Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1898-03-08


 aciency of tho Police ofaeern.
 Burma is one of the countries the. are changing very fast. and one of th6 things that bave changed ill Burma is the daeoit. The sportive gentlemen de, seribed by Rudyard Kipling and others who crucified villagers wholesale and filled old ladies with kerosene were fourishing in full vigor less than ten years ago, but they already belong So 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 . recrudescenoe of the old disease, but i'll 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 thas they meet together for the dispatch Of their more important and lucrative busi- ness.
 Dacoity as defined ty law is simply robbery committed by 2 band of five men or more, and it is important only because of the Burman's strong natural propensity toward it and the great difi- culties which his national character places in thc way of his detection. Il must alwaya be remembered that, Bur. ma being in transition stage and much less settled than India and the government heinz extremely short hand ed, an immense amount of various kinda official Hence it is 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 difficult mat ter. When the dacoits were in the woodA 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 hands of natives,
 Now, the natives are for the most part honest and tolerably law abiding. and they have no sympathy whateve, with @ man wbo goes dacoiting, but the daooit goes armed, and the supinenesa and cowardiee of the Burman in the presence of arms, more particularly of firearms, are something almost incom- prehensibte to the western mind. It is quite sufficient for party of half dozen men to have gun among them-effeot- i've or useless, loaded or empty, matters little, the mere show is enough-and they may 20 fearlessly to work in the midst 0f a crowd. No one will interfere with them. h more than one instance bold robbers have made successful att tacks when armed merely with their dabs-the dagger which every Burman earries-and with pretended rife made of stick, with which they frightened off all opposition.
 But perhaps the strange workings oi the native character are best exhibited i'll 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 praetieing daooity occasionally. Three of them camo from the same village not eommon thing, as it makes detee. 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 ara used for fishing iu lower Burma, entered house, tied up the owner and began plundering. Now, this house was in large village. containing not only population of some l, 400, but police post with 15 native policemen armed with sniders, ghs alarm was given and the housa surrounded. and then there was a 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 and protects every house on the delta, looked down on the house and discussed tho question. The police stana rather uearez the house and fired shots into it through the bamboo walls, hurt. ing no one.
 One solitary policeman after a tilns volunteeygd 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 his bead and part of his body through tue aole, apparently to see what execution ke had done. One of the robbers prompt, y pinned him to the groundwith a fish spear and killed hira. By this time they had completed their preparations; so they sallied forth, each man with his pack of plunder on his back. Though the house was surrounded, they appear to have had no difficulty ill making their way through, only the police fired affer fhp1,a Xvjt, bnclzSbot and bi+ +traa