kept from the knowledge of the British public. In 1908 an American traveller passed through the maritime regions of the French Congo and thus recorded her impressions:
Who is to blame for the annihilating conditions existing to-day in French Congo? Commerce is dead, towns once prosperous and plentiful are deserted and falling into decay, and whole tribes are being needlessly and ignominiously crushed for the aggrandisement of the few. … Towns are sacked and plundered; fathers, brothers, husbands, are put in foul-smelling prisons until those at home can get together the taxes necessary to secure their relief. France has granted exclusive rights to concessionaires who claim everything upon, above, in or about any hectare of land described in their grant. … To be hurled from active, prosperous freedom into inactive and enforced poverty would demoralise even a civilised country; how farther reaching, then, is it with the savage? … As the French say, the entire country is bouleversé, i.e., overthrown, in confusion, subverted, agitated, unsettled. And the French are right in so naming the result of their own misdeeds. All is desolation, demoralisation, annihilation. Native customs are violated; native rights ignored. … Great plains which not long since swarmed with the life and bustle of passing trade caravans are now silent and deserted. Ant-hills and arid grass and wind-swept paths are the only signs of life upon them.
The following are typical illustrations of the character of the reports received by the French Colonial Ministry from its inspectors between 1906 and 1909, and which successive French Ministers suppressed. They were published in full from time to time by the French League for the Defence of the Congo natives, but were suppressed by the entire French Press, with the exception of the Courrier Européen, the Humanité, and one or two other papers. An agent of the N'Kemi Keni Company is denounced for having allowed a native named Oio to be tied up by one of the armed ruffians in the Company's employ, so tightly that his hands sloughed away at the wrists. A judicial investigation ensued (one of the very few judicial decisions in the French Congo which have ever seen the light since 1899, for, like all other reports, they have been officially suppressed). The examining magistrate absolved the incriminated agent of direct responsibility, but fined him fifteen francs! The mental condition of the French Congo magistracy may be estimated by the following extract from this magistrate's report: "Oio presented himself in good health, minus
