4 88 



REVIEW OF REVIEWS. 



INDIA AND CHINA. 



THE INDIAN POLICE. 



Mr. Edmund C. Cox, retired Deputy 

 Inspector-General of Police, Bombay, 

 protests emphatically in Eqst and West 

 against the charges brought against the 

 Indian police. His opinions are based 

 on a quarter of a century's work. The 

 average annual- number of convictions 

 for torture during the last six years is 

 nine! This, out oi a force of 177,000 

 men, is a record of which many Euro- 

 pean forces might be proud. Ample 

 precautions have been designed against 

 any irregularity or misconduct. And 

 yet the result is fiasco after fiasco, the 

 release of numbers of offenders who 

 ought to undergo imprisonment, scan- 

 dalous waste of time of the courts, re- 

 luctance of witnesses to give evidence, 

 because their trouble will most probably 

 go for nothing, and the paralysis of the 

 police force. The situation has become 

 intolerable. 



What happens over and over again 

 is this. Some villagers are prosecuted 

 before a magistrate on a charge, say, of 

 house-breaking and theft. There is a 

 certain amount of evidence against 

 them ; witnesses testify that they saw 

 the accused lurking about the com- 

 plainant's premises, and some brass pots 

 and so on are produced which were 

 found in the possession of the accuser, 

 and which the prosecutor alleges to be 

 his. All this is not very conclusive. For 

 one thing, brass pots are remarkably 

 like each other, and to establish identity 

 satisfactorily is not easy. Then, to 

 strengthen the case, there comes in the 

 prisoner's confession. That confession 

 has been recorded by a magistrate 

 strictly in accordance w 7 ith law. No 

 police officers were present while it was 

 being made. . . . All the precau- 

 tions have been strictly observed. But 

 when Govind or Rama is undergoing 

 his trial, perhaps a fortnight after the 

 confession was taken down, he says that 

 there is not a word of truth in it, and 

 insists that he only made it because the 

 police tortured him. The scene then 

 changes. A side-issue has been intro- 

 duced. A red-herring has been success- 



full}- drawn over the scent. It is no 

 longer Rama and Govind who form the 

 subject of the inquiry, but the police. 

 The whole of the evidence in the case 

 is now regarded as tainted. A with- 

 drawn confession ! That damns the 

 case for the prosecution. The accused 

 are released, and an investigation of the 

 high-handed proceedings of the police 

 drags out its weary length for weeks, 

 with the probable result that the charges 

 against them are neither completely 

 proved nor disproved. 



A BAD BLEND. 



Englishmen are often accused of a 

 parochial outlook on their neighbours, 

 but Captain Wyman Bury's experience 

 should justify his assertion in the Mos- 

 lem World that " civilisation and Islam 

 do not blend well, and that where the 

 attempt has been made it has been to 

 the detriment of both." He enters this 

 claim : — 



I prefer to illustrate my argument with 

 cases culled from one race and one religion 

 — -Arabia Felix, where Islamic civilisation, 

 with a thin veneer of European refinement, 

 may be observed side by side with the old 

 patriarchal system on which Islam was 

 based. I also claim fourteen years' experi- 

 ence! of these people, in health and sick- 

 ness, poverty and plenty, peace and war. 

 I have fought with them and against them; 

 have seen them flushed with victory and 

 known them sadly defeated; I have lived 

 among them as one of themselves, and met 

 their chiefs in Durbar as a representative 

 of the British Government. 



Captain Bury makes out a good case 

 from his personal relations with the 

 tribes whose qualities he respects, and 

 concludes : — 



Such is the mettle of Islam when tem- 

 pered by hardship and a simple, strenuous 

 life. Once import civilisation and the Mos- 

 lem character is sapped thereby. Nigeria, 

 the Sudan, and similar provinces owe their 

 physical aud moral welfare to the fact that 

 a parental government is wise and strong 

 enough to confer such benefits of civilisation 

 as seem most suited to their needs, and 

 withhold its drawbacks. 



A PESSIMISTIC PRO-CONSUL ! 



Mr. Bland's " Recent Events and Pre- 

 sent Policies in China " is made the text 



