The Congo Reforms (13 april 1910)

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

The Congo Reforms is a letter written by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in the Daily Express No. 3122 on 13 april 1910.


The Congo Reforms

Daily Express No. 3122 (13 april 1910)

Sir, — Your readers must bear in mind that so long as in any report of Congo reforms, such a sentence occurs as "Adult natives will be compelled to work," there can be no true reform whatever. That is the touchstone as to whether reform is bogus or genuine.

If the man is compelled to work, then the prison, the chicotte, the hostage-house, and all the old abuses come inevitably as part of the machinery of compulsion. The windows of the Congo are now dressed for European inspection, but the back shop was described only last week by one who has had great experience of it, as being worse than he had ever known it.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Crowborough, Sussex