"When, in February 1885, at the Berlin Conference that not a single Congolese attended, the fourteen participating powers, headed by Great Britain, the United States, France, and Germany, graciously ceded to Leopold II--at whose side Henry Morton Stanley was a constant presence--the million square miles of the Congo and its twenty million inhabitants so that he "would open the territory to commerce, abolish slavery, and civilize and Christianize the pagans,"