregoing pages. It affirms the prevalence of frightful abuses under the King's rule. For eight months the King held back the report, but his commissioners had been too deeply moved by the horrors unfolded before them in their visit to the Congo State, and the testimony presented to them had reached the world through other sources. The digest of the report, as forwarded from Brussels to the European and American press, was skillfully edited, and the report itself does its best to gloss over the King's responsibility for the shame. But the story told in the genuine document is essentially as hideous as anything found in the depositions of plain-speaking missionaries. So the facts are clear, indisputable, undisputed. The train of revilers of missionary testimony, whose rosy-it pictures of conditions under the King's rule have beguiled the uninformed, hurries out at the wings, and Leopold is left to hold the stage, with a skeleton that refuses longer to stay hidden in his Congo closet. One thing the report omits to do, it does not brand or judge the system out of which the foul breed of iniquities has sprung. The King's claim to personal ownership of eight hundred thousand square miles of territory with all their products, and his employment of savage hordes to realize on his claim. Judgment of this policy the commission holds to be beyond its function. Being thus disqualified for striking at the roots of the enormity, the commissioners propose such superficial reforms as occur to them, and the King hastens to take up with their suggestion by calling to his assistance in the work of reform a new commission. Of this body of fourteen members all but two are committed by their past record to defense and maintenance of the King's Congo policy. So ends the King's investigation of himself, doubtless less jubilantly than he had planned, but with all as ineffectively as it was for doomed to end. One stage is achieved. The next in order is action by the powers responsible for the existence of the Congo State. The United States is one of these. Such procedure is advocated in petitions to the President and Congress, signed by John Wanamaker, Lyman Abbott, Henry Van Dyke, David Starr Jordan, and many other leading citizens. If ever the sisterhood of civilized nations have occasion to go up to the Hague or some other accessible meeting-place, a four-ordained hour for their assembling has now struck. Some things the report of the King's commission says. Apart from the rough plantations which barely suffice to feed the natives themselves and to supply the stations, all the fruits of the soil are considered as the property of the state or of the concessionaire societies. It has even been admitted that on the land occupied by them the natives cannot dispose of the produce of the soil, except to the extent in which they did so before the Constitution of the state. Each official in charge of a station, or agent in charge of a factory, claimed from the natives, without asking himself on what grounds, the most diverse imposts in labor or in kind, either to satisfy his own needs and those of his station, or to exploit the riches of the domain. The agents themselves regulated the tax and saw to its collection and had a direct interest in increasing its amount, since they received proportional bonuses on the produce thus collected. Missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant whom we heard at Leopoldville, were unanimous in accentuating the general wretchedness existing in the region. One of them said that this system which compels the natives to feed three thousand workmen at Leopoldville will, if continued for another five years, wipe out the population of the district. Judicial officials have informed us of the sorry consequences of the porterage system. It exhausts the unfortunate people subjected to it and threatens them with partial destruction. In the majority of cases the native must go one or two days march every fortnight until he arrives at that part of the forest where the rubber vines can be met with in a certain degree of abundance. There the collector passes a number of days in a miserable existence. He has to build himself an improvised shelter which cannot, obviously, replace his hut. He has not the food to which he is accustomed. He is deprived of his wife, exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, and the attacks of wild beasts. When, once he has collected the rubber, he must bring it to the state station, or to that of the company, and only then can he return to his village where he can sojourn for barely more than two or three days because the next demand is upon him. It was barely denied that in the various posts of the A-B-I-R, which we visited, the imprisonment of women hostages, the subjection of the chiefs to servile labour, the humiliations meted out to them, the flogging of rubber collectors, the brutality of the black employees set over the prisoners, where the rule commonly followed. According to the witnesses, these auxiliaries, especially those stationed in the villages, convert themselves into despots, claiming the women and the food.  The truth of the charges is borne out by a mass of evidence and official reports. The consequences are often very murderous, and one must not be astonished if in the course of these delicate operations, whose object it is to seize hostages and to intimidate the natives, constant watch cannot be exercised over the sanguinary instincts of the soldiers when orders to punish are given by superior authority. It is difficult to prevent the expedition from degenerating into massacres, accompanied by pillage and incendiarism. The United States Government and the Congo State The International Association of the Congo was recognized by the United States April 22, 1884. Nine months afterward, recognition was secured from Germany and later, successively, from the other European powers. Two international conferences were held at which the powers constituted themselves guardians of the people of the Congo Territory, the association binding itself to regard the principles of administration adopted. In both these conferences, the United States Government prominently participated. The act of Berlin was not submitted by the President of the United States for ratification by the Senate because its adoption