TELLS OF HORRORS ON DEVILS ISLAND.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19241, 1 December 1930, Page 1

TELLS OF HORRORS ON DEVILS ISLAND.

MONSTROUS BARBARISM LINGERS ON IN 1930. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Tel eg raph—Copy rl ght.) LONDON, November 29. “In the name of humanity should this horror go on?” asks a writer in the “ Daily Express,” consequent on the announcement that the cages of the French convict ship, La Martiniere, are again being filled up with human cargo for transportation to Devil’s Island, the French penal settlement off the coast of Honduras. “This barbarism still lingers in France,” he writes, “in spite of the abolition of public execution and the claim that Paris is a city of light.” The writer goes on to describe the boiling steam pipes encircling the cages, which are turned on in the event of unrest on board. The ship’s average quota is six hundred, and many of them have to be carried ashore at their destination, half dead from the hardships of the voyage. The writer estimates that on the average thirty-six die each month in the hospitals on the island, or nearly 60 per cent of the annual arrivals. “I have spent a night in the hospital in Devil’s Island.” he writes, “with a convict holding his head in his hands sobbing his heart out. Words cannot depict the awful horror of the place. There is a look in the eyes of; the convicts which I cannot eradicate from my mind. Their very souls seem to; start from their eyes crying to humanity for mercy. “I have walked through the settlement with the Governor;- when the majority 6f the convicts lowered their eyes. Here and there a convict bared his teeth and snarled behind the Governor’s back. Had he made any other move he - would have been taken back to the cells for punishment, or sent to work in the forests, bootless and sockless. I Have seen men who have fallen at their work lying on the ground, shaking from head to feet with fever, begging for aid which never comes. Even when they have finshed their sentences they are unable to leave the island because there is a tacit understanding with the civilian population that no ex-convict is to be allowed fo earn enough money to take him back to France. “This is 1930 and still this monstrous thing goes on,” the writer concludes. “The French are a brave and chivalrous people. What is the explanation? They live in their own fair land flowing with milk and honey, and they do not know what is happening in their colonies.”