I of course witnessed no Belgian atrocities at Boma, and it would surely have been a matter of amazement if I had. But still more amazing is the report of certain casual travellers, who had no more opportunity than myself for direct observation, to the effect that there are no atrocities, because they did not witness them. If I had gone to King Leopold’s representative, the governor at Boma, and had told him, in the course of a neighbourly conversation, that I had heard about the Belgian atrocities and had come to witness them that I might exploit them to the horrified nations, and then had asked him to accommodate my purpose by having at least a few atrocities performed in the front yard, including the different varieties of murder, mutilation and torture, it would have been parallel to the methods pursued by certain persons, who actually heralded their arrival and their purpose all along the way, notified Leopold’s agents in particular, perfected their investigations by asking questions of these same agents, and then proclaimed that these cruel reports of atrocities and atrocities represent an unparalleled conspiracy on the part of several hundred men from half a score of nations, who having lived many long years in the Congo have become prejudiced and have accumulated a number of personal grievances against the Belgian officials and are now seeking by the invention of innumerable charges of unheard-of crimes to ruin the reputation of Good King Leopold and deprive him of his rights. The administration of the Congo government is not a melodrama; it is anything but that. Leopold’s atrocities are not placed on free exhibition at Boma for the entertainment of travellers, some of whom are immorally unconcerned in regard to the real suffering of the natives. They are performed only for money and plenty of it. The motive is money and the argument is that they pay. Though I was only a traveller, and not a resident, in the Congo Free State, yet I can speak with some authority on the question of the Belgian régime; for I lived several years in the adjoining territory, the Congo Français, a large part of which was farmed out in concessions to Belgian companies, whose policy and methods were precisely those of the Congo Free State. Such a system, however, is contrary to the spirit of the French, and one cannot think that it will long endure.