When I returned to America, I had decided to express no opinion upon the public and political questions of the Congo Free State. Having found conditions there quite different from what I had expected, it was impossible for me to state my actual impressions without danger of antagonizing or offending some whom I valued as friends. Hence, on landing at New York, I refused to say anything upon those matters to several reporters who interviewed me. A little later, the Chicago Tribune asked me to write upon these subjects, urging the importance of the whole matter to our nation, and leaving me entire freedom in viewpoint and mode of treatment. In response to its request, I wrote this book.

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