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thing about the country?' Suddenly he is waked from as great a stupor as that of Theebaw when, hourly expecting the arrival of the captive British army, he is told that Prendergast has passed the last defences of the capital, and there is not time even for flight. News comes that the peacock flag is raised and the rebels are marching on him, leaving blood in their wake, and this dignified British official calmly writes a memorandum! He can ask and get a dozen regiments from India at the cost of many lakhs of rupees, but when that bothersome missionary raves at him for guns to arm men who have proved themselves universally loyal, he can't spend a pice! A dignified non possumus is all you can get out of him. The Karens could have put five thousand men in the field for three months without a pice of pay, and ended the rebellion in a way that would have knocked the nonsense out of the Burmans for thirty years to come.

"A telegram to Madras would have sent the arms by next steamer (I wrote to find out), but non possumus was all the result. Now the Burmese have been taught the worthlessness of the sepoy in guerilla fighting. The sepoy has been 'weighed in the balances and found wanting.' He

can't shoot, and takes three hundred cartridges to kill a man at point-blank range. He can't march, and, worse than all, he can't get through the jungle, and he is soon knocked up by jungle fever. At the cost of moving one of those sepoy regiments from India the whole work would have been finished and much blood saved.

"These rebellions have been all got up from nuclei sent down from up country.

"Many a leader-especially the poongyees-have tried to keep their men from robbery and plunder, but they have found that the natural cowardly ferocity of the Burman at the first taste of blood could not be restrained.

"We are sick at heart at the officialism that paralyzes us all in Burma."

"Rangoon, July 26.

"The 'memorandum' of which I wrote has set the Karens in a blaze all over Burma. I have felt bound to send a protest-a copy of which I enclose. I expect, as usual, a polite slap in the face, giving me to understand (in the most gentlemanly manner) that it is none of my busi

ness.

"The effect of this paper is simply deadly. One

of my best men wrote me yesterday, 'We must either be killed by the dacoits or join them.'

"We don't want another sepoy from India. We only ask for a MAN. To quote James Russell Lowell's poem in Yankee dialect, written in the darkest hours of our civil war,

'More men!! More men is what ze want!'

"Even the wealthy well-to-do Burmese help the rebels, and openly talk disloyalty. Why? They say it is a war for religion, and patriots must put up with licence in the soldiers fighting for them. Again, not a wealthy family but has lots of sons. and nephews and relatives who have been ground through your Government dacoit mills, and who are in the rebellion, binding their relatives to the peacock flag. The same is true of even your

officials.

The un

"The dacoit atrocities are horrible. utterable Turk, with his 'Bulgarian atrocities,' would have no chance in a competition with the Burman dacoit. Dacoity is reported, you dash off at the double quick for a dozen miles, Karen levy trotting along abreast, or even ahead of the police officer and missionary on their ponies; you come in and find that thousands of rupees have been taken, the women lashed to platforms and then

violated by the dacoits in turn, and kerosene oil poured over their clothes and set on fire. The men, bruised and slashed, have seen all this, and are wailing like women around the horrible, blackened lumps of charred flesh that were once their wives. You are shown where babies have been beaten to a literal jelly in those rice mortars, before their mothers' eyes.

"Now, wouldn't you expect that these men would be wild to bring the gang to punishment? Wouldn't you expect to have to restrain their rage? Not a bit. You can't extort a word to help you to hunt the gang down, and hours of questioning give you no hint, though the dacoits have been in full possession of the place for many hours of broad daylight. One old grey-haired Karen leader once turned away disgusted, saying, 'Christ on His cross was not so forgiving.'

"Has this apathy no meaning for you? If not, it is in vain for me to interpret it.

"Burman dacoits have taken the measure of the sepoy, or rather they have been carefully taught it, and they now know our weakness.

"Your military men cannot be made to see the matter from the Burmese standpoint.

"What should the dacoit fight the sepoy for,

unless strongly stockaded, or the sepoys worn out by marching? He has no loot to gain from the sepoy worth the trouble and risk. Dacoits bolt, of course, chuckling at their escape, and grinning at the jaded sepoys. Sepoy officer telegraphs a victory, etc., etc., casualties all on our side. Dacoit, chuckling, still thinks he has whipped. Both parties are satisfied, for each has gained all he wanted. Troops move home, and dacoits re-occupy their old position, and go on with their career of blood. Newspapers call for cavalry. What use is cavalry in Burman elephant-grass or on the hills? Every battle merely educates the Burman in old Hyder Ali's Mysore tactics-only to fight when your legs are swelled up to the size of your bodies,' still hearing the British drums every time they beat.

"Your new Punjabee military police are even a greater failure than the sepoys.

"You have but one winning card that you can play, and it is the Karen.

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Everything that officialism can do has been done to disaffect the Karen, and I seriously fear, as do my brother-missionaries, that even Our endeavours will prove fruitless, and even when the right man comes here he will have hard work to wrest the card back again.

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