The key to the difference between their methods and ours lies in the fundamentally distinct objects for which we acquire territory. We acquire territory for generations yet unborn, trusting thereby to find an outlet for surplus population in the congested days to come. It is to the future benefit of the race that we look. We expect no immediate return. It is as with a man who starts farming, and with an eye to the future buys the call on the surrounding country. But with the Belgians it is quite different. They expect immediate returns. They say this country is no good, we can get no ivory or rubber, why do we stay here? And they are advising the evacuation of the Nile stations. It is as with a man who leases a vast tract of country and cuts down all the timber for sale, hoping thereby to obtain a large and immediate return on his money, ignoring the future, or believing his lease to be merely temporary. The greatest difficulty with which the Belgians have to contend--one that paralyzes all their efforts, however genuine--is the character of the tribes from whom they recruit their soldiers. I myself, having had experience of Manyema, can fully appreciate their difficulties in this respect. The majority of the tribes drawn upon are cannibals, and they are so low in the scale of civilization, and in many cases so vice-sodden from their association with Arabs of the Tippoo Tib fraternity, that it is impossible to make any impression upon them. Most natives can be touched in their pride or sense of the responsibility of a soldier’s position. But these brutes are mere brutes, feeling the whip if it is laid on sufficiently thoroughly, and nothing else. As I pointed out to Inspector Chaltin, if the Congo State would draw its soldiers mainly from the northern tribes, such as the Makrakas and Niam-Niams, they would obtain the raw material that could be trained to a sense of responsibility and self-esteem. The ruffians that they employ at present cannot be trusted for one hour away from the superintendence of a white man. Cases of outrages committed by the mail-carriers on even the natives on the British side of the river are of daily occurrence. I can bear witness to the distress that they caused Inspector Chaltin, but they are inevitable with the existing state of the Free State forces. Another potent factor is the inadequacy of the commissariat arrangements; the Belgians are at present endeavouring to maintain about one thousand five hundred men in a country destitute of supplies. They have to make expeditions ten days’ march into the interior to obtain any supplies at all. And I am convinced by the frequency of the shooting affrays that their methods of obtaining these supplies are not, in our ideas, legitimate. Knowing, too, the difficulty that we have in buying provisions for one hundred men only on the British side, and having seen the trade goods taken out by the Belgians, I am sure that "commandeering" is largely resorted to.