Royal Insolence.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2664, 20 November 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

Royal Insolence.

KING LEOPOLD TREATS BRITAIN WITH CONTEMPT.

The Congo Exhibition at the Horticultural Hall was on September 23 opened by Mr E. D. Morel, of the Congo Reform Association..

The Rev. J. H. Shakespeare, secretary of the Baptist Union, who presided, said when the door of the Congo was opened there had been let in a hellish crowd—the raider, the land-grabber, tlie murderer, and the taskmaster. •They had thought that it -was to be the beginning'of a golden day for the Congo, and they had dreamed of dusky natives, happy and industrious, with native churches and Sunday-schools, but instead they had found people with hands cut off, disembowelled natives, children tossed upon ©pears, human heads floating down the Congo, and the natives ground down, leaving them with no rights and no possessions. They were hearing of the whistling lash, the torturing chains, and the rattling of guns, and, he asked, was there ever such an awful dispelling of human -dreams .us-This ? He did not believe 'that Bell&ui% was going to be arbitrated or of the Congo; and any bold w«fd& spoken in: Parliament by any Camf%v Minister which were not followed H6y-cbold •. and resolute action - would only deserve; and receive bitter all round. No reform couldbe made until the present system was swept away. Mr Morel said few records were more amazing than the record pursued over six years of the failure of the -Foreign Office to deal with King Leopold and his Ministers. If it were possible to bring home to the people or Great Britain the,, full story of the persistent insolence ■ with which ; the King of Belgians had treated British representations, and the mingled contempt, bad faith, and truculeftce displayed by his Ministers during the past eighteen months, a wave of passionte anger would sweep through the country. Over a year had passed since the Belgian annexation, and the crack of the slave driver’s whip was still heard throughout the land, those that authorised it apparently supposing that the sound was sufficient to bring not . only. the. Congo native but the _British Government to heel. Sir .Edward Grey had pledged himself, 'and had pledged the country in this matter. To say that the Belgian Government upon annexing could not change, and change completely, tlie vile system of slavery obtaining, was a propositipn_unsusttiuable in argument. If the British Government imagined that feeling m tins country was on the wane, they were mistaken. The next three months would afford striking proof to the con-