OCR Text |
Show NO ENTANGLING ALLIANCES. Great Britain has intimated that tho support of this country would be acceptable ac-ceptable In her protest against the cruelties and rapacities perpetrated In the Kongo Free State by the authority of that avariclous old roue, the King of Belgium. It seems a hard caso that we are unable to extend that support, for the faot that civilization and Christianity Christian-ity are being disgraced by the outrageous outrage-ous pillaging and slaughter of natives appears ccrtdlnly to be true. But under un-der our traditional policy of avoldanco of entangling alliances and complications complica-tions with foreign powers, no doubt Secretary Hay Is right In declining to Interfere. Yet there might be something some-thing said or done from our own standpoint, stand-point, inasmuch as this country was tho first of the nations to recognize the international African Association as a sovereign power. This association was afterward, at a conference in Berlin, attended by fourteen powers, including the United States, merged Into the Kongo Free State, though this country expressly declined to be responsible for, the futuxo of that State. Still, on humanitarian hu-manitarian grounds, we might well formulate for-mulate an independent objection to the brutal ravages that arc depopulating that region and reducing a rich land to a hopeless wilderness. |