[Footnote 467:  H.R.  Fox-Bourne, Civilisation in Congoland p. 277.]

[Footnote 468:  M. Cattier, op. cit. p. 88.]

Very many Belgians object strongly to the building up of an imperium in imperio in their land; and the wealth which the ivory and rubber of the Congo brings into their midst (not to speak of the stock-jobbing and company-promoting which go on at Brussels and Antwerp), does not blind them to the moral responsibility which the Belgian people has indirectly incurred.  It is true that Belgium has no legal responsibility, but the State which has lent a large sum to the Congo Government, besides providing the great majority of the officials and exploiters of that territory, cannot escape some amount of responsibility.  M. Vandervelde, leader of the Labour Party in Belgium, has boldly and persistently asserted the right of the Belgian people to a share in the control of its eventual inheritance, but hitherto all the efforts of his colleagues have failed before the groups of capitalists who have acquired great monopolist rights in Congoland.

Having now traced the steps by which the Congolese Government reached its present anomalous position, we will proceed to give a short account of its material progress and administration.

No one can deny that much has been done in the way of engineering.  A light railway has been constructed from near Vivi on the Lower Congo to Stanley Pool, another from Boma into the districts north of that important river port.  Others have been planned, or are already being constructed, between Stanley Falls and the northern end of Lake Tanganyika, with a branch to the Albert Nyanza.  Another line will connect the upper part of the River Congo with the westernmost affluent of the River Kasai, thus taking the base of the arc instead of the immense curve of the main stream.  By the year 1903, 480 kilometres of railway were open for traffic, while 1600 more were in course of construction or were being planned.  It seems that the first 400 kilometres, in the hilly region near the seaboard, cost 75,000,000 francs in place of the 25,000,000 francs first estimated[469].  Road-making has also been pushed on in many directions.  A flotilla of steamers plies on the great river and its chief affluents.  In 1885 there were but five; the number now exceeds a hundred.  As many as 1532 kilometres of telegraphs are now open.  The exports advanced from 1,980,441 francs in 1885-86 to 50,488,394 francs in 1901-02, mainly owing to the immense trade in rubber, of which more anon; the imports from 9,175,103 francs in 1893 to 23,102,064 in 19O1-O2[470].

[Footnote 469:  L’Afrique nouvelle, by E. Descamps (1903), chap. xv.  Much of the credit of the early railway-making was due to Colonel Thys.]

[Footnote 470:  Ibid. pp. 589-590.]