Belgium stole Congo's gold and left only one lawyer behind
By Vera Kessler ·
A nation of millions was left with an empty treasury and a legal system in foreign hands, while Henry Lodge privately told the State Department that Lumumba knew exactly what he was doing.
The Congolese government could not afford to pay its own officials because the Belgian treasury had been emptied and shipped to Brussels. In a country of millions, the entire legal system rested in foreign hands, leaving only one Congolese lawyer to navigate a landscape of alleged atrocities.
These were the stakes delivered by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba during a meeting on the morning of July 26, 1960. According to a telegram from the U.S. Mission at the United Nations to the Department of State, Lumumba met with Henry Lodge at his hotel at Lumumba's own request. The record of that conversation shows a leader attempting to secure the survival of a new state while fighting a colonial power that had stripped the country bare upon its exit.
Brussels and the Gold
Lumumba told Lodge that his hopes for Belgian cooperation had vanished. He reported that Belgium had left the Congolese "without treasury," noting specifically that the gold had been taken to Brussels just prior to independence. This was not merely a matter of lost wealth; it was a functional collapse. Lumumba stated that the Congolese financial position was "desperate," and there was not even enough money to pay the salaries of government officials.
The deprivation extended to the law. While Belgians complained in the Security Council about atrocities, Lumumba countered that the police and court systems remained entirely in Belgian hands. He noted the absurdity of the situation: there was "only one Congolese lawyer in entire country," yet the Belgians had refused to use the regular legal means they administered to bring formal charges against Congolese for alleged crimes. Lumumba claimed he had ordered strict enforcement of the laws to protect everyone, but those orders were ignored by Belgian officials.
The Detwiler Letter
Despite the friction with Belgium, Lumumba expressed a specific faith in the United States, citing the work of American missionaries. He and a Congolese official named Kanza urged the U.S. to provide an urgent loan to stabilize the critical period, drawing a parallel to the experience of Guinea after the French suddenly ended all assistance.
However, a point of confusion arose regarding a man named Detwiler. Lumumba produced a carbon copy of a letter from July 11 in which Detwiler claimed the State Department was aware of his efforts and had instructed the Embassy in Leopoldville to cooperate with him. Lumumba believed this meant Detwiler had official State Department support.
Lodge did not confirm this. Instead, he offered a vague caution, explaining to Lumumba that "there were all kinds of Americans, good and bad." He suggested that if Lumumba wanted to know the official U.S. attitude toward specific individuals, he should speak with Ambassador Timberlake.
"Not a Bad Man to Deal With"
While the official telegram focused on the diplomatic exchange, a separate memorandum of the conversation—prepared in the Secretary’s office and found in the Herter Papers—records Lodge’s private assessment of the Prime Minister.
Lodge told the Secretary that Lumumba was "certainly not crazy." He analyzed Lumumba's threats to call in the Chinese Communists not as a sign of instability, but as a tactical move to put "the necessary heat on the U.N. to get quick action." Lodge described Lumumba as "a little flighty and erratic in some respects," but concluded that he "knows exactly what he is doing."
In Lodge's estimation, Lumumba was "not a bad man to deal with" and was "interesting and on the whole encouraging." Lodge suggested that if the Secretary gave Lumumba a little time, the relationship could pay "big dividends."
Lodge recommended that the Department make complete arrangements for Lumumba to be received at the highest levels in Washington, with the visit scheduled to begin the following day. The record ends with this invitation, leaving open whether the "big dividends" Lodge anticipated ever materialized before the Prime Minister's death in January 1961.