REVOLVERS READY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 136, 11 June 1934, Page 6

REVOLVERS READY.

LIFE IN CHITTAGONG

Fantastic situations arc of daily occurrence in the armed camp that is Chittagong of to-day, headquarters of the terrorists of Eastern Bengal, who have sworn to kill every white man or to die in the attempt (writes Mr. H. C. S. Grubb in the "Sphere"). The rulo is that every European shall carry a loaded gun at all times, and it is obeyed strictly and literally to the last letter of the words "at all times." To one's morning bath one takes a towel and a revolver. A game of bridge is reminiscent of Dead wood Gulch in the wild and woolly West, with four vicious weapons close to hand. At dancing, the very best-dressed young men fancy a small pistol held in the left hand. These heavy Colts and automatics do disturb the set of one's evening coat so terribly!

The church is heavily guarded by armed men. The padre has his gun beside him on his reading desk and takes it with him into the pulpit, for, where two or three white men are gathered together, there would be a terrorist like to be in the midst of them. The more, spacious games such as cricket and golf, which are spread over a large area of ground, require more detailed methods. It so happens that the scorer for the Chittagong XI. is the prettiest girl in the station, and on her table lie thirteen wicked black guns, fully charged. The umpires carry two guns each, strapped across them, and the ground is completely surrounded by armed G-hurkas. The possibilities of golf are, perhaps, not always realised at home 'where bunkers and other obstacles, stay put. In Chittagong the links arc continually patrolled by armed squads. If there is. an undoubted pleasure in laying a nicc approach over a platoon dead on the pin, it is slightly less pleasing to hit a full iron shot into a sergeant-major. A car containing natives is stopped 200 yards away from the player. It lias been found difficult to ram down a long putt under the fear of a snapshot ftrom just behind.

The Indian Republican Army is purely anti-British, and equally anti-Anglo-Indian— who sympathise with and support the British. Although all its members are Hindus, there is no religious motive behind it, nor is it Gandhi-ist or non-co-operative. It is drawn from the better class of youth from seventeen to twenty-five years of age, sons of well-to-do Indian gentlemen, and consequently well educated and speaking fluent English. The Eastern Bengal contingent, with headquarters in the. neighbourhood of Chittagong, are mostly educated at the Chittagong College and number perhaps 100—certainly not more. Promising boys are taken in hand as early as twelve yeans of age and carefully trained in revolutionary and anti-British methods with appropriate literature. That its results have not been more murderous is attributed, first, to the normal native disinclination to produce a finished article, to- the defence measures, and —quite frankly—to luck.