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SUB-TITLE (VIII): POLICIES SEEKING JUSTIFICATION IN THE NECESSITIES FOR INDEPENDENCE AND EFFICIENCY OF PUBLIC OFFICERS IN GENERAL

(A. One Phase of Irresponsible Power.)

1111. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. A Journey from Cornhill to Cairo. (c. XV, Nelson ed., p. 153.) . . . A short time since, one of his Highness's grandsons, whom I shall call Bluebeard Pasha (lest a revelation of the name of the said Pasha might interrupt our good relations with his country) — one of the young Pashas being rather backward in his education, and anxious to learn mathematics, and the elegant deportment of civilized life, sent to England for a tutor. I have heard he was a Cambridge man, and had learned both algebra and politeness under the Reverend Doctor Whizzle of College. One day when this Mr. MacWhirter, B.A., was walking in Shoubra gardens with his Highness the young Bluebeard Pasha, inducting him into the usages of polished society, and favouring him with reminiscences of Trumpington, there came up a poor fellah, who flung himself at the feet of young Bluebeard, and calling for justice in a loud and pathetic voice, and holding out a petition, besought his Highness to cast a gracious eye upon the same, and see that his slave had justice done him. Bluebeard Pasha was so deeply engaged and interested by his respected tutor's conversation, that he told the poor fellah to go to the deuce, and resumed the discourse which his ill-timed outcry for justice had interrupted. But the unlucky wight of a fellah was pushed by his evil destiny, and thought he would make yet another application. So he took a short cut down one of the garden lanes, and as the Prince and the Reverend Mr. MacWhirter, his tutor, came along, once more engaged in pleasant disquisition, behold the fellah was once more in their way, kneeling at the august Bluebeard's feet, yelling out for justice as before, and thrusting his petition into the royal face. When the Prince's conversation was thus interrupted a second time, his royal patience and clemency were at an end. "Man," said he, "once before I bade thee not to pester me with thy clamour, and lo! you have disobeyed me: take the consequences of disobedience to a Prince, and thy blood be upon thy own head." So saying, he drew out a pistol and blew out the brains of that fellah, so that he never bawled out for justice any more.

The Reverend Mr. MacWhirter was astonished at this sudden mode of proceeding. "Gracious Prince," said he, "we do not shoot an undergraduate at Cambridge even for walking over a college grass-plot. Let me suggest to your Royal Highness that this method of ridding yourself of a poor devil's importunities is such as we should consider abrupt and almost cruel in Europe. Let me beg you to moderate your royal impetuosity for the future, and, as your Highness's tutor, entreat you to be a little less prodigal of your powder and shot." "O Mollah!" said his Highness, here interrupting his governor's affectionate appeal, "you are good to talk about Trumpington and the Pons Asinorum; but if you interfere with the course of justice in any way, or prevent me from shooting any dog of an Arab who snarls at my heels, I have another pistol, and, by the beard of the Prophet! a bullet for you too." So saying he pulled out the weapon, with such a terrific and significant glance at the Reverend Mr. MacWhirter, that that gentleman wished himself back in his Combination Room again, and is by this time, let us hope, safely housed there.

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1112. EDMUND D. MOREL. King Leopold's Rule in Africa. (1905. pp. 21, 44, 33, 119, 128, 186, 416, 433, 438, 442, 456.) . . . It is my purpose in this book to describe . the exploitation of Tropical Africa through the methods introduced, legalized, and upheld by King Leopold, the sole arbiter of and legislator for the destinies of the Congo Natives. . . . In the most able and learned treatise on the constitution of the "Independent State of the Congo," it is stated that... "in the Congo the Sovereign, being the titulary of the sovereignty absolute ('toute entière') is the direct fountain-head of the legislative, executive, and judicial power. He can, if he chooses, exercise these powers directly and personally. He can, if he prefers it, delegate the execution of the same to certain officials or bodies of officials. That delegation has no other fountain-head but his will. He settles as he pleases the nature and the limits of the delegation to which he consents. He can, at any moment, cancel or modify them. His will cannot meet with any judicial obstacle." . . . This is a regime of absolute and unlimited despotism. . . . The difficulty facing those who are contending in the cause of the Congo natives — in which cause is bound up the honour of the white races in tropical Africa is that of making people not entirely familiar with the subject understand the inevitableness of the misrule reported from the Congo territories so long as the legislative and economic basis of the administration remains what it is to-day.

