I fulfil a final duty in making myself the mouthpiece of the gratitude that the Conference owes those of its members who have discharged the difficult labours of the Commission, notably the Baron de Courcel and the Baron Lambermont. I also thank the delegates for the valuable assistance they have afforded us, and I associate with the expression of that gratitude the Secretaries of the Conference, who by the precision of their work have facilitated our task. Gentlemen, the work of the Conference will be, like every human undertaking, susceptible of improvement and perfection; but it will mark, I hope, a step forward in the development of international relations, and will form a new link of solidarity between civilised nations. [Sidenote: Sir Charles Dilke Astray.] The brilliant, cordial, and edifying final session of the Berlin Conference presaged no such campaign of calumny as that which has proceeded since Sir Charles Dilke, on gross misinformation purveyed by interested persons, and on what appears to have been his wilful misreading of a book entitled _The Fall of the Congo Arabs_, attacked the Congo State by moving in the British Parliament on April 2, 1897, a measure calling for a new Conference to consider charges which no one had presented, but which, for some inscrutable reason, this eminent parliamentarian seemed anxious to dignify by sensational legislation. When the Berlin Conference concluded its labours, it was with manifest sympathy for the King of the Belgians and his voluntary pledge to an African task which practically all the participating Powers regarded as impossible of achievement, such were its glaring difficulties. Now, after twenty years of Belgian sacrifice, there are those who, jealous of the achievements in a task they were so anxious to avoid in 1885, must destroy where they cannot reap in 1905. To men of purpose and brave outlook, this is merely one of the many incivilities of civilisation. Success begets envy in one’s neighbour; failure often confirms him in his secret contempt.