[Throws down pamphlets which be has been reading, Excitedly combs his flowing spread of whiskers with big fingers; pounds the table with big fists; lets off brisk volleys of unsanctified language at brief intervals:, repentantly drooping his bead, between volleys, and kissing the Louis XI crucifix hanging from his neck, accompanying the kisses with mumbled apologies; presently rises, flushed and perspiring, and walks the floor, gesticulating] – – !! – – !! 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, and what do I get for it? Nothing. Not a compliment. These generosities are studiedly 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, what of it? They are slanders all the same, when uttered against a king.
Miscreants – they are telling everything! Oh, everything: how I went pilgriming 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 gentle 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 whisky 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 officials – “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 itself 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 blabbing Belgian-born traitor officials! – 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 under foot; 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, mutilation – 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.
Blest, crowned, beatified with this 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 aeons 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 a 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’s 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 earls and bishops and John Morleys 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 Englishman!
And were the fault-finders frank with my private character? They could not be more so if I were a plebeian, a peasant, a medianic. 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. They remark that “if the innocent blood shed in the Congo State by King Leopold were put in buckets and the buckets placed side by side, the line would stretch 2,000 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’s Fair and all; if they should all clap their bony hands at once, the grisly crash would be heard at a distance of –” 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 me sky, and the shadow it casts makes 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’s comfort in that. [Reads with mocking smile, the President ‘s Order of Recognition of April 22, 1884]
. . . the government of the United States announces its sympathy with and approval of the humane 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 Rev. 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 perpetrated 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 1884 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 conscienceless 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 up 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! Puts 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 eighty-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 Rev. A. E. Scrivener, a British missionary”]
. . . . Soon we began talking. and without any 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 demur; 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 sites of former big chiefs’ settlements were pointed out. A careful estimate made the population of, say, seven years ago, to be 2,000 people in and about the post, within a radius of, say, a quarter of a mile. All told, they would not muster 200 now, and there is 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 palaver 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 hundred[s] 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 paid 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 that all went to prove the state of terrorism that exists and the virtual slavery in which the people are held. |
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Devuelvo al público aquello que me ha prestado. De él he tomado la materia de esta obra. Es de justicia, pues, que ahora, una vez terminada, con toda la consideración por la verdad de que soy capaz y el respeto que me merece, se la restituya. Puede contemplar con calma este su retrato copiado del natural, y si en él reconociere algunas de las imperfecciones que señalo, corregirse de ellas. Éste es el único fin que debe proponerse el escritor, y así también el logro que menos debe esperar; pero, ya que los hombres no dejan de solazarse en el vicio, preciso es no cejar de reprochárselo. Tal vez fueran peores si les faltaran críticos o censores; por esta razón se predica y escribe. Ni el orador ni el escritor son capaces de vencer la satisfacción del aplauso; mas deberían sentir vergüenza si con sus sermones y escritos no hubieran perseguido otra cosa que elogios. Aparte de que la más segura aprobación y la menos equívoca es el cambio de costumbres y la enmienda de aquellos que les leen o escuchan. No se debe hablar, no se debe escribir más que para instruir; si por ventura acontece que, además, se deleita, no deberá lamentarse de ello si sirve para atraer y hacer que las verdades, aceptadas, instruyan. Cuando en un libro se