“Well, there were eight of us,” he explained, “called by Bula Matadi. We were bound to go, bound to leave our wives and our children and go down river several days by steamer. When we arrived, the head white official gave us a ‘book’ (contract) for three years, and sent us to cut a road for the ‘Nsinga’ (telegraph wire). We worked for some days, discussing every night how we could escape. One afternoon the white man went into the forest and four of us who were working together ran down to the river where we found an old canoe and one paddle hidden in the grass. We crowded in and pushed off, one guiding the canoe with the single paddle, whilst the others paddled with their hands. We managed to get into a creek hiding ourselves until the next night, when, with the help of some stout sticks for paddles, we began the long journey home, paddling in the night and hiding ourselves and our canoe during the day. We lived on roots and nuts for eight days, and then, when hiding in the forest, we heard some women talking we ‘frightened’ them and they fled, leaving their baskets behind. These contained palm nuts, on which we lived for another six days. On the fifteenth day we reached home again, but our people did not at first recognize us.” “Why?” “Because, white man,” chimed in the old chiefs, “they were so emaciated that the flesh had shrunk from their cheek-bones, their ribs stood out like skeletons, and they could barely speak.” Such is Belgian forced “Contract Labour” in the Congo. What are the boundary lines between legitimate forced labour and that which public opinion, as trustee for native rights, should refuse to tolerate? The broad line of division is unquestionably between genuine works of public utility on the one hand, and profit-bearing works on the other. Road-making, bridge-building, creek-clearing, are all of them works from which the whole community benefits, but the requisition of this labour should not be left to the arbitrary will of a temporary official, but subject to clearly-defined regulations. Any legislation upon forced labour for works undertaken for the public good should only permit the requisition, in lieu of taxation, as is the case in German Togoland, where the native has the alternative of paying a head tax of six marks per annum or giving his labour for twelve days, subject to the labour being required for the improvement of his own district. As in Ceylon and other British colonies, the natives should be allowed to commute the labour by a money payment. To labour exacted under these rigid conditions, there can assuredly be no strong objection, and, generally speaking, the native tribes would loyally co-operate in such proposals. [Sidenote: FORCED LABOUR AND PROFITS]