The dead, we no longer count them. The villages, horrible charnel-houses, disappear in this yawning gulf. A thousand diseases follow in our footsteps… And this martyrdom continues… We white men must shut our eyes not to see the hideous dead, the dying who curse us, and the wounded who implore, the weeping women and the starving children. We must stop our ears not to hear the lamentations, the cries, the maledictions which rise from every foot of land, from every tuft of grass.
••••••
De Brazza bad been furnished upon his departure with secret instructions from the French Government, in which he had been urged to make it clear in his report that the system established in the French Congo since 1899 was not identical with that of the Congo Free State. These instructions, which were subsequently published with the authority of the Comtesse de Brazza, are extraordinarily interesting. They show on the one hand, that French governing circles were fully aware as far back as 1905 of the character of the Belgian "System" (described in the "instructions" as "proceedings of methodical tyranny") which had been so calamitously imitated in the French Congo and of its necessary consequences; and their anxiety, on the other hand, to be able to dissociate their country from the charge of pursuing an identical policy in the French Congo. They ran, in part, as follows:
1. That the system of land concessions which she (France) has created (mis en vigueur) reposes upon principles differing from those inaugurated in the Congo State; that she has never instituted a "domain" analogous to that of the "domaine privé" of the King, thus identifying in the direct interest of a commercial exploitation conducted by herself, the principles of sovereignty, demesniality (Crown lands), and private property.
2. That she maintains an army (force publique) solely for the purpose of upholding general security, without ever compelling the natives, by various measures of coercion, to enter the service of a commercial, agricultural, or industrial concern.
3. That she has taken all necessary precautions to allow of third parties being able to trade freely in the French portion of the conventional basin of the Congo, even in conceded territory.
4. That she has scrupulously reserved all the customary rights and all the food crops of the natives (cultures vivrières), even in conceded territory.
5. That she has always been careful to punish acts of violence committed upon the natives when brought to the knowledge of the authorities; that these acts have, moreover, always been limited to individuals, without it being possible to attribute
