The British Consul, Mr. Casement, in his report on the administration of the Congo, stated that the majority of the government workmen at Leopoldville were under some form of compulsion, but were, on the whole, well cared for[473].

[Footnote 473:  Parl.  Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1904), p. 27.]

According to a German resident in Congoland, the lot of the apprentices differs little from that of slaves.  Their position, as contrasted with that of their former relation to the chief, is humorously defined by the term liberes[474] The hardships of the labourers on the State railways were such that the British Government refused to allow them to be recruited from Sierra Leone or other British possessions.

[Footnote 474:  A. Boshart, Zehn Jahre Afrikanischen Lebens (1898), quoted by Fox Bourne, op. cit. p. 77.  For further details see the article by Mr. Glave, once an official of the Congo Free State, in the Century Magazine, vol. liii.; also his work, Six Years in the Congo (1892).]

However, now that a British Cabinet has allowed a great colony to make use of indentured yellow labour in its mines, Great Britain cannot, without glaring inconsistency, lodge any protest against the infringement, in Congoland, of the Act of the Berlin Conference in the matter of the treatment of hired labourers.  If the lot of the Congolese apprentices is to be bettered, the initiative must be taken at some capital other than London.

Another subject which nearly concerns the welfare of the Congo State is the recruiting and use of native troops.  These are often raised from the most barbarous tribes of the far interior; their pay is very small; and too often the main inducement to serve under the blue banner with the golden star, is the facility for feasting and plunder at the expense of other natives who have not satisfied the authorities.  As one of them naively said to Mr. Casement, he preferred to be with the hunters rather than with the hunted.

It seems that grave abuses first crept in during the course of the campaign for the extirpation of slavery and slave-raiding in the Stanley Falls region.  The Arab slave-raiders were rich, not only in slaves, but in ivory—­prizes which tempted the cupidity of the native troops, and even, it is said, of their European officers.  In any case, it is certain that the liberating forces, hastily raised and imperfectly controlled, perpetrated shocking outrages on the tribes for whose sake they were waging war.  The late Mr. Glave, in the article in the Century Magazine above referred to, found reason for doubting whether the crusade did not work almost as much harm as the evils it was sent to cure.  His words were these:  “The black soldiers are bent on fighting and raiding; they want no peaceful settlement.  They have good rifles and ammunition, realise their superiority over the natives with their bows and arrows, and they want to shoot and kill and rob.  Black delights to kill black, whether the victim be man, woman, or child, and no matter how defenceless.”  This deep-seated habit of mind is hard to eradicate; and among certain of the less reputable of the Belgian officers it has occasionally been used, in order to terrorise into obedience tribes that kicked against the decrees of the Congo State.