Nathan Alexander has observed that Morel's impassioned campaigning stemmed largely from his belief that the Congo Free State was a corrupt example of modern standards of European colonialism. Alexander noted that as a humanitarian with paternalistic views towards Africans, Model favoured indirect rule and the promotion of free trade and commerce for gradually developing Africa into a continent with the same level of development towards Europe. Morel believed the ’Leopoldian system’ was the catalyst for the scale of atrocities in the Congo, and that the state‘s creation of what was in effect a slave-labour force to fuel Leopold’s monopolistic enterprise demonstrated he had broken the articles of the Berlin Act in every regard. In Morel’s own words, the “King's native policy was the inevitable sequel to his commercial policy“. This unified the humanitarians with commercial and political elites in the common cause of reform.