Chargé Carter to the Secretary of State.
London , February 28, 1908 .
Sir: Sir Edward Grey sent for me this morning to come to the foreign office, as he wished to add a few explanations to you after the debate of this week in the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the subject of the Kongo, and to define his position more clearly.
[Page 544]He said that it was his purpose now to wait and to do nothing more until the proposals of the Belgian Government were laid before the Belgian Parliament, and it entirely depended upon the nature of these proposals what his future action would be. If they were unsatisfactory in their nature and not in accordance with the views of His Majesty’s Government, which were practically the same as ours, he would consider it necessary to make further representations to the Belgian Government on the basis of the reports of our consuls in the Kongo, and this he hoped would be a joint representation of both our Governments, and to that end he would duly inform you of the line he proposed to take, so that the representations in question might be identical.
He said he welcomed the fact of our working together in this matter, and that the amount of good we were able to do in the Kongo was vastly increased and far greater than their isolated action would be—our action being disinterested was open to no suspicion in any quarter—and that he was prepared to go with us as far as we would wish.
I have, etc.,