THE CRIME OF THE CONGO
The
Crime of the Congo
By
A. Conan Doyle
Author of
The Great Boer War, etc., etc.
New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
Mcmix
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, NOVEMBER, 1909
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY A. CONAN DOYLE
PREFACE
There are many of us in England who consider the crime which has beenwrought in the Congo lands by King Leopold of Belgium and his followers tobe the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. Personally I amstrongly of that opinion. There have been great expropriations like thatof the Normans in England or of the English in Ireland. There have beenmassacres of populations like that of the South Americans by the Spaniardsor of subject nations by the Turks. But never before has there been such amixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre all done underan odious guise of philanthropy and with the lowest commercial motives asa reason. It is this sordid cause and the unctious hypocrisy which makesthis crime unparalleled in its horror.
The witnesses of the crime are of all nations, and there is no possibilityof error concerning facts. There are British consuls like Casement,Thesiger, Mitchell and Armstrong, all writing in their official capacitywith every detail of fact and date. There are Frenchmen like Pierre Milleand Félicien Challaye, both of whom have written books upon the subject.There are missionaries of many races—Harris, Weeks and Stannard(British); Morrison, Clarke and Shepherd (American); Sjoblom (Swedish) andFather Vermeersch, the Jesuit. There is the eloquent action of the ItalianGovernment, who refused to allow Italian officers to be employed anylonger in such hangman’s work, and there is the report of the Belgiancommission, the evidence before which was suppressed because it was toodreadful for publication; finally, there is the incorruptible evidence ofthe kodak. Any American citizen who will glance at Mark Twain’s “KingLeopold’s Soliloquy” will see some samples of that. A perusal of all ofthese sources of information will show that there is not a grotesque,obscene or ferocious torture which human ingenuity could invent which hasnot been used against these harmless and helpless people.
This would, to my mind, warrant our intervention in any case.[Pg iv] Turkey hasseveral times been interfered with simply on the general ground ofhumanity. There is in this instance a very special reason why America andEngland should not stand by and see these people done to death. They are,in a sense, their wards. America was the first to give officialrecognition to King Leopold’s enterprise in 1884, and so has theresponsibility of having actually put him into that position which he hasso dreadfully abused. She has been the indirect and innocent cause of thewhole tragedy. Surely some reparation is due. On the other hand Englandhas, with the other Europe