[To MR EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR:1 Sirs,—May I add
a little story to the "drama, of confession" told by your correspondent "R." (Spectator, November 13th) ? Some fifteen years ago a certain Deputy-Commissioner had charge of a district on the North-Eastern frontier of India. In his district, a highly civilised one as such districts go, there were all the paraphernalia of police, and Penal Code, and lawyers. Beyond it was a no-man's-land, a tract inhabited by wild head-hunting tribes, who lived in a state of internecine warfare, and over these people our Deputy-Commissioner exercised a somewhat vague "political" authority. One day a gang of these people ambushed half. a-dozen enemies, can-led off their heads, and left the decapitated bodies to the fowls of the air. Unluckily for them, they did not notice in the thick jungle in which they effected their coup that they were just on the wrong side of the border. What on their side would have been legitimate war- fare was cowardly and treacherous murder on British territory. So the Deputy-Commissioner was ordered to bring the offenders to book. He went with a small armed force to the sinning village, and ordered the headmen to give up the murderers, adding significantly that he and his men would stay in the village till the surrender was made. There was the usual haggling and delay, and no doubt some pressure was brought to bear. Finally, four miserable weedy youths were produced, and these quite proudly claimed to have waylaid and decapitated a party of the enemy with which they were obviously quite incapable of dealing. Their fellow-villagers, not without some humorous appreciation of the situation, sturdily supported their story. There was no one to contra- dict it, for the only persons who might have done so had literally, lost their heads.
Here was a confession supported by evidence and by what I believe the lawyers call a corpus delicti. Yet no experienced person could doubt that the scapegoats surrendered by the amused villagers were innocent in fact, however much they might be guilty in ambition. For the capture of heads, in that part of the world, is the quickest way to a maiden's affections, and, in fact, the only respectable road to matrimony.
I will not finish my true tale by telling what the Deputy Commissioner did to those self-convicted murderers. Every trade has its secrets. He did not, however, hang them. In this case there was no intervention of the much-blamed police. The law demanded victims, and victims were supplied. " Nous avions menage de lui faire faire une bonne confession !" What else was there to do, unless one ignored the law and the boundary posts P But that Deputy-Commissioner has often wondered since whether he acted rightly.—I am, Sir, &c., J. D. A.
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