Apropos of the Congo

THE CONGO IS ON THE ORDER OF THE DAY. EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT. There are those who want it and those who don’t. I am among the latter.

Those who want it have some good arguments: fatherland, brave Belgium, colonial power, expansion, outlets for trade, civilization … I know we need outlets where we can send our spoiled preserves, our cardboard shoes, and the scoundrels we don’t know what to do with at home and to whom we confide the great mission of civilizing the blacks. I also know there are peoples guilty of being Negro and who must be inoculated with our genius, syphilis, and religion. I know that gunning down people who don’t resemble us is a beautiful and noble task, but I’m a sentimental type and none of this really convinces me.

Those who don’t want it talk about millions: it’ll cost us this much or this much or that much—zero, zero, comma, zero—and the millions line up in horrific columns. This is what we’d have to pay for the Congo. But since I’m not a millionaire this leaves me cold. Even more because my small nest egg will disappear anyway, either for this or for the fortifications of Antwerp, the basilica of Koekelberg, or some other equally useful institution.

When people talk to me about the Congo, I think about something else. Even if we aren’t talking about the proceeding of doubtful honesty that consists in annexing a country and a people over whom we have no right other than that of the stronger; even if aren’t talking about the mentality of inferior or so-called inferior peoples the way you and I do of herds of lambs we shear before we eat, thinking about what is called colonization, I see aspects of this that lead me to reflect …

There are the peaceful villages decimated by forced labor, our murderous industry suddenly imported and imposed, military expeditions devastating the countryside, spreading terror, hatred, hunger …

There is a country flooded with blood by soldiers whose animal instincts are unleashed, with villages set on flame, men executed en masse, women raped … What irony: other people’s fatherlands are set to the torch and the sword by our patriots.

And that’s what will happen to those we civilize. And to us?

It will be our sons, our brothers, and our fathers setting off for there attracted by misleading appearances and returning to us—when they return—burned by fever, degraded, polluted, rotted. It will be the little soldiers we’ll send to put down future revolts and who will certainly never return. And even though I don’t feel sorry for those who will go there and die working at a task fit for murderers, I think of the void that will be left here by the departed sons and fiancés, intoxicated by big words.

And for we rebels who don’t want to don military garb, it will be the penal colony, the famous ones in Africa, and the disciplinary companies where they kill and torture.

Our bourgeoisie will grow fat on all this monetized blood and sweat. The money picked up over there in the mud, in the bloody shade of the forests, will serve to enthralled us here and pay the executioners.

And for the unscrupulous, the scoundrels of all kinds, the good-for-nothings for whom the social order isn’t able to provide work, it will be an ocean of troubled water where they can fish at their ease.

This is why all the statistics, all the millions they’ll throw at us, the reasoning of the deputies of every party, don’t convince me of the benefits of colonization.

And those who will speak of the noblest reason, of the duty of the civilized, I’ll say that they’d do better to first civilize the native savages of the villages of our bloody Flanders or some corner of Marolles, and that it would seem more useful to me to use my millions to lessen the exploitation of whites!

(Le Communiste, May 1, 1908)