I said the degradations and tortures practised by the men “working on commission” for Leopold are unprintable, but they have been printed, and those who wish to read a calmly compiled, careful, and correct record of their deeds will find it in the “Red Rubber” of Mr. E.R.  Morel.  An even better book by the same authority, on the whole history of the State, is his “King Leopold’s Rule in the Congo.”  Mr. Morel has many enemies.  So, early in the nineteenth century, had the English Abolitionists, Wilberforce and Granville Sharp.  After they were dead they were buried in the Abbey, and their portraits were placed in the National Gallery.  People who wish to assist in freeing twenty millions of human beings should to-day support Mr. Morel.  It will be of more service to the blacks than, after he is dead, burying him in Westminster Abbey.

Mr. Morel, the American and English missionaries, and the English Consul, Roger Casement, and other men, in Belgium, have made a magnificent fight against Leopold; but the Powers to whom they have appealed have been silent.  Taking courage of this silence, Leopold has divided the Congo into several great territories in which the sole right to work rubber is conceded to certain persons.  To those who protested that no one in the Congo “Free” State but the King could trade in rubber, Leopold, as an answer, pointed with pride at the preserves of these foreigners.  And he may well point at them with pride, for in some of those companies he owns a third, and in most of them he holds a half, or a controlling interest.  The directors of the foreign companies are his cronies, members of his royal household, his brokers, bankers.  You have only to read the names published in the lists of the Brussels Stock Exchange to see that these “trading companies,” under different aliases, are Leopold.  Having, then, “conceded” the greater part of the Congo to himself, Leopold set aside the best part of it, so far as rubber is concerned, as a Domaine Prive.  Officially the receipts of this pay for running the government, and for schools, roads and wharfs, for which taxes were levied, but for which, after twenty years, one looks in vain.  Leopold claims that through the Congo he is out of pocket; that this carrying the banner of civilization in Africa does not pay.  Through his press bureaus he tells that his sympathy for his black brother, his desire to see the commerce of the world busy along the Congo, alone prevents him giving up what is for him a losing business.  There are several answers to this.  One is that in the Kasai Company alone Leopold owns 2,010 shares of stock.  Worth originally $50 a share, the value of each share rose to $3,100, making at one time his total shares worth $5,421,000.  In the A.B.I.R.  Concession he owns 1,000 shares, originally worth $100 each, later worth $940.  In the “vintage year” of 1900 each of these shares was worth $5,050, and the 1,000 shares thus rose to the value of $5,050,000.