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 membc : 

 Civil Services elsewhere (except the Turkish), they 

 get paid for their services. This use of the phi 

 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 thistle 



