All who know anything of the land systems of primitive peoples will see that they contravened the customs which the savage holds dear.  The plots actually held and tilled by the natives are infinitesimally small when compared with the vast tracts over which their tribes claim hunting, pasturage, and other rights.  The land system of the savage is everywhere communal.  Individual ownership in the European sense is a comparatively late development.  The Congolese authorities must have known this; for nearly all troubles with native races have arisen from the profound differences in the ideas of the European and the savage on the subject of land-holding.

Yet, in face of the experience of former times, the Congo State put forward a claim which has led, or will lead, to the confiscation of all tribal or communal land-rights in that huge area.  Such confiscation may, perhaps, be defended in the case of the United States, where the new-comers enormously outnumbered the Red Indians, and tilled land that previously lay waste.  It is indefensible in the tropics, where the white settlers will always remain the units as compared with the millions whom they elevate or exploit[472].  The savage holds strongly to certain rudimentary ideas of justice, especially to the right, which he and his tribe have always claimed and exercised, of using the tribal land for the primary needs of life.  When he is denied the right of hunting, cutting timber, or pasturage, he feels “cribbed, cabined, and confined.”  This, doubtless, is the chief source of the quarrels between the new State and its proteges, also of the depression of spirits which Mr. Casement found so prevalent.  The best French authorities on colonial development now admit that it is madness to interfere with the native land tenures in tropical Africa.

The method used in the enlisting of men for public works and for the army has also caused many troubles.  This question is admittedly one of great difficulty.  Hard work must be done, and, in the tropics, the white man can only direct it.  Besides, where life is fairly easy, men will not readily come forward to labour.  Either the inducement offered must be adequate, or some form of compulsory enlistment must be adopted.  The Belgian officials, in the plentiful lack of funds that has always clogged their State, have tried compulsion, generally through the native chiefs.  These are induced, by the offer of cotton cloth or bright-coloured handkerchiefs, to supply men from the tribe.  If the labourers are not forthcoming, the chief is punished, his village being sometimes burned.  By means, then, of gaudy handkerchiefs, or firebrands, the labourers are obtained.  They figure as “apprentices,” under the law of November 8, 1888, which accorded “special protection to the blacks.”

[Footnote 472:  The number of whites in Congoland is about 1700, of whom 1060 are Belgians; the blacks number about 29,000,000, according to Stanley; the Belgian Governor-General, Wahis, thinks this below the truth.  See Wauters, L’Etat independant du Congo, pp. 261, 432.]