The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1913. THE PUTUMAYO ATROCITIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 76, 29 November 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1913. THE PUTUMAYO ATROCITIES.

It may quite well be said that no one who has read the.reports of the Putu:riayo atrocities and who has any knowledge of life in South America need be surprised to learn that fresh charges )f cruelty and outrage are being made n connection with the rubber gathering. The Putumayo is only a compara;ively small district, and there was no particular reason for supposing that die barbarities practised there were inique in the vast region that supplies so much of the world's rubber. Else.vhere there is the same temptation uid the same lack of authority. "The

uitiro absence of government, which ins not kept pace with the extension of revenue-yielding communities, has left the weaker members of those ommunities exposed to the ruthless »reed of the stranger,'' wrote Sir Roger Casement in his official report.

■'The crimes of the Putumayo, horible as they are, have their counterpart, I am assured, in other remote ■egions of the same lawless forest—hough possibly not to the same terri- ' 'ying extent.-'' One writer contends hat these remote regions of South \merica offer greater facilities, for rime of this kind than any other par; )f the world, and while Africa gave the .vorld the Congo atrocities it has practically lost the title of the Dark Jontinent. Besides, a meat part ol Central Africa is under the control of Europeans in the employ of strong ind just Governments. But in South America great stretches of country lie far away from the seats of government, and authority, which, under the best conditions, is not particularly strong, cannot pierce the enormous forests, in the gloom of which greed. made more brutal by the climate and the lack of civilising influences, works iis terrible purposes unchecked. The public conscience in England was deeply stirred by the Putumayo revelaions, and (here will ..irobably be as '.■.rent an outcry as there was concerning the doings of the Belgians in the Congo some years ago.