deslizan ciertas reflexiones que ni tienen el fuego ni la pujanza ni la viveza de otras, por más que se antojen escritas para la amenidad y remansar el espíritu, y de esta suerte prepararlo para lo que siguiere, y por otra parte, no sean sensibles, familiares, instructivos, acomodados a la gente del común, entonces puede el lector condenarlos y el autor proscribirlos de sus páginas: tal es la regla. Hay otra, sin embargo, la cual tengo interés que se siga, pues se trata de la conveniencia de no perder de vista el título de la obra y pensar de continuo, a lo largo de su lectura, que lo que yo describo son los caracteres o las costumbres de este siglo: aunque a menudo retrato los de la corte de Francia y de los habitantes de mi nación, no cabe ceñirlos a una sola corte ni a un único país, sin que por ello mi libro sienta mengua de su amplitud y utilidad, pues en él he pretendido pintar a los hombres en general, así como las razones que justifican el orden de los capítulos y la sucesión de las reflexiones que los componen. Después de esta prudente y no menos necesaria advertencia, y cuyas consecuencias son fácilmente previsibles, creo poder protestar contra todo enfado, contra toda queja, toda maliciosa interpretación, contra cualquier capciosa aplicación y toda censura; contra los chanceros de poca ley y los lectores malevolentes. Hay que saber leer, y después callar, si no se atina a referirse con propiedad a lo que se ha leído estrictamente. Y no basta con quererlo, sino que es menester querer hacerlo. Sin estas condiciones —que un autor estricto y escrupuloso debe reclamar de ciertos espíritus, como única recompensa de su trabajo—, dudo que deba continuar escribiendo, antes bien que anteponga su propia satisfacción a la utilidad de los demás y al celo por la verdad. He de confesar, por otra parte, que me ha embargado la duda, desde el año de 1690 y antes de la quinta edición, entre la impaciencia de redondear mi libro y darle mejor disposición con nuevos caracteres, y el temor de que algunos exclamen: «¿Es que no terminaremos nunca con esos Caracteres ni habremos de leer otra cosa?» Algunas personas juiciosas me decían: «El asunto es de consistencia, provechoso, agradable e inagotable. Vivid mucho tiempo, y versad sobre él mientras viváis. ¿En qué mejor podríais emplearos? No habrá año que las locuras de los hombres os procuren un nuevo libro». Otras, con no menos razón, me han hecho temer los caprichos de la multitud y la ligereza del público -del cual, pese a todo, tengo motivos para estar contento-, arguyendo con pertinacia que, como quiera que desde hace unos treinta años sólo se lee por leer, es preciso dar a los hombres, a fin de entretenerles, nuevos capítulos y hasta un título nuevo; que esa indolencia había llenado las librerías y poblado el mundo, en todo ese tiempo, de libros insulsos y aburridos, sin reglas ni estilo, contrarios a las costumbres y al decoro, escritos con precipitación y leídos, también aprisa, sólo por ser novedad; y que si yo no atinaba más que a aumentar un libro razonable, lo mejor que podía hacer era descansar. He acordado tomar entonces algo de dichas opiniones opuestas y guardado entrambas un equilibrio que las aproxime: no fingí añadir nuevas observaciones a las que ya habían engrosado en más del doble la primera edición de mi obra. Empero, con el propósito de que el público no se viera obligado a recorrer lo antiguo para llegar a lo nuevo, y así sus ojos alcanzasen aquello que tenían deseo de leer, he curado indicar ese segundo incremento con una señal particular, de suerte que creí no resultaría inútil distinguir el primer aumento con otro signo más sencillo, que sirviera para mostrarle el avance de mis Caracteres y ayudar de este modo a espigar la lectura que le plazca. Y para que nadie anduviere temeroso de que este ejercicio vaya a tender al infinito, he añadido a todas estas precisiones una sincera promesa de no arriesgar nada más en este género. Pues si alguno me acusare de faltar a mi palabra, insertando en las tres ediciones que han seguido un grande número de nuevas observaciones, verá que, al confundirlas con las antiguas, no he pensado tanto en hacerle leer algo nuevo, cuanto en dejar a la posteridad una obra de costumbres más completa, más acabada, más regular. Por lo demás, no son máximas lo que he querido escribir; vienen a ser reglas morales, para las que, debo confesar, no tengo autoridad ni talento bastante para erigirme en legislador. Tampoco desatiendo que habría atentado contra el uso de las máximas, que deben ser breves y concisas, a guisa de oráculos. Algunas son de esta naturaleza, pero otras tienen mayor extensión. Uno piensa las cosas de manera diferente, y también de manera diferente las explica: mediante una sentencia, un razonamiento, una metáfora o cualquier otra figura; un paralelo, una simple comparación, una descripción entera, un solo rasgo, una pintura; de ahí lo extenso o lo breve de mis reflexiones. Aquellos que escriben máximas quieren que los demás las asientan; yo, por el contrario, consiento que digan de mí que alguna vez no fui un fino observador, pero ese alguien debe saber observar más agudamente que yo. |
