RED RUBBER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 31, 11 June 1913, Page 5

RED RUBBER.

PUTUMAYO ATROCITIES. BRITISH DIRECTORS GUILTY OF NEGLIGENCE. DEFECTIVE SLAVE LAWS.

[By Electric Telegraph—Copyright] [United Press Association.] London, June 10.

The Putumayo Committee, in their report, decline to believe that the Indians are bloodthirsty and ferocious savages. They are a simple people, naturally of a friendly disposition. The British Trading Company was not entitled to spend money on the conquest of the Indians. The money spent was ultra vires. There was no evidence that the British directors were individually parties to any overt act which would expose them to charges under the slave trade Acts, but they were culpably ngligenfc concerning the labor conditions prevalent.

Messrs Guggins and Rein ought to have known the devilish conditions under which they were making money. Messrs Lister and .Kayes were in a different position. They were apparently only a decoy duck for the investors, and did not know the language with which the Board olten conducted its proceedings. They deserve censure for taking directorships under conditions so humiliating. ■Arana and other vendors had a knowledge of the atrocities perpetrated at Putumayo. The committee does not think that the Peruvian case revealed any defect in the company law; but the existing slave laws should be consolidated and modernised. Morepver, the principle of extra-territorial crime ehoiild be extended to enable British offenders in ft-rcad labor cases to be brought to trial in their own country. ,