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surrender are now in progress; and, if his surrender does not materialise, there is every reason to hope that he will perish in the continuous inter-tribal fighting in that region. In any event, it is certain that he can never resume his old activities in British territory. His stock, which represents almost his sole means of subsistence, is ours, as is all the rest of his property. The whole of his famlly (but two) and all his followers have deserted him, or have been killed or captured.

Daring the expedition many evidences of his atrocities were found-at Medishe the corpse of an unfortunate Dervish who had been chained up and roasted over a slow fire, and in a neighbouring ravine the bodies of many who, at the tyrant's whim, had been hurled from a peak to a terrible death on the rooks below. There were also many evidences of his organising ability: orders regarding the defence of grazing camps and the care of horses which would have done oredit to a G.S.O. 1. There were signs, too, that he was alive to his comparative weakness, which many years of attrition had brought about; and it is confirmed that he was plotting last December to obtain the persons of one or two British officers with a view to holding them to ransom, and so obtaining terms which would be acceptable to himself. It would be of interest to know what those terms would have been.

No account of the Mullah would be complete without

the story of the adventures of a certain German named Emil Kirsch (or Casson). A mechanic by trade, he had travelled extensively in South and East Africa, mending typewriters and other machines. The outbreak of the Great War found him at Jibouti, the capital of French Somaliland. To avoid internment, he hastened to the neighbouring and neutral country of Abyssinia, where he remained until August 1916. In that month he was sent to the Mullah's haroun at Tale by the Mohammedanised, antiEntente, and subsequently dethroned Prince of Abyssinia, Lij Yasu. It appears that he was given to understand that he was on a five months' contract to make ammunition and to repair the Dervish machine-guns and rifles, and that Lij Yasu was personal security for his safe return. Whether or not he realised the foolhardy nature of his enterprise we shall never know; but, if he did not, he was very soon to be disillusioned. On arrival

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Tale he was given quarters in the main fort, where he was virtually a prisoner. However, he immediately set to work mending rifles and manufacturing ammunition; and he received no actual ill-treatment until his savage masters demanded that he should perform impossibilities-manufacture rifles without material and plant, and mend Maxim guns without component parts. Then buffeting and abuse were his let,

and subsequently, when he asked to be allowed to return to Abyssinia, on the ground that his contract had expired, his request was received not only with threats of mutilation, but with actual manifestations of the most unspeakable atrocities. Thus his last few months at Tale were all but intolerable, and frequently he contemplated suicide. Finally, he decided on an attempt to escape. Day after day, his shoes were filled with sand to harden his feet by his devoted servant Ahmed, a native of Nyasaland, as he realised that his tracks would soon be picked up in the desert by the Dervishes if he attempted to escape in European foott-gear; and then one night in June he let himself down from the fort by means of a long rope and a grappling - iron, and working by compass, he headed for the northern coast with the intention of surrendering at the Italian port of Alula. After many days of wandering without food or water his strength gave out, and he bade his faithful servant leave him and make good his escape if he could. Ahmed staggered on for another three miles, where he found water, with which without delay he returned to his master, only to find him dead under the bush where he had left him. This story is given as related by Ahmed, and subsequently confirmed by deserters; and it may be regarded as reliable. Needless to add, the eight Dervishes

who formed his guard were executed as soon as his escape was discovered.

For twenty-one years Dervishism has spelt economic stagnation for Somaliland, and ruin for many of its inhabitants. In the Dervish area of the Protectorate and the districts impinging upon it no security for life or property has been possible. Such money as has been granted from imperial funds-in recent years some £85,000 annually-has been expended on the maintenance of military forces of a magnitude which would have been unnecessary but for the Dervish menace; and no money has been available for the establishment of adequate communications or for other development schemes. As a consequence, the general impression of British Somaliland is that it is politically an unmitigated nuisance and economically a sterile jungle incapable of development. If this false impression is now perpetuated, it can only mean that the country will continue indefinitely to be a burden on the British taxpayer. But if, on the other hand, the money saved by the reduction of the military forces, which is now made possible by the removal of the Dervish scourge, can be made available for the development of the Protectorate's resources, then there is no reason why Somaliland should not take her proper place in the near future among our prosperous and self-supporting African Protectorates.

D. J. JARDINE.

MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD.

THE CASE OF GOVERNOR EYRE-THE TRAGEDY OF AMRITSARA PLOT AGAINST EUROPEANS-GENERAL DYER-THREE PROCLAMATIONS OR FOUR-CONSPIRACY OR REBELLION ?—THE RESULTS OF GENERAL DYER'S DISMISSAL-MR GEORGE AND KRASSINCOMMERCE OR A TREATY OF PEACE? THE PRIME MINISTER'S TWO VOICES-FRIENDS SACRIFICED TO ENEMIES-PATRICK SHAWSTEWART.

IN the year 1865 "the black gentlemen" of Jamaica, stirred up by the harangues of agitators and the spiritual addresses of Baptist ministers, armed themselves with bayonets, outlasses, and pikes with the kindly intention of murdering all the white men they could find. "We want the Buckra men to kill, but we don't want the women now; we will have them afterwards"- such was the amiable ory that was heard on all sides. The "black gentlemen" murdered with all their own savagery the Custos of Morant Bay; they out to pieces a small band of volunteers, who made a gallant resistance; they beat policemen to death for no better reason than that they were not afraid to do their duty; they destroyed plantations, and they burned houses. As the historian says, "nothing could exceed the brutality with which the infuriated negroes perpetrated their atrocities. At the court-house the eyes and hearts of some of their viotims were torn out, and the women showed themselves even more cruel than the men."

