When Belgium annexed the Congo, she for many months retained the old Congo State flag; she still retains the sobriquet “Bula Matadi”; she retained, and still retains many of the old Congo officials, and finally she retained her interest in rubber. These indications did not escape the notice of the natives who are never slow to detect circumstantial evidence, to say nothing of the enlightening influence of the old witch doctor! The consequence is that the natives distrust the new “Bula Matadi” as much as they did the old one, for to many of them there is no visible change. Thus Belgium finds herself in possession of a colossal colony whose economic resources are exhausted, whose population has been seriously diminished, and whose native tribes everywhere mistrust her administration. The foregoing features present Belgium with a problem not to be solved easily by the most experienced and powerful of colonizing Powers. International obligations, too, cannot but make that task more difficult. The Congo must still work out its salvation under the guardian eye of the fourteen signatories to the Berlin Act. It is still the duty of each of these Powers to “watch over the moral and material welfare of the native tribes.” Not only so, but the Congo colony is further restricted by separate treaties with all the Great Powers, which together provide a shoal of difficulties through which it will not be easy to steer the Administration without disaster. The Congo territories, however, are not without assets, which, in the hands of a bold statesman, are capable of making Central Africa one of the greatest wealth-producing areas of the Continent.