Mr. J. R. Gubbins, Director of the Peruvian Amazon Company
from 1906 to 1908, and Chairman from 1910 until the company went into liquidation, was examined on Wednesday and Thursday before the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the responsibility of the British directors of the company for the Putumayo atrocities. Mr. Gubbins, who said he bad spent thirty-eight years in Peru, while not accepting Sir Roger Casement's report entirely, did not dissent from the general picture it gave. He denied that the directors had fought the Foreign Office and refused an inquiry or investigation. Their line was that the only effective hope of redress was through the Central Govern- ment of Peru, that the charges of murder should be inquired inio by them, and that it was their duty to punish the offenders. He did not remember seeing in the company's local accounts an item of 210 for a four days' hunt for fugitive Indians, and observed, in reply to the observation that British law would not sanction it even though in a foreign territory, that the directors were working under Peruvian law. In the course of the evidence given on Thursday Mr. Gubbins stated that Arana had absolute control, the British directors being practically figureheads.
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