as a whole was thought by him to involve responsibility for support of the territorial claims of rival powers in the Congo region. The act of Brussels, with a proviso safeguarding this point, was formally ratified by the United States Senate. Whether we are without obligation to reach a hand to this expiring people, the intelligent reader will judge for himself. Stanley saw neither fortress nor flag of any civilization save that of the United States, which he carried along the arterial watercourse. The first appeal for recognition and for moral support was naturally and justly made to the government whose flag was first carried across the region. Mr. Cason, in the North American Review, February 1886. This government, at the outset, testified its lively interest in the well-being and future progress of the vast region now committed to Your Majesty's wise care by being the first among the powers to recognize the flag of the International Association of the Congo as that of a friendly state. President Cleveland to King Leopold, September 11, 1885. The recognition by the United States was the birth into new life of the Association, seriously menaced, as its existence was, by opposing interests and ambitions. Mr. Stanley, the Congo, Volume 1, Page 383. He, the President of the United States, desires to see in the delimitation of the region which shall be subjected to this beneficent rule of the International Association of the Congo the widest expansion consistent with the just territorial rights of other governments. Address of Mr. Cason, U.S. Representative at Berlin Conference, 1884. So marked was the acceptance by the Berlin Conference of the Views presented on the part of the United States that Herr von Bunsen, reviewing the action of the Conference, assigns after Germany the first place of influence in the Conference to the United States. Mr. Cason, in North American Review, February 1886. In sending a representative to this assembly, the government of the United States has wished to show the great interest and deep sympathy it feels in the great work of philanthropy which the Conference seeks to realize. Our country must feel beyond all others an immense interest in the work of this assembly. Mr. Terrell, U.S. Representative at Brussels Conference, First Session, November 19, 1889. Mr. Terrell informs the Conference that he has been authorized by his government to sign the General Act adopted by the Conference. The President says that the U.S. Minister's communication will be received by the Conference with extreme satisfaction. Records of Brussels Conference, June 28, 1890. Claiming, as at Berlin, to speak in the name of Almighty God, the signatories at Brussels declared themselves to be equally animated by the firm intention of putting an end to the crimes and devastations engendered by the traffic in African slaves of protecting effectively the aboriginal populations and of ensuring the benefits of peace and civilization. Civilization in Congoland, H. R. Fox Bourne. The President continues to hope that the government of the United States, which was the first to recognize the Congo Free State, will not be one of the last to give it the assistance of which it may stand in need. Remarks of Belgian President of Brussels Conference, Session May 14, 1890. Aught King Leopold to be hanged? Note, the above article, which came to hand as the foregoing was impressed, is commended to the King and to the readers of his soliloquy. M. T. Stead, with the Reverend John H. Harris, Baringa, Congo State, in the English Review of Reviews for September 1905. For the somewhat startling suggestion in the heading of this interview, the missionary interviewed is in no way responsible. The credit of it, or if you like, the discredit, belongs entirely to the editor of the review, who without dogmatism wishes to pose the question as a matter for serious discussion. Since Charles I's head was cut off, opposite Whitehall, nearly 250 years ago, the sanctity which Doth hedge about a King has been held in slight and scant regard by the Puritans and their descendants, hence there is nothing antecedently shocking or outrageous in the discussion of the question whether the acts of any sovereign are such as to justify the calling in of the services of the public executioner. It is not, of course, for a journalist to pronounce judgment, but no function of the public writer is so imperative as that of calling attention to great wrongs, and no duty is more imperious than that of insisting that no rank or station should be allowed to shield from justice the real criminal when he is once discovered. The controversy between the Congo Reform Association and the Emperor of the Congo has now arrived at a stage in which it is necessary to take a further step toward the redress of unspeakable wrongs and the punishment of no less unspeakable criminals. The Reverend J. H. Harris, an English missionary, has lived for the last seven years in that region of Central Africa, the Upper Congo, which King Leopold has made over to one of his vampire groups of financial associates, known as the A-B-I-R Society, on the strictly business basis of a half-share in the profits rung from the blood and misery of the natives. He has now returned to England, and last month he called at Marbury House to tell me the latest from the Congo. Mr. Harris is a young man in a dangerous state of volcanic fury, and no wonder, after living for seven years face to face with the devastations of the vampire state, it is impossible to deny that he does well to be angry. When he began, as is the want of those who have emerged from the depths to detail horrifying stories of murder, the outrage and torture of women, the mutilation of children, and the whole infernal category of horrors served up with the background of cannibalism, sometimes voluntary and sometimes incredible though it seems, enforced by the orders of the officers, I cut him short and said, Dear Mr. Harris, as in Oriental Dispatches the India Office translator abbreviates the first page of the letter into two words, after compliments, or AC, so let us abbreviate our conversation about the Congo by the two words after atrocities, or AA. They are so invariable and so monotonous, as Lord Percy remarked in the house the other day, that it is unnecessary to insist upon