When the subtle consul thinks silence will be more effective than words, he employs it. Here he leaves it to be recognized that a thousand killings and mutilations a month is a large output for so small a region as the Mambogo River concession, silently indicating the dimensions of it by accompanying his report with a map of the prodigious Congo State, in which there is not room for so small an object as that river. That silence is intended to say, “If it is a thousand a month in this little corner, imagine the output of the whole vast State!” A gentleman would not descend to these furtivenesses. [Illustration: FOOT AND HAND OF CHILD DISMEMBERED BY SOLDIERS, BROUGHT TO MISSIONARIES BY DAZED FATHER. FROM PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT BARINGA, CONGO STATE, MAY 15, 1904. SEE MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS, JANUARY, 1905 “Imagine the output of the whole vast State!”—_Page 18._ ] Now as to the mutilations. You can’t head off a Congo critic and make him stay headed-off; he dodges, and straightway comes back at you from another direction. They are full of slippery arts. When the mutilations (severing hands, unsexing men, etc.) began to stir Europe, we hit upon the idea of excusing them with a retort which we judged would knock them dizzy on that subject for good and all, and leave them nothing more to say; to wit, we boldly laid the custom on the natives, and said we did not invent it, but only followed it. Did it knock them dizzy? did it shut their mouths? Not for an hour. They dodged, and came straight back at us with the remark that “if a Christian king can perceive a saving moral difference between inventing bloody barbarities, and _imitating them from savages_, for charity’s sake let him get what comfort he can out of his confession!” It is most amazing, the way that that consul acts—that spy, that busy-body. [_Takes up pamphlet “Treatment of Women and Children in the Congo State; what Mr. Casement Saw in 1903”_] _Hardly two years ago!_ _Intruding_ that date upon the public was a piece of cold malice. It was intended to weaken the force of my press syndicate’s assurances to the public that my severities in the Congo _ceased_, and ceased utterly, _years and years ago_. This man is fond of trifles—revels in them, gloats over them, pets them, fondles them, sets them all down. One doesn’t need to drowse through his monotonous report to see that; the mere subheadings of its chapters prove it. [_Reads_] “Two hundred and forty persons, _men, women and children_, compelled to supply government with _one ton_ of carefully prepared foodstuffs _per week_, receiving in remuneration, all told, the princely sum of 15s. 10d!” Very well, it was liberal. It was not much short of a penny a week for each nigger. It suits this consul to belittle it, yet he knows very well that I could have had both the food and the labor for nothing. I can prove it by a thousand instances. [_Reads_]