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Most of the increase had to be attributed to immigration, for the convict population had only a small natural increase. The nomadic tribes need not be taken into account. The gradual occupation of the land. by immigrants meant, of course, the disappearance of the exile system.

The Congo-A State Monopoly

Whispers of evil conditions in the Congo Independent State began to cause some uneasiness among the civilized nations in 1901. The exploitation of the territory had been made a Government monopoly, and the sovereign (King Leopold of Belgium) and his associates were waxing rich by draining the natural wealth of rubber and ivory. Even back in 1885 the Government had declared that all unoccupied land belonged to the State. If this decree had been followed by satisfactory arrangements for exploitation by private enterprise, the situation would have been well enough; but private enterprise was evidently not desired by the authorities.

The Brussels conference in 1890 rendered the State practically independent of foreign aid by permitting it to tax imports. In the following year the Government ordered the commissioner of the Uelle District to secure for the State all the products of his District. The natives were required to sell their rubber and ivory to the Government. Private traders in whose possession such products should be found were to be treated as holders of stolen goods.

In 1892 the State was divided into three zones. The northerly zone constituted the private domain of the Government; the central zone was left to the Katanga Company, in the products of which the State had a two-thirds share; the southerly zone, though supposedly open to private trading, was virtually kept within Government control, for license fees and heavy tolls tended to discourage private enterprise. Some fourteen Belgian Companies did, however, operate in this zone, and in 1901 they were consolidated, forming the Kassai Company, one-half of the stock of which went to the State. Further to discourage private. commerce, the Government set an almost prohibitive price on land in the comparatively small area in which land could be bought. All this would seem to have been in direct disobedience of the Berlin Congo Act of 1885, which provided for the commercial freedom of all nations in exploiting the Congo products. Figures showed that nearly all the

profits of the country went to the Government and a few companies in which the Government was heavily interested.

The results of this State monopoly were onerous and cruel to the natives. They were required to pay large taxes in products and to bring to the Government depots a fixed quantity of rubber every month. The code stipulated that the natives should be paid liberally. As a matter of fact they were given the equivalent of five cents a pound for rubber which sold in Europe as high as one dollar a pound. More than that, the native soldiers of the State, in carrying out the Government's policy, did not hesitate to terrorize the natives, often turning the villages into black shambles as horrible as those that had existed during the supremacy of the Arab slave trader. During the debate in the Belgian Parliament in 1901 protests were made against "the capitalist colonial policy which entails exploitation, theft and assassination forced labor. . . a forced twelve-year military service. . . this disguised form of slavery." It was charged that the soldiery even brought to their officers the severed hands of natives, as proofs that the rigorous policy of the Government had been carried out. Such practices naturally aroused resentment in civilized countries. As the movement of protest developed the Congo authorities somewhat relaxed their severity.

In 1889 King Leopold made provision that after his death. his sovereignty in the Congo should go to Belgium. In 1890 Belgium agreed to advance about five million dollars to the Congo State without interest, stipulating that after ten years Belgium should have the option of annexing the State. When this period expired Belgium was unready to take over the vast colonial domain, so in 1901 a law was passed by the Belgium Government, extending the option for another ten years.

Spain's Attempt at Rehabilitation

At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the possessions of Spain were vast. Besides the Philippines; Cuba, and Porto Rico; all of South America, except Brazil; all of Central America; Mexico, Florida, and territory in the western part of what is now the United States—as far north as Puget Sound-all belonged to Spain. At the close of the century she had lost these territories through foreign wars, internal revolutions, and peaceful cessions. Yet it is questionable whether the

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Spanish people cared very much. Aside from the hurt to their pride, they felt a degree of relief in the loss, for the colonies had been a constant military and financial drain upon the resources of the mother country and a constant temptation to corruption-a source of weakness rather than of strength.

With the colonies gone Spain could begin to concern herself with domestic development. For the time she sat in silence, like a ruined grandee, but her national energies soon recuperated. The loss of her last colonies proved to be of advantage, by arousing her from the apathy of a nation with a past to the hopefulness of a nation with a future. The administrative defects that had caused her colonial policy to fail had been too deeply established to improve under modern industrial conditions. Her energies had been widely distributed, unwisely used. Admitting her colonial failure, she denied the charge of inherent weakness, and sought national rehabilitation.

With the view that has been taken of the minor colonial work of the Powers, it is time to consider the situation arising out of the Boer War in South Africa. The world at large was still watching the struggle of a handful of devoted burghers against the British armies. The outcome could now be anticipated, but the final stages of the conflict presented many events of interest and many lessons of importance.

CHAPTER IV

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

On October 11, 1900, began the second year of the Boer War. The first year had seen the early successes of the Boers and later the great march of Lord Roberts to Kimberley, Bloemfontein, and Pretoria. The Boer resistance had been metamorphosed from an organized struggle into an application of guerilla tactics. Lord Roberts had not ended the war, but he had hurried it into its last stage-had made the ultimate British triumph inevitable, barring the unlooked-for intervention of Europe.

Let us consider briefly what had occurred. When the war began the British expected an easy campaign. They did not dream that forty or fifty thousand farmers could check the advance of the English armies. But the Boers, after delivering an ultimatum, took the offensive, besieging Mafeking and Kimberley, and driving Sir George White into Ladysmith, Natal. The British campaign really was not started until these three British camps had been beleaguered. But now the forward movement began from both Natal and Cape Colony.

In Natal General Sir Redvers Henry Buller, who was in supreme command of the forces in South Africa, pressed to the relief of Ladysmith. In Cape Colony General Sir William Forbes Gatacre, Lord Paul Sanford Methuen, and other commanders fought their way northward toward Kimberley on the west, and farther to the eastward sought to hasten their invasion of the Orange Free State, which had joined issue with the Transvaal in the struggle against British domination. For a time the British advance was hardly checked. Then, in December, England received bad news. On the ninth Lord Methuen was driven back with heavy loss at Magersfontein. On the tenth General Gatacre was defeated at Stormberg, and retreated. On the fifteenth General Buller suffered a humiliating defeat at Colenso, and lost ten guns and twelve hundred men.