them. There is no longer any dispute in the mind of any reasonable person as to what is going on in the Congo. It is the economical exploitation of half a continent carried on by the use of armed force wielded by officials the aim all and be all of whose existence is to extort the maximum amount of rubber in the shortest possible time in order to pay the largest possible dividend to the holders of shares in the concessions. Well, said Mr. Harris reluctantly, for he is so accustomed to speaking to persons who require to be told the whole dismal tale from A to Z, what is it you want to know? I want to know, I said, whether you consider the time is ripe for summoning King Leopold before the bar of an international tribunal to answer for the crimes perpetrated under his orders and in his interest in the Congo State. Mr. Harris paused for a moment and then said, that depends upon the action which the King takes upon the report of the commission which is now in his hands. Is that report published? No, said Mr. Harris, and it is a question whether it will ever be published. Greatly to our surprise, the commission which everyone expected would be a mere blind whose appointment was intended to throw dust in the eyes of the public turned out to be composed of highly respectable persons who heard the evidence most impartially, refused no bona fide testimony produced by trustworthy witnesses and were overwhelmed by the multitudinous horrors brought before them and who, we feel, must have arrived at conclusions which necessitate an entire revolution in the administration of the Congo. Are you quite sure, Mr. Harris, I said, that this is so? Yes, said Mr. Harris, quite sure. The commissioner impressed us all in the Congo very favorably. Some of its members seemed to us admirable specimens of public-spirited, independent statesmen. They realized that they were acting in a judicial capacity. They knew that the eyes of Europe were upon them, and instead of making their inquiry a farce, they made it a reality, and their conclusions must be, I feel sure, so damning to the state that if King Leopold were to take no action but to allow the whole infernal business to proceed unchecked, any international tribunal which had powers of a criminal court would, upon the evidence of the commission alone, send those responsible to the gallows. Unfortunately, I said, at present, the Hague Tribunal is not armed with the powers of an international assized court, nor is it qualified to place offenders crowned or otherwise in the dock. But don't you think that in the evolution of society the institution of such a criminal court is a necessity? It would be a great convenience at present," said Mr. Harris, nor would you need one atom of evidence beyond the report of the commission to justify the hanging of whoever is responsible for the existence and continuance of such abominations. Has anybody seen the text of the report? I asked. As the commission returned to Brussels in March, some of the contents of that report are an open secret. A great deal of the evidence has been published by the Congo Reform Association. In the Congo the commissioners admitted two things. First, that the evidence was overwhelming as to the existence of the evils which had hitherto been denied, and secondly that they vindicated the character of the missionaries. They discovered, as anyone will who goes out to that country, that it is the missionaries and the missionaries alone who constitute the permanent European element. The Congo state officials come out ignorant of the language, knowing nothing of the country, and with no other sense of their duties beyond that of supporting the concession companies in extorting rubber. They are like men who are dumb and deaf and blind, nor do they wish to be otherwise. In two or three years they vanish, giving place to other migrants as ignorant as themselves, whereas the missionaries remain on the spot year after year. They are in personal touch with the people, whose language they speak, whose customs they respect, and whose lives they endeavor to defend to the best of their ability. But, Mr. Harris, I remarked, was there not a certain Mr. Grenfell, a Baptist missionary, who has been all these years a convinced upholder of the Congo state. It was true, said Mr. Harris, and pity, tis, tis was true, but is no longer true. Mr. Grenfell has had his eyes opened at last, and he has now taken his place among those who are convinced. He could no longer resist the overwhelming evidence that has been brought against the Congo administration. Note. Mr. Grenfell's station is in the lower Congo, a section remote from the vast rubber areas of the interior. End of note. Was the nature of the commissioner's report, I resumed, made known to the officials of the state before they left the Congo? To the head officials, yes, said Mr. Harris. With what result? In the case of the highest official in the Congo, the man who corresponds in Africa to Lord Kursan in India, no sooner was he placed in possession of the conclusions of the commission than the appalling significance of their indictment convinced him that the game was up, and he went into his room and cut his throat. I was amazed on returning to Europe to find how little the significance of this suicide was appreciated. A paragraph in the newspaper announced the suicide of a Congo official. None of those who read that paragraph could realize the fact that that suicide had the same significance to the Congo that the suicide, let us say, of Lord Milner, would have had if it had taken place immediately on receiving the conclusions of a royal commission sent out to report upon his administration in South Africa. Well, if that be so, Mr. Harris, I said, and the Governor-General cuts his throat rather than face the ordeal and disgrace of the exposure. I am almost beginning to hope that we may see King Leopold in the dock at the Hague after all. I will comment upon that, Mr. Harris said, by quoting you Mrs. Sheldon's remark made before myself and my colleagues, Messrs. Bond, Ellery, Ruskin, Walbaum, and Whiteside, on May 19th last year, went in answer to our question, why should King Leopold be afraid of submitting his case to the Hague Tribunal? Mrs. Sheldon answered, men do not go to the gallows and put their heads in a noose, if they can avoid it.