The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1923-07-12
DEATH PENALTY
FOR CANN|BALS
France Issues Orders Intended to
Extirpate Practice in At
riCan Possessions.

| ParfS.-AlDert Sarraut, FRENCH Hill
| lister of colonies, who was one OF
| Frances representatives at the Wash
| ington naval armament limitation and
pacific conference. has just signed two
| DEGREES intended to extirpate the
practice of cannibalism in the French
African possessions. The death penal
ty is imposed on any one killing or
trying to kill human beings for the
purpose Of eating their flesh. Impris-
onment of from one to ten years and
fine of from 100 to 1000 francs are
to be the punishment for completely IN
such crimes or for eating human flesh.
Cannibalism survives, M. Sarraut says,
principally under the form of ritual
rites or acts of sorcery.
Discussing this subject In LIE Jour
nal. NJ. Fernand Hauser writes:
doctor Cureau, formerly a colonial
governor, assured us some years ago
in work on the primitive peoples OF
equatorial Africa that cannibalism, as
practiced there (and 1t is practiced;
even in regions rich in food resources
Of all sorts, vegetable and animal), Is
not due to priyatiop or famine. 1t Is
simply a matter Of taste, he said, q
prediction for certain kind Of meat
cannibaiism Called Instinct.
"Cannlbalism is then, according to
Doctor Cureau, an instinct. 1t is 9
custom. The man who INDUCES in 1t
is not necessarily ferocious. He may
be n man who is gentle, gay, cheerful
and friendly in his ordinary relations
doctor Cureau added that he had
several times seen evidences that GER
tain tribes make prisoners of war or
buy slaves TO hold them in reserve,
and then kill them and eat them in &C
cordance with their needs.
"Pere Martron, who also made a
study of the African ne
groes, declared, on the contrary, that
the cannibals did not hunt men to sat
Isfy hunger. They eat, he said, only
the bodies of enemies ki.!sl II var
and, more rarely, the bodies Of those
On whom they wish to wreak terrible
However that may be, Pere Mar
IRON and Doctor Cureau both stated
lint cannibaism Is dying out. Coming
into intercourse with more civilized
tribes the cannibals feel a sense Of |
shame and soon refuse to admit that |
human flesh is eaten by them.
Reports for Many Years.
"These are reports dating back some |
ears. NJ. J. Brevie, chief adminiStra- |
or of colonies, director of political |
md administrative affairs In the gov
,rnment of French West Africa, says. |
N his Tslamisme contre Naturisme au |
Soudan Francais'-a penetrating essay |
IN native psychology which he has |
many blacks still prac
ice cannibalism, less from any real |
need than from an attachment to an
lent rites, which, divorced from their
primitive Significance. appear unintel-
igible to US, and which they them
selves can no longer explain.
"'We are dealing here he declares
with human sacrifices intended to dis
urn hostile spirits, or to produce
;ort of physical and moral transsub-
sanitation from the person sacrificed
to the person who eats, the latter
hus assimilating the formers strength
md qualities"
But whatever may be the reasons
which have kept cannibalism alive, the
french government is now determined
o make an end of It,