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This appalling Congo business is replete with so many elements of horror that the reader may well be spared anything beyond the enumeration of facts, which in themselves are sufficiently repulsive without any attempt at "piling on the agony." But the policy of appropriation of the native's land and the products thereof is the key to the whole Congo problem. . . . The systematic hand-cutting, and worse forms of mutilation, which for over a decade have been practised all over Congo territories mutilation of dead and living, must be assigned to the direct instigation of State officials and agents of the Trusts appointed to terrorize the rubber districts. The soldiers, let loose throughout the country with the object of reducing, by perpetual and repeated slaughter, the people of a specific district to abject and absolute submission, have been required to bring back tangible proof that proper punishment was inflicted, and the hands of slain, or partly slain, people were the readiest and most acceptable form of proof. One of the Trust's agents, Lacroix by name, sent a confession and explanation to the "Nieuwe Gazet," of Antwerp, in which paper it appeared on April 10, 1900. It then became apparent why the natives of the Mongalla district had shown themselves so refractory to civilization. Lacroix asserted, amongst other things, that in November, 1899, he was instructed by his chief to massacre all the natives of a certain village. Twenty-two women and two children were killed, and two other women who were fleeing in a canoe were drowned. The massacre had been ordered because the village had been slow in bringing in rubber. On another occasion, Lacroix's chief had put sixty women "in chains," nearly all of whom had been allowed to die of starvation, because the village to which it belonged, Mummumbula, had not brought in enough rubber. . .

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A few extracts will give the nature of the revelations made to the Consul by these hunted beings. . . . "We were sent out to get rubber, and when we came back with little rubber, we were shot." Q. "Who shot you?" A.-"The white men . . . sent their soldiers out to kill us." Q.-"How do you know it was the white man who sent the soldiers? It might be only these savage soldiers themselves." A.-"No, No! Sometimes we brought rubber into the white man's stations. When it was not enough rubber, the white man

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would put some of us in lines, one behind the other, and would shoot through all our bodies. Sometimes he would shoot us like that with his own hand; sometimes his soldiers would do it." Q. - "You mean to say you were killed in the Government posts themselves by the Government white men themselves, or under their eyes?" A. — (emphatically) — "We were killed in the stations of the white men themselves. We were killed by the white man himself. We were shot before his eyes." . . . Here are some specimens of the stories I have heard from some of the Basengele and Bakutu. . . . "The chief ——— told me the following as one of the reasons why he ran away. He went with a lot of his people to the post of -. They were short by several baskets. The white man took him gave him to a soldier to tie to a tree, and then himself shot him. The others (some twenty-nine) were standing shivering with fear, when the white man told the soldiers to fire on them. This they did, and killed twenty-seven, only two poor wretches managing to get away." "The power of an armed soldier amongst these enslaved people is absolutely paramount. By chief or child, every command, wish, or whim of the soldier must be obeyed or gratified. At his command, with rifle ready, a man will eat his own dung, outrage his own sister, give to his persecutor the wife he loves most of all - say or do anything indeed, to save his life. The woes and sorrows of the race whom King Leopold has enslaved have not decreased; for his commissaires, officers, and agents have introduced and maintain a system of deviltry hitherto undreamed of by his victims." . . .

The state of affairs is the natural outcome of the system. The Congo officials want rubber. The State says that the collection of rubber is a collection of taxes; we are told that "the taxes are fixed between the officials and the native chiefs." This is a wicked and barefaced untruth; the chiefs are never consulted, they are ordered to bring in so much rubber every fortnight, and sentries with their retinue are quartered upon them and force the rubber out of the people. . . . It is a marvel to us that the people can submit to such treatment. They are getting desperate, and one wonders what the end of it all will be. They seem so hopeless and helpless, and there is no remedy provided for them by the State in fact, it is the State that is oppressing them. . . . Perhaps you will say, "Why did you not speak out and report all this?" My first experience in Katanga was Captain X―'s threat to imprison my colleague for denouncing these doings. . . . He would not believe his soldiers would be guilty of such misconduct, or, "Well, they must have carte blanche, or the Natives would not respect the State." Sometimes "might is right," would be the curt reply. What could one say? There were no judges or courts of appeal, and the officer, often at his wits' end, would say, "What can I do? I must get ivory. I have no law or regulation book. I am the only law and only god in Katanga."

(B. Another Phase of Irresponsible Power.)

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1113. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Representative Men: Napoleon, the Man of the World. (Riverside ed., vol. II, p. 186.) ... Napoleon is strong in the right manner, namely, by insight. He never blundered into victory, but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field. His principal means are in himself. He asks counsel of no other. In 1796, he writes to the Directory: "I have conducted the campaign without consulting any one. I should have done no good, if I had been under the necessity of conforming to the notions of another person. I have gained some advantages over superior forces,

and when totally destitute of everything, because, in the persuasion that your confidence was reposed in me, my actions were as prompt as my thoughts." History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they know not what they should do. The weavers strike for bread; and the king and his ministers, not knowing what to do, meet them with bayonets. But Napoleon understood his business. Here was a man who, in each moment and emergency, knew what to do next. It is an immense comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens. Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, and, after each action, wait for an impulse from abroad. Napoleon had been the first man of the world, if his ends had been purely public. . . . We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in less degrees. . . . The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches, - that there is always room for it. . . . Here was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of the powers of intellect without conscience. Never was such a leader so endowed, and so weaponed; never leader found such aids and followers. And what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men, of this demoralized Europe? It came to no result. All passed away, like the smoke of his artillery, and left no trace. He left France smaller, poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole contest for freedom was to be begun again.

