TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE LUST OF CR17ELTY.
TINLESS the English people have totally lost some of their finest characteristics there will be from one end of the country to the other an outburst of indignation at the hideous cruelties revealed in the official report of the manner in which rubber is collected in the Putumayo district of Peru. This report has been drawn up with obvious marks of care and restraint by Sir Roger Casement. It was presented to Sir Edward Grey in January 1911, and a week ago was published to the world. We are inclined to think that Sir Edward Grey would have done more wisely if he had published the report at once, but doubtless, for what seemed to him good reasons, he proceeded on the assumption that it was possible privately to persuade the Peruvian Government to punish the criminals denounced by Sir Roger Casement and to pre- vent a repetition of these atrocities. It is easy to be wise after the event, but looking back on the eighteen months that have been spent in fruitless correspondence between Sir Edward Grey and the Peruvian Government we cannot help thinking that the members of that government sus- pected that Sir Edward Grey was reluctant to publish the report because a British company was primarily responsible for the loathsome cruelties brought to light. Assuming this to have been their belief, the whole of their conduct is intelligible. However, it is useless to cry over spilt milk. The report is now published, and it remains for the British people to take action upon it.
A summary of the report has already appeared in the daily Press, but we doubt whether the public is yet fully aware of the ghastly nature of the atrocities revealed. The Indian natives who have been the principal sufferers are described by Sir Roger Casement, as by other observers, as a mild, inoffensive people, incapable of acting collectively in their own defence, because they are split up into a multitude of separate tribes. There is no suggestion that the treatment of these Indians was due to any action on their part. Only in very rare instances did the Indians take measures to protect themselves by attack- ing their conquerors. In the vast majority of cases they submitted patiently to whatever tortures the superior white, or so-called white, men might inflict upon them. These tortures were inflicted, partly for a commercial motive, namely, to compel the natives to bring in rubber without payment, but partly also out of pure lust of cruelty.
This latter aspect of the question is perhaps the most revolting of all, but it would be a complete mistake to imagine that the two aspects are disconnected. The instinct of cruelty is, unfortunately, more or less inherent in every human being. It comes out in boys who deliberately torture animals to death ; it has even been found in schoolmasters, who have been known to use the legitimate power of punishment as a means of gratifying the desire to inflict pain. But the normal man under the restraints of law and religion keeps whatever instincts of cruelty he may be endowed with well in subjection. It is only when he is let loose, and finds himself in possession of unrestrained power, that he gives vent to his unrestrained lusts, of which the lust of cruelty is the vilest of all.
It is only on this hypothesis that we can explain some of the hideous revelations made by Sir Roger Casement. For example, he gives an account of how the stocks (the cepo) were deliberately used to inflict the maximum amount of suffering upon the persons confined in them. In one case the hole cut for the legs was so small that two or three men had to sit on the stocks to squeeze the wood down into the flesh of the victim confined. He was kept under this torture for hours. In other cases the legs of the person confined would be fixed several holes apart as an added punishment for the man or the woman thus distended. Sometimes the stocks were merely used as a method of detention, one leg of the prisoner being confined ; but in these cases the imprisonment was often prolonged indefinitely. "Whole families were so imprisoned— fathers, mothers, and children—and many cases were reported of parents dying thus, either from starvation or from wounds caused by flogging, while their offspring were attached alongside of them to watch, in misery themselves, the dying agonies of their parents." Is it possible for any ordinary Englishman to read such a paragraph as this without his blood boiling, and the desire arising in him to punish the inhuman brutes who are responsible for such action ? Or take, again, the kind of incident recorded only too often in these horrible pages, where the victims of the lash have been infested with maggots, as the result of their wounds, and have been left to die in the forest or perhaps shot. The men who have done these things are not unknown. Their names are pub- lished by Sir Roger Casement. One man named Normand is charged with committing "innumerable murders and tortures of defenceless Indians, pouring kerosene oil on men and women and then setting fire to them; burning men at the stake ; dashing the brains out of children ; and again and again cutting off the arms and legs of Indians and leaving them to speedy death in this agony."_ Here is a detailed picture of this man's proceedings :— "Leavine finally declares that Senor Normand killed many hundreds of Indians during his six years at Matanzas, during all which time he (Leavine) served under him, and by many kinds of torture, cutting off their heads and limbs and burning them alive. He more than once saw Normand have Indians' hands and legs tied together, and the men or women thus bound thrown alive on a fire. The employees on the station would look on or assist at this. The station boys, or muchachos, would get the firewood ready, acting under Senor Normand's orders. He saw Normand on one occasion take three native men and tie them together in a line, and then with his Mauser rifle shoot all of them with one bullet, the ball going right through. He would fire more than one shot into them like this."
