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Like some prodigious bended bow the River Congo curves away from the Moon Mountains and flows 3,000 miles across Africa to the Atlantic. Of all rivers whatsoever, only the Amazon, in Brazil, is greater. Every time a second ticks, prodigal Mother Congo empties into the ocean more than a million cubic feet of water. Stopping last week beside a river of such magnitude, Their Belgian Majesties must have given many a thought to the cold, relentless businessman who first exploited good Mother Congo and her Blackamoors as his hirelings, slaves and strumpets. The strumpeteer was King Leopold II of the Belgians (1835-1909), detested uncle and immediate predecessor of beloved King Albert I. Uncle Leopold went wickedly a-travel-ing when he was Crown Prince, to India, to China, to Japan and home around Africa, with a momentous visit to Mother Congo. Memories of Congoland germinated in the shrewd brain of Uncle Leopold and flowered when he became King. The master move of his long and wily reign was to call the International Conference of 1876 at Brussels, where he piously proposed to the Great Powers a program for "civilizing" the Congo and suppressing slavery there. The expense of these good works was to be generously defrayed from His Majesty's privy purse. Not until a generation later did the Powers fully realize that they had allowed Uncle Leopold to seize, under humanitarian pretexts, one of the richest colonial empires on the Globe. Astounding is the story of how British-born & U. S.-bred Henry Morton Stanley, greatest African explorer, sought to convince U. S. and British statesmen of the boundless worth of the Congo; of how he was feted as an explorer but had his practical suggestions ignored, and finally joined reluctant forces with Belgium's Leopold. Belated exposures of "Belgian Atrocities" in the Congo—true tales of Blackamoors whose hands were hacked off when they failed to bring in sufficient rubber or ivory—were utilized by the Powers to compel Uncle Leopold to grant them more favorable trading privileges in his Congo. Thereafter, as before, the fabulous wealth wrung from strumpeteered Mother Congo was lavished by Wicked Uncle Leopold chiefly upon public works* in Belgium ; secondarily upon his many and riotously extravagant mistresses; and lastly upon his Queen, Marie Henriette, "The Rose of Brabant," a great-niece of Marie Antoinette, a great-granddaughter of Maria Theresa, and "lovelier than either" —as gallant King Leopold often told her. . . . Uncle Leopold visited the Congo as Monarch about 1860, receiving abject homage. Nephew Albert toured the Congo in 1909 as Crown Prince. This, the present state visit of King Albert, is a reap-parition royale after 19 years. Significant was the cordial approval of Queen Elizabeth which was manifested, last week, by inhabitants of Ruanda, Africa, a onetime German colony now held by Belgium under a League of Nations mandate. Ruandans approve the present Queen of the Belgians because they know her to be 100% German, know that her father was Duke Charles of Bavaria (Germany), know that she married King Albert in Munich, Germany. For her sake generous Ruandans overlook her husband's anti-German sentiments. . . .