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1114. ALBERT EDWARDS. Our Canal. (1911. The Outlook, vol. XCVIII, p. 391.) . . . Colonel George Washington Goethals, the Chief Engineer and Chairman of the Commission, is now at the head of this great National Job of ours. A visitor to the Isthmus who has not included "the Colonel" among the sights has missed more than half that there is to see down here. . . . This new Commission, installed April 1, 1907, did not run very smoothly at first. It requires some time for a seven-headed executive to shake down to an equilibrium of power. Several of the commissioners seemed to think that most, if not all, of the responsibility rested on their own shoulders. They felt much as the other two members of the French First Consulate did before they became entirely acquainted with the character of Napoleon. The struggle was tense while it lasted. But now that the dust has settled, almost every one on the Zone agrees that the best man won. In January, 1908, Colonel Goethals persuaded the Administration at Washington to issue an Executive order which (whatever it may seem to say) gave him absolute control. The other six Commissioners are subordinates, most of them cordial, all of them docile.

Certainly modern times have never seen one-man rule pushed to such an extreme. The Colonel, with his immense capacity for work and the restricted area of his domain about four hundred square miles succeeds in the rôle of autocrat, after a fashion which must cause no little envy to Nicholas II. How free-born American citizens accept this condition of things is at first a matter of wonder. One is used to thinking that if we were deprived of jury trials and the right to vote, we would begin to shoot. But down here the only right which has not been alienated is the right to get out. There are two or three steamers home a week. Then of course every one looks on this condition as temporary and necessitated by the unusual circumstances of the Job.

But with all these things which make for submission, such an absolutism would not be endured except for the almost universal feeling that Colonel Goethals is just. He has made enemies, of course, and here and there I have heard men declaiming that they had not been treated fairly, and that they were "going back to the States to live under the Constitution." But the men down here who take an intense interest in the work, whose imaginations have been caught by the immensity of the Job the real men would protest in a body at any talk

of removing Goethals. . . .

The most remarkable part of Colonel Goethals' routine is his Sunday Court of Low, Middle, and High Justice. Even as the Caliphs of Bagdad sat in the city gate to hear the plaints of their people, so, in his very modern settingprincipally maps and blue prints - the Colonel holds session every Sunday morning. . . . I had the good fortune to be admitted one Sunday morning to the audience chamber. The first callers were a Negro couple from Jamaica. They had a difference of opinion as to the ownership of thirty-five dollars which the wife had earned by washing. Colonel Goethals listened gravely until the fact was established that she had earned it, then ordered the man to return it. He started to protest something about a husband's property rights under the English law. "All right," the Colonel said, decisively. "Say the word, and I'll deport you. You can get all the English law you want in Jamaica." The husband decided to pay and stay. . . . A man came in who had just been thrown out of service for brutality to the men under him. This action was the result of an investigation before a special committee. The man sought reinstatement. The Colonel read over the papers in the case, and when he spoke his language was vigorous: "If you have any new evidence, I will instruct the committee to reopen your case. But as long as this report stands against you, you will get no mercy from this office. If the men had broken your head with a crowbar, I would have stood for them. We don't need slave-drivers on this job." Then a committee from the Machinist's Union wanted an interpretation on some new shop rules. A nurse wanted a longer vacation than the regulations allow. A man and his wife were dissatisfied with their quarters. . . . Then a man came in to see if he could get some informal inside information on a contract which is soon to be let; his exit was hurried. An American Negro introduced some humor; he was convinced that his services were of more value than his foreman felt they were. The Colonel preferred to accept the foreman's judgment in the matter. The dissatisfied one pompously announced that he was the best blacksmith's helper on the Isthmus and that he intended to appeal from this decision. The Colonel's eyes twinkled. "To whom are you going to appeal?" he asked. For the fact is that the verdicts rendered in these summary Sunday sessions will not be revised before the Day of Judgment.

(C. Some Discussions.)

1115. CHARLES, Baron DE MONTESQUIEU. The Spirit of the Laws. (1748. Book XI, c. III, Appleton ed., vol. I, p. 131.) . . . Democratic and aristocratic States are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go. Is it not strange (though true) to say that virtue itself has need

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