The favourite weapon of the rubber collector and slave- hunters in the Putumayo district is a dried tapir-hide twisted into a whip, and sufficiently stout to cut a human body to pieces. At one station Sir Roger Casement states that mothers were flogged because their little sons, who were considered too small for punishment, had brought insufficient rubber. But this comparative mercy to the young was not universal. Cases are reported of quite small children being flogged to death, and frequently children as well as adults appear to have been killed for no motive whatever except the lust of cruelty.
These things were done, and similar things are still being done, by the agents of a British commercial com- pany. They were first brought to light by Truth, and we hasten to acknowledge the debt of gratitude which the whole English-speaking world owes to our con- temporary. In consequence of the revelations in Truth Sir Edward Grey sent Sir Roger Casement to investigate the facts on the spot, and simultaneously the Peruvian Amazon Company, Limited, sent out a deputation which travelled with Sir Roger Casement. It is to the credit of the company that this deputation did everything to assist Sir Roger Casement in arriving at the truth, and in some cases the worst criminals appear to have been discharged from the company's service, though there is no evidence whatever that the company did anything to prosecute the men who had thus worked for it. Nor is it clear from the official report that the company has yet to any appreciable extent washed its bands of the hideous crimes that were—and possibly still are—being committed.
So far as the company is concerned the beginning of the business is the desire to obtain rubber without paying for it. This Peruvian Amazon Company took over the concern of the Arana brothers, who had organized a regular system of slave-raiding in the Putumayo dis- trict in order to secure a sufficient amount of unpaid labour. Not only are these inoffensive Indians com- pelled to carry rubber, often for fifty or sixty miles, without payment, but they are also compelled to provide for the maintenance of the white men and their coloured. agents who quarter themselves upon the district. These coloured agents are, again to the disgrace of this country, mostly British subjects drawn from Barbados. Some of the worst cruelties recorded were committed by these Barbadians and frankly avowed by them. Their defence was that if they had not themselves been cruel they would have been punished with equal craelty by their white masters, and in some cases these black Barbadians were subjected like the Indians to atrocious tortures.
We said above that the facts were first brought to light by Truth, but before these revelations took place in England the Peruvian Government must have been cognizant of what was going on. Sir Roger Casement quotes from the annual report of the Peruvian Minister of Justice presented to the Peruvian Congress in 1907 a statement made by a Roman Catholic missionary on the river Putumayo to the effect that "it is not possible to establish any mission owing to the abuses of the caneheros against the Indians (los infideles), whom they maltreat and murder for no reason (por inotivos frivolos), seizing their women and children." Thus as early as 1907 the Peruvian Government was officially cognizant of the atrocities going on in territory under its Jurisdic- tion. Is there any other Government in the world claiming to be civilized which would take no action when it is informed that its subjects are being maltreated and murdered by commercial agents ? That is not all. After Sir Roger Casement's report had been officially communi- cated to the Peruvian Government in 1911 that Govern- ment seems to have devoted its principal energies to evading responsibility. It pleaded that the scene of these atrocities was very remote and. difficult to reach ; but obviously if these robbers and. murderers were able to get to the Putumayo district it was also possible to send policemen and soldiers to arrest them. The facts, be it noted, are not in dispute. The Peruvian Government did, on the receipt of Sir Roger Casement's report, appoint one of its officials, Dr. Parades, to make a fresh report, and. this report more than confirms the worst revealed by Sir Roger Casement. For a moment it seemed as if the Peruvian Government meant to take action. Several people were arrested and a judge was appointed to try them. But before he fully got to work he was dis- missed and a more complacent magistrate took his place. The leading actors in this prolonged tragedy were never arrested at all—only a few underlings, and even these have not been punished. Men who were denounced. by name by Sir Roger Casement in his report were seen sub- sequently in Lima, or in Callao, or in Iquitos, confident that nothing would. happen to them. Nothing has happened, and there is every reason to believe that they are now carrying on the collection of rubber by exactly the same methods as before.
