DAYS OF PIRATES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 12 September 1925, Page 10

DAYS OF PIRATES.

HOW WARS WERE CAUSED. IMMORTAL MEN IN BONDAGE. Italy hates been within an ace of entering upon war with Afghanistan owing to the imprisonment and murder of tin Italian ,subject in an Afghan prison, .says a London paper, and no one can yet «ee tlie end of the wrath of the nations with China and her rebels, who have been, ill-treating and killing Hie isubjeuts of other countries. It ton the a,s!saKi>i nation of an Austrian Grand' Duke at Sarajevo which touched off the mine that blew up half of the world in 1014, just as, when Britain went to wav with Spain in 1780, the chief a!legation against her was that one 'of her ollici-alsi had cut oil an ear of a British subject, Robert Jenkins, master mariner. The conflict was known as the war of Jenkin’s ear.

It was not always that nations were willing to go to war on behalf of the Liberty of individuals, and it was .this callousness which gave the pirates ol olcl tso many of their opportunities. For centuries the north coast of Africa was 'O, vast, series of nests of pirates. • Bondage qf Cervantes.

Many a notable man and woman languished in the foul gaols of these pirates and their kings, tortured, starved, awaiting .ransom or death. Cervantes, the Shakespeare of Spain, author of Don Quixote, .spent five terrible years in such bondage in Algiens, and though he planned -as roanantic an escape asi that of Monte Cristo, digging a cave and hiding in it for seven months, he was. betrayed in the end. There were pirates before Cervantes' day and after. The future master of the world wais once their prisoner; Julius Gaesar was, lor six weeks, m their hands.

Caesar, as a young man of 24, was Caught- by pirates as he was crossing the Aegean Seia, and was held to ransom at whalt is now Fermaeo, an island off the Cla.rjan coast. While, a mission was sent to Rome to collect £10,600 as his ransom; tlie pirates made much of him, permitted him to join in the games, and iso on. Throughout his stay he warned them tliaib- lie would bang them a.lil in the end, hut they thought lie was joking a.nd let him go when the money came. PLATO IN CHAIN'S.

Once at liberty, Caesar collected a fleet, captured his former captors, .and carried them to trial. Every man of of them was slain, though Caesar endeaoivured: to gain -some remifcisidin of their sentence. But if they, and not he had proved the executioners, how world history would have been changed !

And how impoverished would have been the intellectual world had not tlie same good fortune attended the miseries of ai still earlier captive; The great philosopher, P-laito., to whom the world owes its knowledge of the immortal Socrates, was himself soltl into slavery. Hie had.visited Syracuse under a. guarantee of safe conduct to instruct the tyriant Dionysius in the art of humane government. Plato’s plain speaking on torture and slavery offended his royal malsiter, who cast his .illustrious visitor into chains, and sold him into bondage. Happily, admirers of the philosopher bought his liberty.