LAYING ON THE PUNISHMENT.
"In another form of flogging practised, a short bamboo was used. The coolie would strip to the waist and go down on his knees with his head on the floor. His castigator would then squat beside him, and strike him across the shoulders with lightning rapidity. The blows, though apparently light, always fell on the one spot, and raised a large red weal before cutting the flesh. During the first quarter of this year no fewer than fifty-six coolies were whipped, after 8 p.m. one evening, at the Witwatersrand Mine, the dose varying from five to fifteen strokes."
In Mr. Douglas Blackburn's letter to The Times, from which I quoted just now, we are told that much of the resultant mischief was due to the incompetence and mismanagement of the men in charge of the compound. "I assert unequivocally," he says, "that most of the white interpreters and compound managers had not a working acquaintance with the Chinese language, and, therefore, frequently misunderstood the complaints and requests made to them by the coolies.... This is no place for detail, but the following incident, which occurred in my presence, may be accepted as typical and illustrative. A compound manager was examining the passes of a number of coolies. When we left the compound we were followed by two Chinamen who shouted and gesticulated violently, and clutched at the arm of the manager. I could see that he failed to understand them, for he shouted wildly in return, exhibited signs of great alarm, and eventually knocked them both down, called the guard, had the pair locked up, and later in the day he flogged them for insubordination. Next day he confided to me that he was in fault. He had inadvertently put the passes into his pocket and misinterpreted the clamouring request for their return into threats against himself. That manager is now seeking another engagement."
The twenty thousand soldiers who went to their death fighting what they imagined was for their country, might well, instead of singing "God save the King" and the like, have marched to the battle-fields of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony crying, like the old gladiators, "Ave, Crœsus, morituri te salutant."
CUTTING THE FLESH.