X 



BRITISH BLOODSUCKERS 



I WRITE this title with peculiar pleasure, be- 

 cause it is so nice to be able for once to apply 

 it literally. With its figurative use I am already 

 too familiar. In some tropical countries the free- 

 born Britons who are sent out in the Govern- 

 ment employment to protect the natives or the 

 coolies or the negroes, as the case may be, from 

 their aggressive brethren, are commonly known to 

 their planter neighbours as " British bloodsuckers " 

 apparently because, like most other members of 

 Civil Services elsewhere (except the Turkish), they 

 get paid for their services. This use of the phrase 

 is so well known to me, even as applied to myself, 

 that I rejoice in being able to employ it here, with- 

 out political prejudice of any sort, with reference 

 to the habits of the mosquito and the horse-fly. 

 Nobody, I suppose, is interested to deny that mos- 

 quitoes and horse-flies do suck blood ; nobody feels 

 the faintest sympathy for the misdeeds of those 

 sanguinary and unpleasant creatures. Now, it is 

 always delightful to find a lawful outlet for our 

 evil passions : all the world turns out to hunt a 



mad dog. I love to flick the heads off tall thistles 



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