It is net, in fact, an old evil, but a modern and. a still existing evil with which we have to deal. The practical question now before the British people is how it shall be dealt with. Happily, in any ques- tion concerning slavery the conscience of the United States is as .keen as the conscience of Great Britain, and throughout the diplomatic correspondence published with this report it is clear that the United States has loyally supported Gie,at Britain in every step taken. Those steps have proved insufficient. Stronger measures must be taken if the Peruvian Government is to be moved. Sir Edward Grey speaks as if mere publicity would shame the Peruvians into giving real redress. That hope appears to us ill-founded. The men who knew these things were going on and who refused to stop them will not now take action because of newspaper articles in England and of public meetings. These atrocities will not cease unless some compulsion is brought to bear upon the Peruvian Government. Obviously England does not wish to take any step which would give colour to the suspicion that she wished to annex Peru or to obtain any national advantage from her action. Moreover, since the Americans claim under the Monroe doctrine that it is not the business of European Powers to intervene with American States, forcible action ought to be taken by America rather than by ourselves. On the whole it appears that the best im- mediate step to take would be a Joint naval demonstration, to be followed, if necessary, by a close blockade of Peruvian ports, so as to prevent the export of any rubber produced by slave labour.
Our right and our duty to take part in such a demonstra- tion arise from the long and honourable tradition we have established in connexion with the suppression of the slave trade in all parts of the world. The right and duty of America to take part arise first from the great war which she fought to put down slavery, and, secondly, from her claim to a predominant voice in all the affairs of both American continents. But action must be taken promptly, for every day men and women and children are being flogged, tortured, and murdered by the agents of a British company which is collecting rubber by means of slave labour.
To sum up. If the 'United States will not undertake to ict, and act with efficiency and despatch, the British Government must act alone. We cannot for one moment admit that the matter only calls for protest and the pressure of public opinion. That the British people will be satisfied with the attitude taken up by Mr. Acland in his answer to a question in the House on Wednesday last is simply unthinkable. The Government, through the mouth of Mr. Acland, actually declared :— "It must be clearly understood that, though it has been thought right to publish facts which had come to our knowledge, they relate to territory in which his Majesty's Government have no responsibility and no power of direct interference. I hope that the publication of the papers will be helpful by its effect upon public opinion and by stimulating private enterprise to establish a mission.'
We say, with a full sense of responsibility, that this atti- tude cannot be maintained, and. so the Ministry will find if they persist in it. We must have acts, not words— punishment, and adequate punishment, for the guilty and. assurance that the crimes shall not be repeated. That is the minimum. To allege that we have no case for interference would be ridiculous if it were not shameful. British subjects have been tortured and killed, and there has been no redress. To say that we have no power to provide a remedy is untrue. Thank God ! we have the power, and we must use it. If the Government tell the Peruvian Government that unless they agree to our demands we shall send a naval force and blockade the chief Peruvian ports the Peruvians will yield. They are not going to risk their whole trade with the British Empire.
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