establishing judicially what was always clear enough: the complicity between the State and the criminal. Caudron was a man against whom 120 cold-blooded murders were charged. He was, in fact, a zealous and efficient agent of the Anversoise Society, that same company whose red-edged securities rose to such a height when Manager Lothaire taught the natives what a minister in the Belgian House described as the Christian law of work. He did his best for the company, and he did his best for himself, for he had a three per cent. commission upon the rubber. Why he should be chosen among all his fellow-murderers is hard to explain, but it was so, and he found himself at Boma with a sentence of twenty years. On appealing, this was reduced to fifteen years, which experience has shown to mean in practice two or three. The interesting point of his trial, however, is that his appeal, and the consequent decrease of sentence which justified that appeal, were based upon the claim that the Government was cognisant of the murderous raids, and that the Government soldiers were used to effect them. The points brought out by the trial were:
- The existence of a system of organized oppression, plunder, and massacre, in order to increase the output of india-rubber for the benefit of a “company,” which is only a covering name for the Government itself.
- That the local authorities of the Government are cognisant, and participatory in this system.
- That local officials of the Government engage in these rubber raids, and that Government troops are regularly employed there on.
- That the Judicature is powerless to place the real responsibility on the proper shoulders.
- That, consequently, these atrocities will continue until the system itself is extirpated.