ALBERT I., KING OF THE BELGIANS, WHO, LAST MONTH, SUCCEEDED HIS UNCLE, THE LATE KING LEOPOLD II. to Queen Victoria (even though the good Queen seldom replied) had at times considerable influence upon the foreign policies of the British Government. During the reign of Leopold Belgium prospered commercially and had no serious foreign problems, aside, of course, always, from the great question of the Congo. The general tranquillity and prosperity of his reign, however, was disturbed by many labor and socialistic agitations. These difficulties were, to a certain extent, met by a gradual broadening of the suffrage, until, in 1893, the franchise right was conferred on all male citizens above the age of twentyfive. The great factor of internal politics was the strife between the clerical and liberal parties. As a whole, however, the country prospered, and with its international position guaranteed by the great powers of Europe it has played a prominent part as a promoter of many international agreements on such matters as neutrality in war, arbitration, hygiene, geographical science, and the postal QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS world was the founding and exploitation of the Congo Free State. In the long story of outrage, cruelty, and misery in this central African empire, and the equally long controversy with its bitter criticism and indignant defense, the following facts are undisputed history: In 1876 Leopold succeeded in inducing the congress of geographers and explorers at Brussels to establish the African International Association to utilize African discoveries. The fact which will make King Leopold's The next year the explorer, Henry M. Stanreign a marked one in the history of the ley, was sent to Africa with the financial service. backing of King Leopold. Stanley made an impressive report on the riches and vastness of the Congo basin and the perfect machinery which in a short time had been built up by the Belgian King to exploit the region. In 1884 there was called at Brussels a national conference under the title the Committee for the Study of the Upper Congo. In 1885, in accordance with the work of this committee, there was passed by the international conference at Berlin, in which fourteen powers were represented, the Great Charter of the Congo Free State, which, later, developed into the National Association of the Congo. According to the Great Charter there was to be free trade in the Congo, but no monopoly, no slavery, and no cannibalism. King Leopold was chosen sovereign. In a decree which announced this to the world it was declared that the relations between Belgium and the Congo were, and LEOPOLD II., THE LATE KING OF THE BELGIANS (April 9, 1835-December 17, 1909) were always to remain, "purely personal." In his will made four years after the Berlin conference King Leopold bequeathed his Congo rights of sovereignty to the Belgian nation, and in the following year (1890), in return for the guarantee of a loan for developing the so-called Free State, the Belgian government received from the King the right to annex the Congo after a period of ten years. Owing to some opposition from England this option was not taken up in 1900, but, finally, in 1908, Belgium formally annexed the territory, the Parliament at Brussels compelling Leopold to surrender all of what was known as "the Domain of the Crown." In the developing of this region King Leopold had spent many millions of francs, some from his own private purse, but the larger portion in two loans authorized by the Belgian Parliament aggregating almost fifty millions of dollars. For a decade or more the civilized world has been receiving tales of the most horrible cruelty and misrule from the Congo. Bloodcurdling stories of outrages upon the natives, and of the horrors of slavery imposed upon them in developing the resources of that vast territory of more than 900,000 square miles (approximately one-third the area of the lightly than was the custom among EuroUnited States), have been circulated upon pean monarchs of his time. There was the authority of missionaries and travelers scarcely a year of his reign in which his King Leopold's family was a most unfortunate one. His sister Carlotta was married to the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. A few months after the execution of her husband she became violently insane, and it was whispered that King Leopold had appropriated her estates and fortune. His only son, Leopold Ferdinand, government. In reply to all these charges the King and his defenders claimed malicious falsification, and offered the general explanation that it would be impossible to apply the rules of civilized society to the natives in the wilds of Africa. Making due allowance for exaggeration and despite great differences of opinion, it is generally agreed that there still remains a vast deal of corruption and suffering in Africa, for which the late King Leopold was responsible, and that he made a vast fortune out of his rich African concessions. Of course the Congo was Leopold's chief business enterprise. He had many others. He had large personal interests in railroad enterprises in his own country and in China, in Japanese promotion schemes, and in nitrate fields in South America. Indeed, it may be said that he was one of the most astute business men that ever sat upon a throne. Throughout his entire career, the late King Leopold was known as a man of unsavory personal reputation, and a ruler whose family misfortunes almost equaled those of the ill-fated Hapsburg Emperor of