Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1898-04-26


 lag and Do Not Often Capture One ef
 She Dacoits-A Sample Case of the Inss.
 nciency Of the Police Officers.
 Burma is one of the countries that are changing very fast. and one of the things that have changed in Burma is the dacoit. The sportive gentlemen de. soribed by Rudyard Kipling and others who crucifed villagers wholesale and filled old ladies with kerosene were flourishing in full yigor less than ten years ago, but they already belong as completely 10 the past as Dick Turpin and his colleagues ill England. No doubt fresh war or any event seriously shak. ing the British power or reputation might produce a recrudescenee of the old disease, but in the meantime the daooita have entirely changed their habits. In- stead of living together in bands in ths jungle they are scattered through sepa- rate villages in the guise of peaceful cultivators. During the day each man attends to his paddy fields just like hin neighbors, and it is only at night that they meet together for the dispatch of their more important and lucrative busi. ness.
 pacoity as defined ty law is simply robbery committed by band Of five men or more, and it is important only because of the Burman's strong natural propensity toward it and the great difl. culties which his national character places in the way of his detection. It must always be remembered that, Bur ma being in transition stage and much less settled than India and tha government being extremely short hand. ed, an immense amount of various kinds of work falls upon each single English official. Hence it ia wholly impossible for him to exercise any close or detailed supervision over any particular part of his district. This of itself renders the detection of criminals difficult mat ter. When the daeoits were in the woods. it was simply case of turning out oo casionally to hunt them down. At pres ent the matter must necessarily be left chiefly in the bands of natives.
 Now, the natives are for the most part honest and tolerably law abiding, and they have no sympathy whatever with man wto goes dacoiting, but the dacoit goes armed, and the supineness and cowa1diee of the Burman in the presence of arms, more particularly of firearms, are something almost incorn- prehensibie to the western mind. It is quite sufficient for party of half dozen men to have gun among them-effect- i've or useless, loaded or empty, matters little, the mere show is enough-and they may go fearlessly to work in the midst of a crowd. No one will interfere with them. In more than one instance bold robbers have made successful att tacks when armed merely with their dabs-the dagger which every Burman carries-and with pretended rife made of stick, with which they frightened off all opposition.
 But perhaps the strange workings of the native character are best exhibited in the following case, which occurred quite recently. The facts are vouched for by an English officer: There was a band of five men who were in the hahit of practioing daooity occasionally Three of them came from the same village not common thing, as it makes detec. tion easier--the fourth from another village, and, as for the fifth, no man knows whence he came, for reasons that will appear. One night these five men, armed with nothing but their knives and spears, which are used for fishing 1 in lower Burma, entered a house, tied | mn bn 111l dpr iT1cp 1 Now, this house was in a large village. containing not only population of some 1 400, but police post with Is native policemen armed with Hniders The alarm was given and the house surrounded. and then there was pause The robbers continued their work undis. turbed within. The villagers, some 200 or 300 ablebedied men, all more or less armed, sat ground on the dam which surrounds apd protects every house on the delta, looked down on the house and discussed the question. The police stood rather nearex the house and fired shots into it through the bamboo walls, hurt. ing no one.
 One solitary policeman after ti1na volunteered to advance. He erept up quite close to the house and fired in through an opening ill the wall. Then he vent farther and actually put his bead and part of his body through the aole, apparently to see what execution he had done. One of the robbers prompt. y pinned him to the ground with fish spear and killed him. By this time they had completed their preparations; sc they sallied forth, each man with hil pack of plunder on his back. Though