For the last two years Chester A. Beatty has been visiting Leopold at Belgium, and has obtained the two concessions, and Leopold has obtained, or hopes he has obtained, the influence of many American shareholders.  The fact that the people of the United States possessed no “vested interest” in the Congo was the important fact that placed any action on our part in behalf of that distressed country above suspicion.  If we acted, we did so because the United States, as one of the signatory Powers of the Berlin Act, had promised to protect the natives of the Congo; and we could truly claim that we acted only in the name of humanity.  Leopold has now robbed us of that claim.  He hopes that the enormous power wielded by the Americans with whom he is associated, will prevent any action against him in this country.

But the deal has already been made public, and the motives of those who now oppose improvement of conditions in the Congo, and who support Leopold, will be at once suspected.

To me the most interesting thing about the tract of land ceded to Mr. Ryan, apart from the number of hippopotamuses I saw on it, was that the people living along the Congo say that it is of no value.  They told me that two years ago, after working it for some time, Leopold abandoned it as unprofitable, and they added that, when Leopold cannot whip rubber out of the forest, it is hard to believe that it can be obtained there legitimately by any one else.  On the bank I saw the “factories” to which the unprofitable rubber had been carried from the interior.  They had formerly belonged to Leopold, now they are the property of Mr. Ryan and of the American Congo Company.  In only two years they already are in ruins, and the jungle has engulfed them.

I was on the land owned by the company a dozen times or more, but I did not go into the interior.  Even had I done so, I am not an expert on rubber, and would have understood nothing of Para trees, Lagos silk, and liane.  I am speaking not of my own knowledge, only of what was told me by people who live on the spot.  I found that this particular concession was well known, because, unlike the land given to the Forestry and Mines Company, it is not an inaccessible tract, but is situated only eight miles from Leopoldville.  In our language, that is about as far as is the Battery to 160th Street.  Leopoldville is the chief place on the Congo River, and every one there who spoke to me of the concession knew where it was situated, and repeated that it had been given up by Leopold as unprofitable, and that he had unloaded it on Mr. Ryan.  They seem to think it very clever of the King to have got rid of it to the American millionaire.  To one knowing Mr. Ryan only from what he reads of him in the public press, he does not seem to be the sort of man to whom Leopold could sell a worthless rubber plantation.  However, it is a matter which concerns only Mr. Ryan and those who may think of purchasing shares in the company.  The Guggenheims, who are to operate this rubber, say that Leopold did not know how to get out the full value of the land, and that they, by using the machinery they will install, will be able to make a profit, where Leopold, using only native labor, suffered a loss.