In the White Book containing the reports
of British vice-consuls on conditions in the Congo from April of
last year to January of this year, Mr. Mitchell tells how the
enslavement of the people still continues, how "they" (the
conscripts, as they are called) "are hunted in the forest by
soldiers, and brought in chained by the neck like criminals." They
then, though conscripted to serve in the army, are set to manual
labor. They are slaves. The difference between the slavery under
Leopold and the slavery under the Arab raiders is that the Arab was
the better and kinder master. He took "prisoners" just as Leopold
seizes "conscripts," but he had too much foresight to destroy whole
villages, to carry off all the black man's live stock, and to uproot
his vegetable gardens. He purposed to return. And he did not wish to
so terrify the blacks that to escape from him they would penetrate
farther into the jungle. His motive was purely selfish, but his
methods, compared with those of Leopold, were almost considerate.
The work the State to-day requires of the blacks is so oppressive
that they have no time, no heart, to labor for themselves.
In every other colony--French, English, German--in the native
villages I saw vegetable gardens, goats, and chickens, large,
comfortable, three-room huts, fences, and, especially in the German
settlement of the Cameroons at Duala, many flower gardens. In Bell
Town at Duala I walked for miles through streets lined with such
huts and gardens, and saw whole families, the very old as well as
the very young, sitting contentedly in the shade of their trees, or
at work in their gardens.
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