When the first protests were heard in this country, King Leopold committed the grave mistake of not starting an immediate inquiry and punishing the culprits. Distrusting the motives of the leaders of the campaign, and stiffened in his resistance by the tone they chose to adopt towards him, he allowed the opposition to grow to such proportions that the general public, whose indignation was skilfully nurtured by the most exaggerated reports, lost all sense of proportion. They ignored the fact that the king had given sufficient proof of disinterestedness and of devotion to his country not to deserve the abominable accusations launched against him. They forgot the invaluable work accomplished, under the most difficult circumstances, during twenty years of ceaseless labour, the suppression of slavery, of cannibalism, human sacrifices and tribal wars, and remembered only the gross indictments of Mr. Morel and the biased reports of Mr. Roger Casement (1913). [_THE BELGIAN CONGO_] When, the next year, three impartial magistrates sent to the Congo by King Leopold reported that the excesses had been repressed and advised a complete reform of the administration, their testimony was disregarded. When concessions were abolished and drastic measures taken against the criminal agents, the fact remained unnoticed. Even after the Congo had become a Belgian Colony (1908), under the control of the Belgian Parliament, when every scrap of authority had been taken away from the old king with the "Domaine de la Couronne" (whose revenue was to be devoted by its founder to public works in Belgium), when the colony had been entirely reorganized, the campaign of the Congo Reform Association went on relentlessly. Far from silencing his accusers, the king's death, a year later, was made the occasion of a fresh outburst of abuse.