Austria. While his early married life seemed to be happy, it soon became evident that King Leopold held his marriage vows even more His eldest daughter, Princess Louise, deserted her husband, the nephew of Queen Victoria, to elope with an Austrian army officer. His second daughter, Princess Stephanie, made a widow in 1881 by the suicide of her husband, the Archduke Rudolph of Austria, later married a Hungarian count, a match to which her father declined to be reconciled. His youngest daughter, Princess Clementine, remains unmarried. The Queen, Marie Henriette, died in 1902, of a broken heart, it is believed, over her husband's neglect. An excellent characterization of the late monarch is given in a character sketch in the New York Sun, from which we quote the following apt paragraph: too tender hearted to sign the death warrant of A good king and a bad husband and father; a criminal, yet the heartless exploiter of the Congo natives; perhaps the shrewdest business man living, although the most profligate prince promoter of industry and commerce, art conin Europe; up-to-date statesman, enlightened noisseur, benefactor of his people, domestic tyrant, spendthrift, gambler, embezzler, hero of and obscure of several great capitals figured, a hundred scandals in which women notorious Leopold II., King of the Belgians, a man of contradictions, offered perhaps the most curious study in history to the analyst of character. In his public capacity he showed many qualities of greatness. In his private life he was vicious, reckless and cynical to the point of indecency. Age brought no change in him. The closing years of his life, well past threescore and ten, public-spirited acts and by at least one of his were marked by some of his wisest and most most flagrant excursions in the realm of gallantry. WATER-POWER SITES ON THE PUBLIC DOMAIN BY THE HON. RICHARD A. BALLINGER tinuous flow throughout the year in wet and NUMEROUS factors of conservation are involved in the development of water power in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West, which embrace substantially all the remaining public lands outside of Alaska. The essential factors are, (1) a saving of the natural fuels, coal, oil, gas, and for- trical transmission. Also thousands of moests; (2) a lessened expense in the irrigation of agricultural lands and in securing power for mine development; (3) the restraint of flood waters and the augmenting of waters for navigation. The long-distance transmission of hydroelectric power will always, generally speaking, be most practicable and economical in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast States since the cost of coal and other fuels for power generation will have locally prohibitive values, due chiefly to cost of labor in mining and the long hauls in transportation. This, however, is not true in all localities, as at present the low selling price of oil in Los Angeles and San Francisco removes much of the incentive for hydro-electric development in these cities. It needs no argument to show that every horsepower developed by hydro-electric transmission conserves just that quantity of nature's fuel necessary to produce the same horsepower, not to mention the fuel used in its transportation; therefore the gain represents the saving of an exhaustible natural resource and the utilization of what would otherwise run to waste. tors are thus capable of use in pumping water to the surface for irrigation to an extent not feasible if fuel were necessary to create power or normal stream flow must be depended on. Experience shows that the impounding or storage of the waters of mountain streams in the flood season necessarily retards the abnormal seasonal run off and equalizes the flow of the natural streams and rivers, preventing inundation of lands in one season of the year and augmenting river flow in other seasons of low waters, thereby increasing the facilities for navigation. Those whose environment leads them to think only of densely populated regions, busy with all manner of industrial pursuits, little realize the absurdity of the development of water power on streams in a wilderness or many hundreds of miles from large centers. of population and industrial activity, except for purposes of irrigation, mining, or railway operation, as, for instance, there can be no possible incentive in a commercial sense in the present development of hydro-electric power for other purposes on the Shoshone River in Wyoming, or the Flathead River in The natural gift of power in the waters Montana, and the same is true of many of the can never be of full service until developed great power possibilities of a large number and stored, in countries where there are of other Rocky Mountain streams. well-defined wet and dry seasons, and such cities lie within reach of these streams development is dependent mainly upon pri- through power transmission. In a word, vate enterprise. Water-power development there are not to-day settlements capable of in probably the major portion of the West is economically utilizing many such power posimpracticable from a commercial point of sibilities unless coupled with the uses above view unless coupled with the irrigation of mentioned. This, however, is no reason for arid lands, the extraction and reduction of the power sites being permitted to pass beminerals, or railway operation. The force yond public control, as the future may reof these statements is better understood when quire the development of all their potentialit is known that the maintenance of a con- ities. No |