Congo: Savagery

It began as just another week of heat and torpor in the Congo. Sweating natives, as usual, loaded palm kernels into boats at upcountry river stations, while understaffed United Nations teams passed out powdered milk to babies and urged the villagers to expand their scraggly little farm plots. In Leopoldville, things seemed normal enough: harassed Premier Cyrille Adoula, struggling to hold his limping central government together, still pondered ways to whip Katanga's Secessionist Moise Tshombe into line, and noted nervously that Eastern Province's Antoine Gizenga talked of breaking away again to...