Now it is a matter of history, quite outside the realms of argument, that punishment by bodily mutilation has been practised by natives of Central Africa from the earliest times of which we have any record. Here is a sentence taken from a book entitled _The First Christian Mission on the Congo_, published before the Congo State came into existence, written by Mrs. H. Grattan Guinness: From half a million to a million of lives are annually sacrificed in the slave trade, and as many more in all probability in intertribal wars and contests. Physically a land of sunshine and beauty and redundant life, it is spiritually a land of darkness, _deformity_, and death. This evidence, _given by the wife of Dr. Grattan Guinness in 1882_, is a strange foundation for Dr. Guinness to erect his 1904 statement upon. Let us hear what other people have to say upon this subject. COMMANDER LOVETT CAMERON (_English_) In Ouroua only two punishments are known, mutilation and the penalty of death. Both are much in use, but _especially the former_. For the least offence the chief and his lieutenants cut off a finger, a lip, a portion of the ear or of the nose. For more serious offences, they cut off the hands, etc. DR. WILLIAM JUNKER (_German_) Mazindeh wished to punish the man according to A-Zandeh law _by cutting off a finger_.... I saw a man who had been punished by the loss of _his finger and of another important member_. A Malingdeh told me he knew about twenty men who had been similarly punished. SIR JOHN KIRK (_English_) If slavery were abolished, all criminals would probably be put to death or _mutilated_. CARDINAL LAVIGERIE (_Belgian_) King Wemba, near Tanganyika, finding the wooden drumsticks too harsh for his ears, cut off the hands of his slaves so that they might beat the drums with their stumps. MR. J. A. MALONEY (_English_) The offender was lucky if he escaped with instant death, for Msiri delighted in diabolical refinements of cruelty. Quite minor crimes were punished by _the lopping off of a hand_ or the docking of an ear. In fact Msiri practised mutilation almost as extensively as Kasongo. MR. FREDERICK STANLEY ARNOT (_English_) Mr. Giraud noticed some men whose noses or ears had been cut off. Mkewe’s six drummers had a thumb on each hand _but no fingers_.... Mr. Giraud says that everywhere the Bemba people practise these barbarous customs. First the fingers and toes are cut off. [Illustration: The Station at Bumba.] These quotations will surely prove that bodily mutilation is essentially an African barbarity that prevailed more or less among all the tribes of the Congo region, but is now almost entirely suppressed, thanks to Belgian civilisation. The charge brought by Dr. Grattan Guinness against that civilisation, that it introduced and practises this certificate of death, is a libel so monstrous that it carries with it its own refutation. MR. GRENFELL