Content note: Caricature of Morel and Twain, and a burning village. This object is shown as it was published. Why
An Answer to Mark Twain (Brussels pamphlet cover, 1907)
An anonymous Brussels pamphlet cover answers Mark Twain's "King Leopold's Soliloquy" and E. D. Morel's campaign by drawing both men with tongues spelling out LIES and SLANDER, meeting the atrocity evidence with a counter-accusation rather than a rebuttal of the facts.
An anonymous pamphlet published in Brussels in 1907, issued in the context of the Congo reform campaign and aimed at a domestic Belgian audience. The cover answers Mark Twain's "King Leopold's Soliloquy" and the campaign of E. D. Morel by drawing both men with tongues spelling out LIES and SLANDER, and it quotes a statement attributed to the Congo Reform Association's Secretary. Name-calling is used for the labels, Ad hominem because the men are attacked in place of their claims, and Card stacking because the atrocity evidence is met by a counter-accusation instead of an answer to the facts.
Propaganda techniques used in this pamphlet
- Date
- 1907
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Anonymous, Brussels
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- Belgium
- Medium
- Books and pamphlets
- Issuer type
- Individual
- Regime
- Kingdom of Belgium
- Leader
- Leopold II
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Deceive or deny
- Themes
- Empire and colonialism, Media and information
- Event
- Congo Reform Campaign
- Source
- Impersonated Source falsified: fake personas, outlets or documents
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 27, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (anonymous work published 1907)
Front cover of An Answer to Mark Twain, anonymous, Brussels, 1907; scan via American Museum of Natural History digital library
Text on the object
Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked
An Answer to Mark Twain THE PAST THE PRESENT BELGIAN CONGO "The absolute and immediate necessities are the disruption of the Congo Free State and its partition among the Powers." (The Congo Reform Association's Secretary.) Price : 1/ Net
Two black ribbon-like tongues wind down from the caricatured heads (of Twain and, per the caption, a Congo Reform campaigner) to the 'PRESENT' scene; the caption describes them as spelling out words such as LIES and SLANDER, but the interwoven, curling lettering is too stylized to transcribe with confidence here, so it is left out rather than guessed. A handwritten date 'July 1907' at the top margin is an archival/owner annotation, not part of the printed cover, and is excluded.
