knowledge of what was taking place, is the contention of Peru. Mr. David Cazes, English Consul in Iquitos since 1903, would have been in a good position to find out about the management of the rubber plantation. All the rubber gathered in the Putumayo is shipped from Iquitos. And yet he always swore that he knew nothing. No one can enter the territory of the rubber company without the permission of the Company’s representative in Iquitos. The twenty-one constables whom the Peruvian Government kept in the Putumayo in those days had all been bribed by the English traders and shut their eyes to what was happening in the jungle.

In this way the Peruvian Commissioner seeks to excuse his country, laying stress on the term “English company and traders,” when he knows that the only representatives of the English company were its Peruvian directors and managers. The judge adds: “You must not imagine that the Indians are any less protected than the white man in Peru. Barring, of course, the times of the early Spanish conquerors, the native Indians have been treated very humanely in Peru.” This latter statement, read in conjunction with the translations from official documents and El Comercio of Lima, previously given, about Peruvian treatment of the Indians, will enable this statement of the judge to be judged in its turn.

Señor Paredes, when asked by his American interviewer “to what he attributed the recent exposure of wrongs committed several years ago,” replied, “It may be that certain Englishmen are a little jealous of the cordial relations existing between Peru and the United States.” There is revealed here the somewhat singular situation of Peru’s international relations, with its atmosphere of jealousies. Peru strives to look towards what it considers the dominant power in that hemisphere, and years past has been engaged in what might be termed a one-sided political flirtation with the United States. Peru has hoped to enlist the sympathy of the great northern republic, which might strengthen her hands against her old enemy Chile, between whom and the United States there exists a veiled antagonism. The rankling question of Tacna and Arica has been at the base of the Peruvian attitude. The friendship of the United States would be more valuable, in Peruvian eyes, than that of Great Britain. Furthermore, questions between Peru and the Peruvian Corporation, the powerful company which controls all Peru’s railways and which, though international as regards its shareholders and its capitalisation of £22,000,000 sterling, is operated and controlled from London, have often been acute. Each claims that the other has failed to fulfil its contracts, and whilst there have been faults on both sides, the Peruvian Governments of past years were those who first created the difficult situation. The Corporation has been accused of a sustained, unfriendly attitude towards Peru and of an endeavour to block outside foreign enterprise in the country. It is, however, in Paris that feeling among financiers against Peru has been most acute, and Peru has been in the past practically shut out from the French financial market owing to the unsettled claims of French creditors. In general terms the United States is considered to be the more desirable friend, not Europe, and thus it is that North American friendship is cultivated. There is, however, no unfriendliness between Peru and Great Britain, and the best Peruvian statesmen have done their best to cultivate good relations. But, like all American people, the Peruvians are sensitive, and they deeply resent outside criticism.

The work of Messrs. Hardenburg and Perkins, to whom the exposure of the Putumayo atrocities is primarily due, has scarcely received sufficient acknowledgment. The risks they ran in obtaining evidence were considerable, and such as can only be understood by a traveller accustomed to Latin American ways. Human life is held cheap in such communities. Murder and treachery to secure personal or political ends are only repressed in the Latin American republics by the presence of collective opinion. Where that is absent or perturbed there is no restraining influence, such as the personal sense of fair play and hatred of treachery which the British character affords. It is not only a matter of education, but of soil, climate, race, and character. Those who arouse the antagonism of any person in power, where the law is weak, may expect anything, from charges of blackmail to the knife or bullet of the assassin. The terrible political murders constantly taking place in the Latin American republics indicate the ruthless spirit prevalent among certain classes in those communities. The trouble taken by Hardenburg to collect his evidence, and the repugnance displayed towards the authors of the crime, and the appeal to English justice are worthy of recognition.[22]

The British public might feel constrained to ask how it was possible that the British Consul at Iquitos—whence all the rubber is shipped—who has been stationed at that town since 1903, had never heard of nor investigated the abuses committed against the Indians; that it remained for a chance traveller to bring them to general notice. Furthermore, the British Vice-Consul at Manaos appears to have had no knowledge of the subject. When the Peruvian Amazon Company imported foremen from Barbadoes—British subjects—and these men learned of the terrible nature of the duties they were to perform, which was that of slave-driving and flagellating the Indians, and complained to the Consul, asking for an annulment of their contracts, they were unable to obtain release by the official. The rubber from the Amazon Valley is all exported in English vessels, moreover. Notwithstanding the extensive British interests in Peru, no inkling of the treatment and fate of the unfortunate Indians had reached the outside world before.

It is to be noted that the American Consul at Iquitos appears not to have been able to afford any assistance to Mr. Hardenburg and his companion, and that action was taken by the American Government consequent upon the ill-treatment of its citizens, only after a considerable lapse of time. The ill-treatment of the two travellers afforded an opportunity for intervention by the United States Government, even if it had not been aroused to action on grounds of humanity alone. It was only in July, 1911, a year after Consul Casement had been dispatched by the British Government to Peru, and after six months of telegraphic dispatches between the British Foreign Office and the British Minister in Lima—dispatches communicated to the Peruvian Government—that the United States Government, having been urged thereto by the British representative, consented to make “informal representations” at Lima. Again urged by the British Government to support their representations, as no progress was being made in bringing the criminals to justice, the United States Minister, six months afterwards, was instructed to support the British representative. Thus, had action not been taken by Great Britain none would have been forthcoming by the United States, a condition which, for a nation that has assumed and been granted the position of policeman in South America, must be regretted. The Monroe Doctrine carries with it a greater responsibility than has been exercised so far by the United States in Latin American affairs, and this is becoming plainer to the great body of well-meaning American people. The United States at the present time are actively engaged in increasing their commercial standing with their southern