The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1929-11-13
DEVILS Island: A Disgrace

To those of the present generation whose age
hovers about the "forties," the search for Devils
Island in the family atlas served in their youth as the
counterpart Of the crossword puzzle or ask me
another" craze Of today.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus had been sentenced to this
lonely penal colony and the international stir created
by the case melted many an American to dust of his
atlas and seek the location of the lonely spot to which
Dreyfus had been consigned to suffer and rot.
Then we forthwith proceeded to forget all about
Devils Island. Dreyfus was summoned back home
for retral and acquittal and vaguely hoped that
the French had allowed the barbarous practice Of
transportation of criminals to fall into dsuse.
Something more than year ago we we're shocked
into consciousness Of the fact that the French had not
sbated the nuisance in the thirty years since Dreytus
historic condemnation. The American explorer and
author, Blair Niles, published arrestng exposure
Of present-day methods at Devils Island, as dramatic
as it was authentic and convincing.
Her book Condemned to Devils Island deserves
to rank il the descriptive literature Of criminal trans
port with Marcus Clarkes For the Term Of His Nat
ural Life" and Do5toevskis "House of the Dead"
Exactly coincident with the successful filming Of
Mrs Niles book by Samuel Goldwyn in the splendid
talkie Condemned" which opened at the Selwyn
theater in New York recently have press account
Of the deportation of 700 additional conycts to
this living hell of the coast of French Guiana.
III
tinung the practice of transporting criminals is one
of the most striking examples of what the socologist
calls cultural lag" It is the last remaining vestge
of an attitude toward criminals which began with the
notion of the scapegoat and the practice OF exile In
primitive society," Its percentage goes back more than
10000 years into dim historic mist OF the stone age
TRANSPORTATION first began on large scale in Eng
land when the galley was displaced by the sailing
vessel in early modern times and England no longer
could send her criminals to the gaeys as slaves She
then began sending her criminals to the American
colonies some $4,000 being shipped out before 1770
when she was compelled to abandon the practice.
England then sent her convicts to Australasia The
incredible horrors of life in the Australasan penal
colonies have been immortalized by Marcus Clarke
and the memoirs of Ralph Rashleigh England finally
gave I'D transportation the middle of the last CEN
try but Russia continued to send convcts to the ter
rbe prison camps Of Siberia down into the twentieth
century Dostoevski has given us an undying picture
of the Siberian terror.
Devils Island and New Caledonia, the other French
penal colony the last vestiges in long trail OF
human savagery in dealing with our fellow-men- the
Italian penal camps are relatively unimportant Only
those who have read Mrs Niles morbidly absorbing
book we'll can appreciate the living death to which
the inmates of Devils Island are consigned in the
crowding RECOMMENDATION, rough labor, monotony so-
tude cruel punishments and tropical heat which char
acerize the life and lot of the convict in this lonely
outpost of barbarsm.
1t is a blight on French civilization, which all
friends of France and French culture will hope to see
removed at no distant date.
Mrs Niles book should be read by all Americans
interested in humanitarian progress The movie YER
sion will bring its message to millions who never would
turn the pages of her printed work
It will be doubly useful if, in fixing our attention
on the mote in the French eye it also makes us con-
scious Of the beam in our own well demonstrated
by our recent prison mutinies.