e River Lulongo, Mr.
Casement found that the amount of rubber collected from the natives
generally proved to be in proportion to the number of guns used by the
collecting force[481]. In some few cases natives were shot, even by
white officers, on account of their failure to bring in the due amount
of rubber[482]. A comparatively venial form of punishment was the
capture and detention of wives until their husbands made up the tale. Is
it surprising that thousands of the natives of the north have fled into
French Congoland, itself by no means free from the grip of monopolist
companies, but not terrorised as are most of the tribes of the
"Free State"?

[Footnote 481: _Ibid_. pp. 34, 43, 44, 49, 76, etc.]

[Footnote 482: _Ibid_. p. 70. The effort made by the Chevalier De
Cuvelier to rebut Mr. Casement's charges consists mainly of an
ineffective _tu quoque_. To compare the rubber-tax of the Congo State
with the hut-tax of Sierra Leone begs the whole question. Mr. Casement
proves (p. 27) that the natives do not object to reasonable taxation
which comes regularly. They do object to demands for rubber which are
excessive and often involve great privations. Above all, the punishments
utterly cow them and cause them to flee to the forests.

The efforts of Mr. Macdonnell in _King Leopold II_. (London, 1905) to
refute Mr. Casement also seem to me weak and inconclusive. The reply of
the Congo Free State is printed by Mr. H.W. Wack in the Appendix of his
_Story of the Congo Free State_ (New York, 1905). It convicts Mr.
Casement of inaccuracy on a few details. Despite all that has been
written by various apologists, it may be affirmed that the Congo Free
State has yet made no adequate defence. Possibly it will appear in the
report which, it is hoped, will be published in full by the official
commission of inquiry now sitting.]

Livingstone, in his day, regarded ivory as the chief cause of the
slave-trade in Central and Eastern Africa; but it is questionable
whether even ivory (now a vanishing product) brought more woe to
millions of negroes than the viscous fluid which enables the
pleasure-seekers of Paris, London, and New York to rush luxuriously
through space. The swift Juggernaut of the present age is accountable
for as much misery as ever sugar or ivory was in the old slave days. But
it seems that, so long as the motor-car industry prospers, the dumb woes
of the millions of Africa will count for little in the Courts of Europe.