PERUVIAN AMAZON COMPANY.
[To TER EDITOR Or THE " &ROTATOR.," J 131R, —A few weeks ago you referred in the Spectator to correspondence which had taken place between the Anti• Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society and Sir Edward Grey on the cruel treatment of native Indians on rubber plantations in the Putumayo-Amazon Valley under the control of a British syndicate. I venture to call the attention of your readers to the very important answer given to a question in the House of Commons on Monday last about the Commission of Inquiry which the Peruvian Amazon Company had proposed to send out to the Putumayo. Sir Edward Grey stated that the Company are sending out a Commission, which started on the 23rd inst.
In view of the assertion made by the Company in a letter to the Foreign Office last month that " in their desire that more light may be thrown upon the matter, and that abuses, if they exist, may be done away with," the directors "will give very clear and definite instructions to the members of the Commission," it is highly significant that the primary object of the Commission, as stated by Sir Edward Grey, is "to report on the possibilities of commercial development of their properties," and while they also propose " to inquire into the present relations between the native employees and the agents of the Company," there is no mention whatever of any "judicial inquiry" into past occurrences, such as was vaguely referred to by the Company in their letter to the Foreign Office, or of any Report likely to throw light upon actions as to which the Society possesses a very large amount of strong evidence.
The importance which is attached by his Majesty's Govern- ment to these allegations may be estimated from the fact that they are sending Mr. Roger Casement, British Consul at Rio, to the Putumayo. It is hardly necessary to say that Sir Edward Grey could have chosen no better man than Mr. Casement, whose work in the investigation of the Congo cruelties a few years ago is historic. The reply of the Foreign Secretary is so important that the Committee of this Society will certainly feel it their duty to circulate a further state- ment on the subject in the Press shortly, and whatever the Company's Commission may do or leave undone, the Society cannot cease to press this terrible case of the exploitation of helpless natives in the interests of private profit upon the attention of the British Government and public.—I am,
Sir, &c., TRAVERS BUXTON. The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society, 51 Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, S.W.
[We join with the Anti-Slavery Society in expressing satisfaction that Mr. Casement should have been entrusted with the duty of investigation. A better man could not have been chosen.—En. Spectator.]
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