Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1898-05-18
DACOITS OF BURMA.
THOUGH SOMEWHAT CHANGED THEY
 STILL EXIST TO THUNDER.


 ssg and Do Not Often Capture One ss
 the Dacoits-A Sample Case of tho Tnek-
 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. scribed by Rudyard Kipling and others who cruoided villagers wholesale and filled old ladies with kerosene were dourishing in full vigor less than ten years ago, but they already belong as completely to the past as Dick Turpin and his colleagues in England. No doubt fresh war or any event seriously shak, ing the British power or reputation might produce recrudescence of the old disease, putin the meantime the daooits have entirely changed their habits. In. stead of living together in bands in the 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.
 Daeoity as defined Ky law is simply robbery committed by 2 band of five mon or more, and it is important only because of the Rurman' $ strong natural propensity toward it and the great diff. entities which his national character places in the way of his detection. It must always te remembered that, Bur- mn being in & transition stage and much less settled than India and ths government heinz extremely short hand. cd, all immense amount of various kinda 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 ths detection of criminals a difficult mat ter. When the dacoits were in the woods. it was simply case of turning out co oasionally to hunt them down, At pres ent the matter must necessarily be left chiefly in tbs bands of natives.
 Now, the natives are for the most part honest and tolerably law abiding, and they have no sympathy whatever with man who goes dacoiting, but the daooit goes alned, and the supineness and cowa1dice of the Burman in the presence of arms, more particularly of firearms, are eomething almost ineom- 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 crowd. No one will interfere with them. Ill more than one instance bold robbers have made successful at- tacks when armed merely with their dabs-the dagger which every Burman carries-and with pretended rife made of a stick, with which they frightened off all opposition.
 But perhaps the strange workings ot 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 habit of practieing daGoity occasionally. Three of them came from the same village not commou thing, as it makes deteo. tion easier-.the fourth from another village, and, as for the fifth, no mar knows whence be came, for reasons that will appear. Ono night these five men, armed with nothing but their knives and spears, which are used for fishing in lower Burma, entered a house, tied up the owner and began plundering. Now, this house was in large village, containing not oply a population of some 1, 400, but police post with 16 native policemen armed with sniders, Tbs 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 800 ablebodied 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 near3x the house and fired shotA into it through the bamboo walls, hurt. ing no one.
 One solitary policeman after tilnA volunteered 10 advance. He crept up quite close to the house and fired in through an opening in the wall. Then he vent farther and actually put hia head and part of his body through the nole, apparently to see what execution re had done. One of the robbers prompt ly pinned him to the ground with fish spear and killed him. By this time they had completed their preparations; so they sallied forth, each man with hia pack of plunder on his back. Though