Details
THE CONGO
Sir Arthur CONAN DOYLE. Autograph letter signed to an unidentified recipient [evidently an American newspaper editor], Windlesham, 27 August 1909, 7 pages, 8vo; with a printed booklet of speeches given on the dissolution of the Congo Reform Association, 16 June 1913, folio, paper covered boards, inscribed on upper cover to Conan Doyle by E.D. Morel, 'In remembrance of a struggle successfully waged for human liberties and in token of your share therein'; with a related printed book.
Conan Doyle's letter on the Congo speaks with eloquent horror of a 'crime unparalleled in its horror ... a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacres all done under an odious guise of philanthropy', laying emphasis on the credibility of the witnesses to the fact that 'There is not a grotesque, obscene, or ferocious torture which diseased human ingenuity could invent which has not been used against these harmless and helpless people', making the case for international intervention -- specifically by the USA or England -- and attempting to rouse US opinion in favour or this. He ends with the point that the British colony of Nigeria, 'honestly' administered, costs $2 million per year, and that the cost of the much bigger Congo should be $10 million a year: but 'Belgium has not run the Colony. It has simply sacked it, forcing its inhabitants without pay to ship off anything of value to Antwerp'. (2)
Sir Arthur CONAN DOYLE. Autograph letter signed to an unidentified recipient [evidently an American newspaper editor], Windlesham, 27 August 1909, 7 pages, 8vo; with a printed booklet of speeches given on the dissolution of the Congo Reform Association, 16 June 1913, folio, paper covered boards, inscribed on upper cover to Conan Doyle by E.D. Morel, 'In remembrance of a struggle successfully waged for human liberties and in token of your share therein'; with a related printed book.
Conan Doyle's letter on the Congo speaks with eloquent horror of a 'crime unparalleled in its horror ... a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacres all done under an odious guise of philanthropy', laying emphasis on the credibility of the witnesses to the fact that 'There is not a grotesque, obscene, or ferocious torture which diseased human ingenuity could invent which has not been used against these harmless and helpless people', making the case for international intervention -- specifically by the USA or England -- and attempting to rouse US opinion in favour or this. He ends with the point that the British colony of Nigeria, 'honestly' administered, costs $2 million per year, and that the cost of the much bigger Congo should be $10 million a year: but 'Belgium has not run the Colony. It has simply sacked it, forcing its inhabitants without pay to ship off anything of value to Antwerp'. (2)
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