The white men and women,

who were but a handful, were saved only by stern and swift measures of repression. Happily, Governor Eyre was a man who did not shrink from responsibility. He went at once to Port Morant with a man-of-war and a gunboat, the only naval forces at his command, and made his dispositions to crush the rebellion. He hanged those who deserved to be hanged, he flogged others, and with the help of martial law he suoceeded in saving Jamaica from a far worse massacre than had already drenched it in blood. Wherever he went in the island he found that a coloured member of the House of Assembly, who called himself Gordon, had exercised a malign influence over the natives. This miscreant had taken refuge in Kingston, which lay outside the proclaimed area, and when he saw that sooner or later his capture was inevitable, he gave himself up to General O'Connor. The Governor instantly put him on board the Wolverine and sent him to Morant Bay. There was a divided opinion concerning the treatment of Gordon. He was arrested at Kingston, where

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mons, full of inflammatory falsehood. They clamoured for the recall or suspension of Governor Eyre, and saw their baleful wishes gratified. They urged the Government to send out a commission of inquiry, and they were rewarded with one of those timid reports, familiar us all, which are glad to wound and afraid to strike. These gratifications did not content them. They pursued Governor Eyre, who had saved their compatriots from murder and ravishing, most acrimoniously with charges of murder. In 1867 Messrs John Stuart Mill and Peter Taylor applied at Market Drayton for warrant against Mr Eyre on the charge of having been accessory before the fact to the murder of Mr George W. Gordon." The warrant refused. The sleuth - hounds, hot upon the track of their victim, would not desist. The following year they made a similar application at Bow Street, and suffered a second repulse. They were sure, these good people, who lived at home at ease, that Governor Eyre had no right to proclaim martial law. No doubt he should have written home for instructions from the Government, and witnessed while he waited for a reply, if indeed he were alive to witness, the massacre of his fellow-countrymen, He should have permitted the worst oriminal of them all, the man Gordon, to complete the infamous work he had done at Morant Bay by stirring up all the disaffected

martial law was not proclaimed. On the other hand, his home was at Morant Bay, where the insurrection had broken out at his instigation, and his accidental escape to Kingston was not enough to shield him from the consequences of his erime. Moreover, Governor Eyre made quite clear in his despatch the reasons of his prompt action. "Considering it right in the abstract," thus he wrote to the Secretary of State, "and desirable as a matter of policy, that while the poor black men who were being misled were undergoing condign punishment, the chief instigator of all the evils should not go unpunished, I at once took upon myself the responsibility of his capture." Governor Eyre had saved the lives of all the white survivors. Concerning that fact there was no dispute, and there was indeed no discussion. Even those who condemned him were forced to admit that praise was due to Governor Eyre for "the skill, promptitude, and vigour which he manifested during the early stages of insurrection." But the politicians, bereft of imagination, and packed with the futile sentimentality of the moment, took alarm. Governor Eyre had saved the lives of white men by punishing instantly and severely a band of black rebels. That was enough to set John Stuart Mill and P. A. Taylor, whose literal minds could not picture the horror of a black rising, on the warpath. They made the usual speeches in the House of Com

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rascals in Kingston to rebel. Such is the fatuity of politicians, who pretend to believe that savage countries should be tried always by the standards which prevail in their own suburbs, and that the policeman at the corner should be sent to argue politely with the madman who is resolved to kill him.

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Happily, Governor Eyre found true and wise supporters in England. Lord Derby had the courage to plead his cause in the House of Lords. And Carlyle, to his honour be it said, did not hesitate to assail "the knot of rabid Nigger - Philanthropists barking ferociously in the gutter. He at any rate had a firm faith in martial law. "In the same direction," said he, "we have also our remarkable Jamaica Committee; and a Lord Chief-Justice speaking six hours... to prove that there is no such thing, nor ever was, as Martial Law;-and that any governor, commanded soldier, or official person, putting down the frightfullest Mob - insurrection, Black or White, shall do it with the rope round his neck, by way of encouragement to him. Nobody answers this remark able Lord Chief-Justice, 'Lordship, if you were to speak for six hundred years instead of six hours, you would only prove the more to us that, unwritten if you will, but real and fundamental, anterior to all written laws, and first making written laws possible, there must have been, and is, and will be, coeval with Human

Society, from its first beginnings to its ultimate end, an actual Martial Law, of more validity than any other law whatever.'

Enveloped in this cloud of rhetorie are the only security of life and the only sanotion of government. But Great Britain is slow to learn the simplest lessons of history, and the wise courage of Governor Eyre has sunk as deeply into forgetfulness as the brutal excesses of the Nigger-Philanthropists. And now once more we are confronted with the same problem. Once more a brave man is thrown to the wolves of the ballot-box. The tragedy of Amritsar resembles in all points the tragedy of Jamaica. The two reports show the painful uniformity of the official brain, and they might have been signed by the same hands. In each is manifest a fear to acknowledge the facts, a plain determination to find the verdict which would be agreeable to a pusillanimous government. The gentlemen who examined the case of Governor Eyre applauded his resolution and approved his suspension. The gentlemen who investigated the conduct of General Dyer paid him the same barren compliment that was thrown at Governor Eyre, and by their censure made it easy for the Secretary of State to disgrace him. At Amritsar, as in Jamaica, the man who saved his fellow-countrymen from murder and his fellowcountry women from outrage, is branded 88 a felon by pedants who were never asked

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