The Crime of the Congo by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I have not in this statement touched upon the financial side of the Congo / State. A huge scandal lies there -- so huge that the limits of it have not / yet been defined. I will not go into that morass. If Belgians wish to be / hoodwinked in the matter, and to have their good name compromised in / finance as well as in morality, it is they who in the end will suffer. One / may merely indicate the main points, that during the independent life of / the Congo State all accounts have been kept secret, that no budgets of the / last year but only estimates of the coming one have ever been published, / that the State has made huge gains, in spite of which it has borrowed / money, and that the great sums resulting have been laid out in / speculations in China and elsewhere, that sums amounting in the aggregate / to at least L7,000,000 of money have been traced to the King, and that / this money has been spent partly in buildings in Belgium, partly in land / in the same country, partly in building on the Riviera, partly in the / corruption of public men, and of the European and American Press (our own / being not entirely untarnished, I fear), and, finally, in the expenses of / such a private life as has made King Leopold's name notorious throughout / Europe. Of the guilty companies the poorest seem to pay fifty and the / richest seven hundred per cent. per annum. There I will leave this / unsavoury side of the matter. It is to humanity that I appeal, and that is / concerned with higher things.

Before ending my task, however, I would give a short account of the / evolution of the political situation as it affected, first, Great Britain / and the Congo State; secondly, Great Britain and Belgium. In each case / Great Britain was, indeed, the spokesman of the civilized world.