LATE SHIPPING. The Daily News. WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 19, 1913. THE RUBBER OUTRAGES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 232, 19 February 1913, Page 4

LATE SHIPPING.

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY. FEBRUARY 19, 1913. THE RUBBER OUTRAGES.

(Save from the point of view of general humanity the Putumayo outrages have very little interest in New Plymouth. They will not aifect our crops, nur have tl.ey any wry general bearing on the tramway .system in Xew Plymouth. Jiu? they have a general hearing on a race problem (bat is not without its interest in mir own happy sea-girt am! sthr>prcut la ml. The greatest disaster that e\er alllictcd the human raee has been the contact of Juiropcans with [he natives of the. tropics, and it is to our everlasting credit that Britain is the. one nation against which this reproach cannot be urged. YVe need go no further than Pnlumayo and the Congo in modern history to point this moral. In the long record of mankind's misery and pain nothing else can for a moment compare with (lie cruelty, lust and brutal greed by which the contact to which we have referred has been accompanied. Some generous-minded people have doubled whether man's noble qualities could ever have been evolved from apes and similar animals. If they knew anything of the conquest of the native races of while men. of the slave-trader's history, or of the present conditions of "niggers" and ''lndians" under the control of Christian communities, thev

would rather doubt whether (he breed of apes could, have evolved anything so fiendish as European mankind has prov- ' ed itself to be, and would cease from insulting the monkey by suggesting that he was man's original progenitor. It h not nice to consider that many respectable English gentlemen in this highly respectable and civilised twentieth century' have been drawing their substantial incomes from the anguish of torture, ravished and murdered men and women and children, while they thanked the stars their protils were so high. It is satisfactory to know (hat they acted in ignorance, but it is not so good to loam that several of theni attempted to throw discredit upon Jtr. Hardenburg's report and to burke it into silence. Fortunately they failed, owing to the persistency of the Anti-Slavery Society and the British Commission which was appointed to investigate the charges has more than justified them. The report which has just been published in Blue Book form makes appalling reading. During the rubber boom of two or three years ago upwards of £150,000,000 was invested, yet how many investors cared one cent how the rubber was produced? Yet part of it. at any rate, was produced in the following why. We quote only a few sentences from an abstract given by a Peruvian paper, published at Iquitos, the chief rubber port on the Upper Amazon. Speaking of the company's agents, it says:

'"They force the Indians of the Putumayo to work day and night at the extraction of rubber, without the slightest remuneration. . . . They rob them of their crops, their women and their children to satisfy the voracity, kisciviousness and avarice of themselves and their employers. . . . They flog them

inhumanly, until their bones are visible; they give (hem no medical treatment, but let them die, eaten up by maggots, or to serve as food for their dogs; they castrate them, cut off their ears, fingers, arms, legs; they torture them by fire, water, and by tying them up, crucified head downwards. . . . They cut them

to pieces with machetes; they grasp children by the feet and dash their heads against walls and trees, until their brains fly out; they have the old people killed when they can work no longer; and, finally, to amuse themselves, practise shooting, or to celebrate the sabado de gloria (Easter Saturday) they discharge their weapons at men. women and children, or. in preference to this, they souse them in kerosene, and set fire to them, to enjoy their desperate agony." \

Even then the worst is not told, but this is the "white man's burden," and this is bow it is taken up. Jn such forms the native races first become acquainted with the blessings of European civilisation and the gospel of Christianity. We do not know that this company's agents arc worse than others. There seems no limit to the abominations to which men may be driven by lust and greed when they stand isolated and armed among hapless people. In the light of tlie.se revelations, our own native race have much to be thankful for. We hear plenty of talk about the manner in which the Maoris Tfave been robbed in the past, but the big measure of equality which has been granted to them—an equality which it is purposed to still further adjust—is an indication that when it comes to administrative control, the Englishman possesses a very much liner sense of duty than most of the other European races. There U no credit to be. taken for this proper sense of proportion where simple justice is concerned, but in the light of the Putumayo and Congo outrages it is a habit of our nationality that cannot be too jealously guarded.