Abstract of the Report of the Commission of Enquiry Into the Administration of the Congo Free State: With Notes and an Introduction (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Abstract of the Report of the Commission of Enquiry Into the Administration of the Congo Free State: With Notes and an Introduction

I. The Commissioners have obviously carried out their task with care, and during the ten weeks which they spent on the Congo they gave themselves to the difficult work in hand with the utmost devotion. It is remarkable how much they accomplished in so short a time. They have mastered the conditions of native life in the areas which they visited, though they may be too sanguine in their conclusions in re gard to the districts which they have not seen. It may be that their language is not always sufficiently strong - that they have spoken of grave abuses when they meant most diabolical cruelties - and that they have sometimes ex pressed, without sufficient reason, the pious hope that things are not quite so bad now as they have been. The gravest criticism, however, to which the report has given rise is, that the details of the evidence have not been appended, for general statements cannot possibly convey to the mind the impression which the facts themselves produce. It must not be taken for granted that the Commissioners are themselves responsible for the suppression of the evidence.

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